Former University of Georgia player Charley Trippi, center, is introduced at the grand opening ceremony for the College Football Hall of Fame in 2014, in Atlanta. Trippi, the oldest living member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, turned 99 on Monday.
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Trainer Harry ‘Squab’ Jones, left, applies the towel to Georgia’s Charley Trippi after the Bulldog Star ran 66 yards to score the last touchdown against Georgia Tech in Athens, Ga. on Nov. 30, 1946. Trippi led the Bulldogs to a spot in the Sugar Bowl.
AP file photo
Charley Trippi, right, 24-year-old All-America halfback tries on a Chicago Cardinal uniform at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Jan. 17, 1947. Trippi signed a four-season $100,000 contract with the NFL. Cardinal coach Jimmy Conzelman looks on.
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Left half back Charles Trippi of the Chicago Cardinals in July 7, 1953. Trippi starred at Pittston High School before playing at Georgia in college and for the Cardinals in the NFL.
AP file photo
Pittston native Charley Trippi, the oldest living member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, celebrated his 99th birthday Monday, an event that drew plenty of attention in his adopted home state of Georgia.
Trippi settled in Athens, Ga. after his professional football career ended, returning to the city where he led the University of Georgia to a 1943 Rose Bowl win, capping a 1942 national championship season. He is also a College Football Hall of Famer, honoring a career that included being runner-up for the 1946 Heisman Trophy when he returned from World War II to lead the Bulldogs to an unbeaten Southeastern Conference championship season, a Sugar Bowl victory and a claim to a national championship as one of the teams recognized as number-one in the various polls.
It is the type of stuff of which legends are made.
Near his birthplace, the Pittston Area football and other teams play home events in a stadium that bears his name. In Georgia, Trippi is a treasured link to the program’s storied history.
University of Georgia radio announcer Loran Smith, writing in the Athens Banner-Herald, described Trippi blowing out all 99 candles Monday with encouragement from his wife Peggy and the woman who made the cake.
“He rose to the occasion, as he often did on the football field, and smiled his way through the celebratory moment,” Smith wrote. “For the first time in his life, he did not spend his birthday outdoors. Well into his nineties, he was usually outside working in his yard most days of the year.”
Smith is among Trippi’s many admirers in Georgia.
“When I reflect back on Trippi’s days in Athens, I can proudly proclaim that he became a good friend,” Smith wrote of Trippi, who became an assistant coach at Georgia, along with a career in real estate. “There are several flashbacks of his time as an NFL great, who often entertained coaching friends, who were scouting college talent and had known him during his NFL days.”
Trippi had coached the Georgia baseball team during his NFL offseasons and in one minor-league season with the Atlanta Crackers, between his college and pro football careers, quickly established himself as a potential Major Leaguer in that sport as well.
All Trippi did in 1947 was: throw a 67-yard touchdown pass in the 20-10 Sugar Bowl win over North Carolina; have his jersey number 62 retired by Georgia; bat .344 for the Crackers in his only season of professional baseball; help the College All-Stars beat the defending NFL champion Chicago Bears, 16-0; sign one of the most lucrative contracts in NFL history to that point to join the Chicago Cardinals, who had drafted him first overall; earned All-Pro honors; ran 44 yards for one touchdown and returned a punt 75 for another to lead the Cardinals to a 28-21 NFL Championship Game victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.
Smith wrote that the performance “begs the question: Has any athlete every had a better year?”
In a December 2018 interview with the Dispatch, Trippi said he “enjoys” knowing that the stadium in Yatesville bears his name.
Trippi’s performance on local fields for Pittston High School earned him the football scholarship to Georgia and the opportunities that followed, including playing in the Rose Bowl and the NFL.
“I think everybody who plays the game would like to be in the Rose Bowl and Hall of Fame,” Trippi told the Dispatch during that interview.
