11/8/1991 - One of the craziest NFL stories, and most unusual American success tales, ends in Stockton, California nursing home with the death at 67, from a combination of alcoholism, dementia, and emphysema, of former linebacker Hardy Brown ... a man who will appear as #5 (just one ahead of Jack "The Assassin" Tatum, and one behind cornerback and safety, Ronnie Lott) on the list professional football releases in 2009 of the Ten Most Feared Tacklers of All-Time.
Brown
Made tough by the hardscrabble and rough region of Childress County, Texas, on May 8, 1924, Hardy Brown becomes an orphan in 1928, when at the age of only four, he witnesses two men murder his 43-year-old father, Hardy Sr., by pumping four bullets into the farmer/bootlegger body from close range. The next psychic blow Brown will receive takes place four months later when he is also a witness to a neighbor shooting to death one of his father's killers. Unable to cope with being a widow responsible for keeping together a family of eight children, Hardy's mother places him, two brothers, 10-year-old Reb John and 8-year-old Jefferson) and 6-year-old sister Katherine Imogene at Fort Worth's Texas Masonic Home, an orphanage occupied by roughly 160 boys and girls, sitting on 200 acres of land opened in 1889 for the children of deceased Freemasons of the region (seventeen at the time, Hardy will not see his mother again until 1941, when he needs her to sign papers allowing him early enlistment in the United States Marine Corps). Taught a shoulder tackle by his older brother, Jeff, in which a player hunches slightly and then launches his shoulder through the chin of his opponent (at the time there are no facemasks in football), often launching the hit player into "LA-LA Land" (the move is called "a humper"), Hardy discovers a vehicle for working out his anger at the cards life has dealt him.
Brown Scoring TD For Masons
1940 Mighty Mites - Brown Is #43 On Back Row
The relatively new football program at Masonic (it begins in 1927) is run by a veteran of the American fighting on the Western Front of WWI, Harvey Nual "Rusty" Russell (starring Luke Wilson and Robert Duvall, the story of Russell and his orphans will be made into.the 2021 release from Sony Picture Classics, "12 Mighty Orphans). A former three-sport Varsity athlete in track, basketball, and football (and captain of the basketball and football teams), and an All-Texas choice at end, Russell serves as a medic during the Battle of St. Mihel and is severely injured during the clash by a German mustard gas attack that blinds Russell for a day and puts him in a Parisian hospital for six months (during his time there, Russell will pledge to God that he will spend the rest of life helping children if his sight can be restored). After the war, his sight restored, Russell will begin fulfilling his pledge by putting together a football program for Masonic. Hand-me-down equipment, mixed-matching uniforms, makeshift footballs, practice on a field that is often more dirt than grass, and small players out of a smaller pool than any of the other schools in the region, but Russell uses those impediments to turn his players into a family, a band of Shakespeare's "brothers," determined to fully engage any opponent. Negatives turned to positives, mixed with incorporating the superior speed and quickness of his players into an offensive philosophy that will have the coach called "The Father of the Spread Offense" (the boys are often out-weighed by fifty pounds or more), Russell fields a rag-tag football team of orphans at Masonic that become known as "The Mighty Mites" as they put together a record of 8-2 in their first season of playing football (Russell will be at the school from 1927 to 1942, compiling a record of 127-30-12 for a winning percentage of 81% while going to the state playoffs ten times ... he will be called one of the greatest passing coaches of all-time by the legendary, Vince Lombardi). At first traveling to practice and games in the back of a truck, the team becomes the darling of fans and in 1932 they tie Corsicana High, 0-0, in the state championship game and in 1941 field a team that goes undefeated but is eliminated from the playoffs for having an eligible player on the squad. Successes that eventually result in the city of Fort Worth building a 15,000 seat stadium for the team and its thousands of fans. Eligible to finally play when he gets older (and growing into a 6-foot, 190 pound package of mean), Hardy strikes terror in his opponents as he begins inflicting the "humper" on league foes as he almost leads the Mites to the state championship game (three-time state champ, Amarillo High wins when they stop the Mites on the one yard line in a 14-7 game), as he becomes All-State at linebacker and delights in earning the nicknames of "Thumper" and "The Hatchet."
Russell
The Masonic Home
Mite Football
Brown Running For TD
Graduating from Masonic, Hardy is set to to play linebacker at SMU, but the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor skewers those plans, and the young Texas headhunter enlists in the United States Marine Corps, and in, joins up with one of the Marines elite groups, the paratroops. Part of the forces scheduled to invade the heavily defended island of Iwo Jima in February of 1945, Brown instead receives orders to begin taking classes at West Point ... and to begin playing football for the Black Knights of the Army; a change of direction compliments of his former orphan teammate, Dewitt "Tex" Coulter. Pumping up Hardy's football talents, Coulter gets his high school buddy an appointment to the service academy, but it is short lived and when the linebacker can't keep up his grades, he is sent packing (math does him in, and it doesn't help that he is caught drunkenly partying at a nearby girl's school). But not for long (Coulter will make the NFL after the war and school, and will find out that Brown doesn't recognize him as a friend once the two face off on opposite sides of the ball), seeking to play football once more, and maybe learn something at college too, Hardy enrolls to become a Golden Hurricane for the state university located at Tulsa, Oklahoma and run by Coach Henry Frnka, and then Coach Buddy Brothers (based on the recommendations of Coach Russell) . Still remembered as one of the meanest defenders to ever play high school football in Texas, Hardy's reputation grows to a national level during his three years on the Tulsa football team where the Marine veteran plays blocking back and linebacker, helping to lead the squad to a 22-9 record (including an 8-3 team in 1945 that loses to Georgia in that year's Oil Bowl) that includes selected as first-team All-Conference for the Missouri Valley Conference in 1945 and 1946, being twice voted his team's outstanding blocking and tackling back, and averaging 38 yards a punt during his playing career (He is still Brown however, reminiscing about his time with the hitter at Tulsa, Jim Finks, a QB and DB with Tulsa and a member of the NFL Hall-of-Fame for his work as the GM that turns the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears into powerhouses in the 1960s and 1970s will state: "He broke my nose and gave me four stitches at a goddamned practice!"). Outside of the lines of a football field, Hardy develops a taste for liquor at Tulsa, and meets the women he will one day marry, Betty ... the pair get into trouble only once while matriculating at Tulsa, trouble that comes their way when they shoot up their campus apartment with a .22 rifle.
Coulter
Tulsa Oil Bowl Team - Brown Is Second From
The Left On Top Row
Out of school by 1947, Hardy is drafted into professional football in the 12th round of that year's college draft, on the 104th pick, by the New York Giants. Starting a career that will last for over a decade, though Hardy never does play for the Giants, he does spend time as a professional playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers football team in 1948, in 1949 he is a member of the Chicago Hornets and the Baltimore Colts, in 1950 he is on the Washington Redskins for a single season, in 1951 he begins a five year stay with the San Francisco 49ers, in 1956, he plays for the Chicago Cardinals (and very briefly for the Hamilton Tiger Cats of the Canadian Football League, retires after the close of the season, and comes back for one last hurrah with the Denver Broncos in 1960 when the new American League Conference is created to challenge the NFL (his sole time making the NFL's Pro Bowl squad comes in 1952). Hiring out his shoulder, Brown will become one of only two players (placekicker Ben Agajanian is the other) to spend time playing for squads in the National Football League, the All-American Football Conference, the Canadian Football League, and the American Football League. And soon Hardy becomes infamously known as the player most likely to hand one his head if not attentive at all times to where Brown is on the field.
Lining Up The Rams' Crazy Legs Hirsch
Though only a so-so linebacker due to his lack of size and speed, and his inability to often use his arms to wrap-up when tackling, Hardy nonetheless becomes a legend among players of 1940s and 1950s for his devastating hits upon the elite of professional football (and none of the hits draw penalties for being after the play is over or coming from behind!). Tall tales told over and over by old timers in the league, none of the stories prove to be made-up when they are actually examined ... opponents and members of his own team agree that Brown is the meanest man and hardest hitter in the sport. In a time and place in which the weekly professional games are not shown regularly on television and there is no 24/7 coverage on the Internet, Brown is said to have knocked 80 players out of games during his career (others have the number at over 100!). Warned by veteran players to always know where Hardy is while playing, rookie Pittsburgh Steeler running back Joe Geri forgets the admonition while running through a trap play hole and wakes up on his back, staring up at a teammate. When he sees the man grimace and he asks how bad it is, Geri is told that one of his eyes has come out of its socket and is only attached by a thin tendon (Geri will recover from the "humper" he receives and later will only admit that the injury comes with a thirteen stitch payment). Enraged, Geri's Steeler teammates will vow to get even with Hardy for their teammate, but the plan backfires horribly and Brown knocks three more men out of the game to keep Geri company at the local hospital. And it seems that plans to get even with Brown always fail, and worse, often have disastrous consequences attached to the attempts. Never collected, there are various cash pools about the NFL for the player that is able to take out Hardy, but no one ever collects the money. Taking his turn at going after the money, Detroit Lions' Gilbert Lee "Wild Horse" Mains flies down the field on a kickoff in a 1954 game against the San Francisco 49ers and jumps feet first into Brown's thigh, opening up two large gashes (after football, Mains will become a professional wrestler). Twenty stitches later, Brown rolls up his pants and goes back in the game ... where he quickly unloads another "humper" on the Lions, breaking the nose of and taking out running back, "Bullet" Bill Bowman. In another attempt to win a pot of $500 in cash for Brown's termination, on a kickoff, more than half of the Rams will leave their men to unsuccessfully go after Brown.
Geri With The Ball
Bowman
Hit after hit after hit and the mantra around the league seemingly becomes the simple question, "Where is Hardy Brown?" (involved in a minor traffic accident in Los Angeles, Hall-of-Fame QB, Bob Waterfield, will quip to ambulance personnel that he didn't know "Hardy Brown was in town.") Another player that forgets that question to his woe is Eagles running back, Ted Ledbetter. Cutting inside a block he loses track of the linebacker and is rewarded with a shoulder to the face breaks the runner's cheek and causes an injury to Ledbetter's cheek that the team doctor will call the "worst" facial fracture the physician has ever seen (the play will cause a riot to take place later that lasts for ten minutes and includes the Back Judge having to be helped to the sidelines, 49er defensive end, Charlie Powell, and Eagles' receiver, Bobby Walston, are both thrown out of the game, and three 49ers, guard Bruno Banducci, Hall-of-Fame tackle Leo Nomelini, and center Bill Johnson all ending the clash with black eyes. Another forgetful player is the 1946 Heisman Trophy winner, Army's Glenn Woodward "Mr. Outside" Davis. Playing for the Rams, Davis receives a head shot from Hardy that causes the receiver to lose control of his body and crumple in such a manner that the running back blows out his knee and his career ends very shortly after it has begun (and for good measure, then Brown takes out the other Rams running back, Dick Hoerner ... in his book, "I Pass," Hall-of-Fame QB, Y. A. Tittle will claim that Brown lays low 21 different players during his 1951 season with the 49ers). In a game with the Giants, running back joe Scott gets off lightly with only a broken nose, in an exhibition game in with Chicago, Hardy is said to have dropped six players breaking three more noses. Tired of seeing his players carted off to the locker room, Hall-of-Fame player, coach, and owner of the Chicago Bears will have referees at halftime tear apart Brown's uniform and shoulder pads looking for illict pieces of hidden metal ... which of course are not found as Hardy grins through the whole process. .Even his own teammates are not immune to Brown's attentions, and he is not allowed to scrimmage with the 49ers for fear that he will accidently take out someone from his own team.
Lining Up Hall-Of-Fame QB Otto Graham
After
Eventually, all the big hits and off field drinking catch up with Brown (along with his coaches finally tiring of Hardy not using his arms to wrap up tackled opponents) and in 1960, after a cup of coffee with the Denver Broncos, the linebacker is forced to retire from the game he loves so dearly (there will be one more documented splat ... out of professional football, playing a pickup game after work, Brown will be taunted as an "old man" by a youngster in his twenties until Hardy turns his lights out with a "humper"). Retired, Hardy has trouble finding work (the only thing anyone appears to want him for are construction jobs and quarrying rock) and begins to drink even more heavily as his marriage to Betty suffers. Eventually, the big hits (before his death, arthritis in his hitting shoulder prevents Brown from being able to reach up and scratch the top of his head), numerous concussions, drinking, emphysema (from years of smoking) and the onset of dementia put the former linebacker in a nursing home in the northern California town of Stockton. He dies there at the age of 67 on May 8, 1991.
Brown After An Orphan Victory
Gone, but not forgotten, the exploits of "The Hatchet" live on in sportswriter Jim Dent's book, "Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites That Rules Texas Football" and the 2021 movie that comes from the book, reels of grainy black-and-white film documenting some of the hits, and the memories of the handful of players still alive that witnessed, or were the subject of "humpers" from Hardy Brown. Orphan teammate Coulter will recall, "When you are doing the hitting, when you stick someone with that shoulder, it's a beautiful feeling. By God, it gives you a sense of power that reaches right to the back of your head. I think Hardy enjoyed that feeling." San Francisco teammate Gordon Leroy "Gordy" Soltau will say of Brown, "Everybody feared him. You whispered 'Hardy Brown' to them, and they began to shiver at the sound. Nobody could hit the way he could. If TV had been in when he played, he'd be immortal." Chuck Bednarik, the Hall-of-Fame center and linebacker also known for his devastating tackles (his nickname is "Concrete Charlie" for the impact of his hits will call Brown the dirtiest "SOB" he ever played against. Summing up Brown, his 49er teammate and on-the-road roommate, Hall-of-Fame QB, Y. A. Tittle will state: "Pound for pound, inch for inch, he was the toughest football player I ever met. He was so tough he was damn near illegal!" Rest in peace, Mr. Brown.
A "Humper" Claims Another Victim
Hardy Brown Jr.
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