Where Are They Buried? (18 page)

Then, at only 28 years old and at the pinnacle of his career, Bobby turned his back on the game. Promptly and decisively retiring from tournament golf, he established a successful career in law and made contributions to the game in other ways; he co-founded the Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters tournament.

A nation that idolized him for his athletic successes found a new respect for him and for his decision to treat golf as a game rather than a way of life. As for Bobby himself, he seemed never to regret his retirement decision. “Golf is like eating peanuts,” he once said. “You don’t want to have too much.”

At only 47 years old, Bobby was diagnosed with syringomyelia, a progressive and incurable paralysis that caused him to use a cane, leg braces, and, finally, a wheelchair.

He died at 69 and is buried at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-75/85, take Exit 94 and head east on Edgewood Avenue. At the first light, turn right onto Hilliard Street and proceed a half-mile to Martin Luther King Drive. Turn left and you’ll see the cemetery a few hundred yards ahead.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and turn onto the first paved drive on the right. Go to the end of this drive and stop. On the left is a brick walk. One hundred feet down this walk, on the right against the brick wall, is Bobby’s grave.

SEPTEMBER 11, 1924 – FEBRUARY 12, 2000

Tom Landry flew 30 combat missions and survived a crash landing as a bomber pilot in World War II. After the war, as professional football lurched forward, he became a star running back for New York teams in the old-school, black-and-blue version of the game. By 1956 he had moved away from playing and was the Giants defensive coach. Three years later, when Tom was offered the position of head coach for the new Dallas Cowboys expansion team back in his home state of Texas, he jumped on it.

The new outfit was awash in chaos and in that first year they were thoroughly trounced. But for one tie, they lost every single game. Dallas was the laughingstock of the league and it was seven long seasons before Tom fielded a winning team. But once he finally had one, he went ahead and had another and another,
racking up twenty-straight winning seasons. While the dogged pattern of 270 victories took shape, the Dallas Cowboys became “America’s Team,” steamrolling over opponents with a startling array of playbook gadgetry, and showcasing a parade of football personalities, including the eye-popping Cowboy cheerleaders who gyrated incongruously behind Tom, the proper Christian coach who stoically paced the sidelines in his trademark business suit and fedora.

Over 29 seasons with the Cowboys, Tom made his mark through stunning innovations, seemingly completely out of sync with his personality, which unleashed an unpredictable but controlled havoc on the field. Ushering in the efficient modern era of pro football, Tom uncorked a mathematical approach to the game by charting opposing offensive patterns, and he was the first to overhaul defensive schemes on the fly with signals from the sideline.

As expected, Tom’s innovations were adopted by others, and by the late eighties, whispers suggested that perhaps Dallas didn’t need Tom anymore. Indeed, Tom had begun to preach to his players that there were three important things in life: God, family, and football, and football had become an increasingly distant third on Tom’s list. It was obvious that Tom didn’t need the Cowboys, either. In 1989, he was sacked as head coach and settled into a citizen emeritus role in Texas, appearing on the nostalgia circuit at charity dinners and golf tournaments.

At 75, Tom died of leukemia and was buried at Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas, Texas.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Sparkman Hillcrest is on the Northwest Highway (Route 12) just a half-mile west of I-75.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, bear right around the funeral home, then bear left at the next opportunity. After a short distance, you’ll see a sign on the right for the Garden of the Cross section. Stop here. On the left, directly across the drive from that sign, is a marker denoting the Crespi plot, behind which is the Landry plot.

JUNE 11, 1913 – SEPTEMBER 3, 1970

In 1949 Vince Lombardi left his $1,700-a-year high school teaching position to manage the defensive line of West Point’s football team. Five years later Vince was in charge of offensive strategy for the New York Giants (Tom Landry handled the defensive responsibilities), channeling the talents of Frank Gifford from defense to offense and earning for himself a reputation as a steely-eyed visionary.

But by 1958, the 45-year-old Vince was tired of being an assistant and he jumped on an opportunity to prove himself, becoming head coach of football’s perpetual losers, the sorriest team in the league, the Green Bay Packers. In 1959 he held the first of his notoriously intense training camps and made clear to his protégés that he expected obedience, dedication, and 110% effort from each man. “Dancing is a contact sport, football is a hitting sport,” he told his Packers. “If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you’ll
be
fired with enthusiasm,” he threatened. But Coach Lombardi also made his team a promise: If they obeyed his disciplines and observed his doctrines, they would be a championship team.

Three years later, the fiery coach’s promise became a reality. At Lambeau Field in Green Bay on December 31, 1961, Vince watched proudly as his new Green Bay Packers defeated his old New York Giants 37-0 for the National Football League championship. When Vince retired as head coach in 1967, the Packers had put together nine phenomenal winning seasons and had dominated professional football, collecting five NFL championships and two Super Bowls (I and II), and acquiring a record of 98-30-4. The Packers had become the yardstick by which all other teams were measured.

Pacing the sidelines in his trademark wristwatch and button-down, short-sleeved white shirt, Vince had helped the men he coached live up to their innate abilities. He had commanded respect from his players; “When he says ‘Sit down,’ I don’t even
bother to look for a chair,” one of them explained. Their efforts brought pride and victory. With the heavy-handed discipline of an all-knowing drill sergeant, he inspired complete trust. “Vince is fair. He treats us all the same—like dogs,” said another player. Vince’s legacy of perseverance had made his name synonymous with winning, and had turned him into an American icon that transcended his sport.

After retiring from the Packers, Vince soon realized that he still wanted to coach and accepted the head coaching position for the Washington Redskins in 1969. During that season, Vince upheld the Lombardi tradition and led the Redskins to their first winning record in fourteen years.

But Vince would never lead another team to the Super Bowl. After one season with the Redskins he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, and he died from the affliction at 57.

Vince was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Red Bank, New Jersey.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
One mile north of the Navesink River bridge on Route 35, turn east onto Chapel Hill Road and the cemetery is a half-mile ahead on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Turn into the second entrance, stay straight for a bit, then bear right and take the next left. Proceed for the length of a football field, and then, on the left in Section 30 next to the road, is the Lombardi plot.

MAY 13, 1914 – APRIL 12, 1981

In the opinion of many, Joe Louis, the plain, unobtrusive legendary Brown Bomber, was the best heavyweight fighter of all time. He held the world championship title for twelve years, defending it an amazing 25 times, including during a period of time beginning in December 1940 known as the “Bum of the Month” campaign, when he met challengers at the rate of one per month.

Many years after his career was over, Joe found himself in the public eye again when the IRS dogged him for more than a million dollars past due, which they eventually forgave as Joe was penniless and his earning days over. Despite all his money woes, Joe never considered himself broke. As his wife, Martha, described, “Joe is rich with friends. If he said he needed a
dollar, a million people would send him a dollar and he’d be a millionaire.”

At 66, just hours after attending a heavyweight championship fight at Caesar’s Palace, Joe died of cardiac arrest and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Arlington National Cemetery is located on the west side of the Potomac River in Washington DC. From any of the major highways, you can easily follow the signs to the visitor parking lots.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Get a map at the information booth, then walk to Roosevelt Drive, which is in front of the Memorial Amphitheater. Standing on Roosevelt looking at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, there is a walkway on the far right that winds up the hill. Joe’s grave is along this walkway in Section 7A, Stone #177.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1923 – AUGUST 31, 1969

Rocky Marciano was
the
world heavyweight boxing champion of the 1950s, and the crowning achievement in his brutal ring career is one that nobody else has yet matched: Rocky retired with a record of 49-0, the only world boxing champion to complete his professional career undefeated. To top it off, 43 of those wins were by knockout.

Rocky’s boyhood was the typical sports-loving one and his professional athletic career actually started when he reported to the Chicago Cubs as a catcher. Released because of erratic throws to second base, Rocky then joined the Army where he discovered his real talents were in boxing.

He turned pro in 1947, and after strong victories over the heavy hitters of the day, Rocky earned the right to fight the heavyweight champion, Jersey Joe Walcott, in 1952. Marciano won by a knockout in the thirteenth round and over the next four years defended his title numerous times before retiring in 1956.

“No man can say what he will do in the future, but barring poverty, the ring has seen the last of me. I am comfortably fixed and I am not afraid of the future,” Rocky said at his retirement. Indeed, he changed his focus, becoming very active in a wide range of charitable causes.

En route to a birthday party, Rocky and two others were killed when their Cessna Skyhawk airplane crashed into a wooded area as it approached the Newton Municipal Airport in Newton, Iowa.

At 45, Rocky was laid to rest at Lauderdale Memorial Gardens in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-95, take Exit 29 and follow Broward Boulevard a half-mile west to NW 27th Avenue. Turn right on 27th and the cemetery is a short distance on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and park at the semi-circular drive in front of the mausoleum. Enter the mausoleum, walk past the first reflecting pool, and continue to the second jaggedly shaped reflecting pool. Immediately before this pool, turn right and the Marciano crypt is on the right in the bottom row, the jagged pool pointing almost directly to it.

In professional sports, the generational staying power of the New York Yankees and the team’s ability to somehow emerge consistently and, for some people, frustratingly, victorious is unmatched. Since 1903, when the franchise was purchased for $18,000 and moved from Baltimore, its roster of over 1,200 players has produced 26 World Series championships and 39 Pennants, and the team that baseball fans alternately adore and despise has boasted many of the game’s most memorable and remarkable players.

FEBRUARY 6, 1895 – AUGUST 16, 1948

There exists a dwindling number of people who have personally seen George “Babe” Ruth play. His speedy trot around the bases in old newsreels seems to belong to some faraway, distant time, yet Babe continues to exert an influence on our culture as his memory epitomizes the image of a larger-than-life sports hero.