In the history of the National Football League, only one player has ever died on the field. Fifty years ago today, with sixty-two seconds left in the fourth quarter of a game at Tiger Stadium against their long-time rivals, the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions' wide receiver Chuck Hughes had a heart attack, collapsed to the turf, and died in front of the 54,418 fans in attendance, whose number included his wife Sharon. She was twenty-five. He was twenty-eight. He would forever remain twenty-eight.
Although I consider myself to be a football fan, born into a family of football fans, I had never heard Chuck Hughes' name or heard his story until just the other day. His story is one of the American Dream, right up until it heartbreaking final act. Hughes was from Abilene, Texas, attended college, and played football at Texas Western (now the University of Texas El-Paso). In his senior year, under first-year coach Bobby Dobbs, the Miners went from 0-8-2 to 8-3, capping their season with a 13-12 win against TCU in the Sun Bowl. The Miners were powered by their offense, led by quarterback Billy Stevens and his two favorite targets, receivers Bob Wallace and Chuck Hughes, who between them caught one hundred and forty of the two hundred and seventeen passes Stevens completed that season.
Chuck Hughes, Billy Stevens, and Bob Wallace
Texas Western Miners
(c) Detroit News
All three men, who were close friends as well as teammates, are now members of their Alma mater's Hall of Fame. This fall, the fiftieth since Chuck Hughes' death, the Miners are experiencing a renaissance. Under fourth-year coach Dana Dimel, they have won six of their first seven games and are already bowl-eligible.
Sharon Hughes was just twenty-five when she was widowed on that terrible October Sunday afternoon fifty years ago, left to raise the couple's two-year-old son, Shane, without Chuck. Twenty-five is too goddamn young to transition from wife to widow. Far too goddamn young.
Forever young.
-AK
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