The Immaculate Reception's Great Truth
You won’t miss his statue at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Franco Harris scoops up the ball every single time, #32 immortalized in a line of statues, next to George Washington, Founding Father, and runner-up to beloved icons at PIT . But Harris’ gaze is off to the side, as if there is something else that might have his attention.
Two days shy of the 50th anniversary of the Immaculate Reception, Franco Harris has crossed over.
The ceremony of the catch that will mark his name forever in the annals of our national religion will go on without him. Perhaps the modest Harris would have wanted it that way. At Penn State, he blocked for Lydell Michell and let the crowd cheer for his friend.
As one of nine children to Cad Harris, a World War Two Medic, and Gina Harris of Pisa, Italy, Harris was always moving, even intentionally, slightly out of frame. Even in those replays.
In our civic religion and collective memory, there is "The Catch." There is the physics-defying, if rather prosaic "Helmet Catch." But only the "Immaculate Reception" turns toward the sacred without irony to express something so fundamental to the game itself.
If the pain and glory and sacrifice and grisly demise of Mike Webster represents one of football’s fundamental truths, so too does the Immaculate Reception.
The truth is a song of joy. A polka. A miracle. The capacity, even if for a moment, collective ecstasy.
Harris' walk-off touchdown, the first ever playoff victory for the Steelers, remains the greatest play in NFL history. When Harris crossed over the goal line, he opened a door for the remainder of the decade, welcoming the Steelers to championship glory.
And it is a joy sharpened with the knowledge that the steel was gone and in eight days Roberto Clemente’s DC-7 would disappear.
For the great Pittsburgh diaspora to come, Franco’s catch and the Terrible Towel would represent a threadbare hope. If a home is lost, can it be found again? Even if for a moment, plucked out of the air and carried home?
Where does one turn after scoring 24 points and rushing for 354 yards in four Super Bowls, securing a Super Bowl MVP, and NFL immortality?
An education. As the former Hotel and Restaurant Management major at Penn State, Harris founded Super Bakery, in search of a healthy doughnut. Like the city itself, Franco Harris put on a sweater and pivoted to healthcare.
At the turn of this century, he told author Roy Blount, he suspected there would be trouble with his brain and inflammation. The Hall of Famer was making some changes. Blueberries. He had also become a vegetarian. The joints and the brain, he told Blount, were going strong in 2012.
For a generation of Yizners and their kids, Franco Harris will always be tied to the city where three mighty rivers converge. You will spot him at the airport. Or in Stephen Dubner’s 2003 book, “Confession of a Hero Worshipper,” where Franco Harris moves perpetually out of frame, a bit reticent at the fame and adulation that continued to follow him and his fellow Steelers.
One place where Harris remained front and center is in the lives of his friends. Franco and his wife Dana surprised former Steeler linebacker and long-time Kennywood volunteer Bill Priatko on his 90th birthday. “He was always thinking of others. Always. He was my dear friend,” Priatko tells me Wednesday morning. “Franco was just one heckuva guy.”
This morning, I am listening to the voice of Tunch Ilkin on my phone. In the summer before he passed away from ALS, Ilkin, former Steeler offensive lineman (’80-’92) and TV and radio analyst, and I shared Steelers memories.
When Ilkin was brought into the Steelers offices, the boss, The Chief, Dan Rooney was in the lobby. Oblivious rookies watched, as the man in the misbuttoned cardigan, tidied up around the lobby. He moved from ashtray to ashtray dumping the small ones into the large ones.
Rooney looked at the rookies and said, “Hello young fellas. What are your names?”
The players gave their names and exchanged pleasantries with the old fella until one rookie asked, “So are you the janitor here?”
Rooney’s chest swelled and he rumbled with laughter. “I do a little bit of everything around here.”
Tunch told me this story because he wanted to say something about the Rooneys and the Steelers. Something that was different. He also told me how during the strike in ’87, beyond free agency, there was a whispered hope that players could receive, like their fellow professionals in MLB, lifetime health insurance upon retirement. There are not enough blueberries to go around. The owners refused to have insurance companies quote a price.
During the strike, The Chief, who had seen union halls double as food banks, called Tunch up and told him there was a key on Mary Ann’s desk, “but you didn’t get it from me.” It was a key to the practice field on Pittsburgh’s North Side–not far away from Three Rivers Stadium–as the replacement players, “the 55 scabs,” played 70 miles away in Johnstown.
Tunch got four calls as the strike went on. Donnie Shell. Gary Dunn. John Stallworth. Mike Webster. The legends. From the glory years. They were going to cross.
Webster told the papers that this was his last year and he would need to find a job when this was all over.
Tunch says, “Webster called me up and said, ‘Tunch, I love you, but I have to cross the picket line.’ He was crying. ‘This is it for me.’”
Tunch told Webster what he told Stallworth and Donnie Shell and Gary Dunn.
“If you like you have to cross, cross. But listen. I love you guys.”
And now Franco Harris has crossed too. They were Pittsburgh Steelers who worked for Mr. Rooney. They knew if there was hope or a chance to come home again, it relied on love and luck and doing your job. They knew the score. They knew what work was.
You Might Also Like
