Kindness and decency were big reasons for Bart Starr's greatness
Green Bay Packers legend Bart Starr died on Sunday at age 85, and the tributes to the five-time NFL champion will likely continue for days and weeks.
On Tuesday, Pete Dougherty of the Green Bay Press-Gazette wrote about his one and only meeting with Starr, and passed along anecdotes of Starr’s kindness.
Broken down car, and a familiar stranger
Dougherty writes that the Press-Gazette sent him and a photographer to Starr’s native Alabama in August 2014 to learn more about the Hall of Famer’s early years.
While there, Dougherty spoke to one of Starr’s high school teammates on both the football and baseball teams.
“Richard Barnes, who on our visit to Alabama in ’14 told the story of friends whose car broke down on the interstate near Birmingham as they were transporting an elderly friend to the hospital in the early 2000s,” Dougherty wrote. “Almost immediately a car pulled up from behind, and it was Starr, who drove them to the hospital, arranged for the car to get fixed, and paid the repair bill.”
On Tuesday morning, Dougherty writes that he received a text message from a friend who had a similar story.
“This was from late December 1977, just after Starr had finished his third season as Packers coach,” he writes. “Tom Stoltenberg, a basketball and football coach at Gillett High School at the time, was driving his wife and two young children back to Gillett when his car conked out on Highway 41 not far from Lambeau Field.
“A car came up from behind, and who was it offering assistance? Starr, who drove the four of them and the family dog to Lambeau, arranged to have the car picked up and serviced, and provided a tour of the Packers’ facilities as they waited for the car to be fixed.”
As Dougherty notes, those likely aren’t the only such stories.
Difficult relationship with dad
One of the other enlightening points from Dougherty’s column is that Starr was ambivalent toward his father, Ben.
Ben Starr apparently thought his younger son, Hilton “Bubba” Starr would be the family’s sports standout for his athleticism and aggressive nature. But when Bart was 13, Bubba died of tetanus, and his father turned his attention to Bart.
The high school teammates Dougherty met with didn’t know Ben and Bart had a strained relationship, though they saw Ben as commanding, and with an intense interest in Bart’s athletics.
“They had no idea that Ben Starr essentially withheld approval from Bart until 1961 when after the Packers won their first NFL championship under Lombardi, Ben told Bart that he’d been wrong in thinking his eldest son didn’t have the stuff to succeed as an athlete,” Dougherty writes.
“In all those years growing up, as Bart became a star quarterback in high school, he never betrayed to his friends the deep pain of never measuring up in his father’s eyes. He was a true stoic who endured it without any outward show of complaint. He was a classic stoic whose deferential exterior masked an inner wildfire to succeed and prove his father wrong.”
But his feelings toward his father didn’t impact how Bart Starr treated others, as the broken down car stories and others of his kindness continue to filter in.
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