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:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“These native villages are as unchanging as the woman in one of their stories. When she was called before a local justice he asked her age. “I have 45 years.” “But,” said the justice, “you were forty-five when you appeared before me two years ago.” “Señor Judge,” she replied proudly, drawing herself to her full height, “I am not of those who are one thing today and another tomorrow!””
—State of New Mexico, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)