Final Years
Following his dismissal, Van Brocklin returned to his pecan farm in Social Circle, Georgia. His only connections to football during this era were as a running backs coach for Georgia Tech in 1979, and as a college football broadcaster.
Van Brocklin suffered a number of illnesses, including a brain tumor. After it was removed, he told the press, "It was a brain transplant. They gave me a sportswriter's brain, to make sure I got one that hadn't been used." He died on May 2, 1983, the day after suffering a stroke.
Van Brocklin was posthumously elected to the University of Oregon Athletics Hall of Fame in 1992.
Read more about this topic: Norm Van Brocklin
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death, a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves ... and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.”
—Coleman Dowell (1925–1985)
“I Years had been from Home
And now before the Door
I dared not enter,”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)