E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer
for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of
only four sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls.
Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

DICK LYNCH
1936-2008

By DAVE KLEIN

It was in July of 1961, and I remember a Brenda Lee song playing on the radio of my 1959 Plymouth Fury.

I was a kid from Newark and I had never been to Connecticut before, yet there I was, motoring up the Merritt Parkway to Fairfield, where I was going to make my first appearance at a Giants' summer training camp site, as the new beat writer for that now-troubled newspaper..

It was on the campus of Fairfield University and, frankly, I was nervous. No, make that VERY nervous. I had played a little football in college, I knew about most of the players, I knew they had a new head coach and I knew they were favored to win something in that 1961 season.

Well, I finally found the campus, once I passed Black Horse Turnpike, and I found the building that was serving as the team's dorm, cafeteria and media work room. It was mid-afternoon and there weren't many people around, so as I wandered through the building I came across a man wearing Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops.

"Hi," I said, "I'm Dave Klein. From the Star-Ledger."

He stared at me, holding an envelope. "Hey, you got a stamp?" he asked.

That was my introduction to Dick Lynch.

He died Wednesday at the age of 72. It was leukemia that got him, and maybe only cancer could have conquered that free-spirited, more than just alive soul. He was an outstanding cornerback, and before than an outstanding running back at Notre Dame (more on that later) and he wasn't such a great broadcaster on the radio, but when it comes to lining up good guys and good friends he finished in the top five.

He was more than friendly when he found out that I was from the Star-Ledger because he had lived in Bound Brook, N.J., and because one of his closest friends on the team, Alex Webster, was a Jersey guy who lived, at the time, in East Brunswick. When he found out that I had attended the University of Oklahoma, he really started to get friendly.

"Did I ever tell you about my touchdown against the Sooners?" he would ask, and he would ask it every time he could, year after year after year. He was the one, of course, who scored the only touchdown in a shocking, stunning 7-0 upset on the Oklahoma campus in Norman, leading Notre Dame past the nation's top-ranked team and ending the Sooners' 47-game winning streak.

Yeah, I knew all about it. I was there. He got a block from a fullback named Nick Pietrosante (I'm pretty sure) that leveled two of my teammates and Lynch, wearing number 25, not the 22 he wore as a Giant, could have walked across the goal line. In fact, I told him that, adding: "Of course you walked across, at least it looked like you were walking, you never did have much speed."

And he just laughed and laughed. There were three things in Lynch's life that made him smile -- Notre Dame, the Giants and Rosalie, his wife of 47 years. He played for the Giants from 1959 through 1966, and in 1967 he became one of their radio team. During the ensuing years he worked with such as Marty Glickman, Jim Gordon, Marv Albert and Bob Papa, and he was kind of pleased to admit, "hell, I never learned anything from them; how can you be neutral when it's your team out there on the field?"

He was a professional broadcaster but even more of a professional cheerleader, and every Sunday morning when we showed up for work we'd exchange information about how Notre Dame did the day before, how Oklahoma did the day before, and I always told him he would have been an All-America if he had me blocking for him, to which he responded, haughtily: "you couldn't make the team at Notre Dame."

That first season I was there was also the first season for such as head coach Allie Sherman and quarterback Y.A. Tittle, and the Giants won the Eastern Conference (they called it that in those years) and traveled to Green Bay to play the Packers for the NFL championship. They had won the Western Conference, with former Giant assistant coach Vince Lombardi as the head coach, with former teammates Ray Wietecha as an assistant coach and Emlen Tunnel as a safety.

Lynch brought Rosalie to that game. They had been married just days before, and they were going on their honeymoon after the game. So I met her then, in the Northlands Hotel, commiserated with her about deciding to marry a football player and marveled at her charm and beauty.

The effervescent spirit of Dick Lynch took a body blow on Sept. 11, 2001, when his son, Richard Jr., was one of the thousands of murder victims when the World Trade Center towers went down. Two weeks later we were in Kansas City, and Dick was there. People approached him to offer condolences, and he took each visit with a stoic expression on his face. "We don't know anything yet," he would say. "He could just be missing. He could have amnesia. He could walk through the door any time now."

He wasn't missing. He wasn't hurt. He was gone. And in a very real sense, a big part of Lynch was gone, too. Oh, he still talked about the old Giants, he laughed at stories about Sam Huff and Rosey Brown, he showed his constant admiration for Andy Robustelli, he talked about Alex and Kyle Rote and Frank Gifford, and about all the others who had departed.

"Those were special days," he would say. "Those were special guys and it was a privilege for me to be a part of it."

There are so many stories. One day in Philadelphia, or should I say one night, I was sitting with another couple of sportswriters in a bar across the street from the Giants' hotel. The bar was called Sinatrama based on the fact that only Frank's songs were played. And there at the other end were Lynch and safety Jimmy Patton, nursing beers way, way after curfew.

So I sent a couple more over to them, and the bartender nodded in our direction and they both nearly fainted. "You won't tell Sherman, will you?" he asked when he walked over. I vowed I would not.

The next day, the Giants beat the Eagles, 16-14, and the key play was a pass intercepted by Patton, who ran as far as he could and then lateraled the ball to Lynch. Going home on the train, I typed a fake first paragraph of the game story, which read: "Dick Lynch and Jimmy Patton proved yesterday that fitness and staying in good shape have nothing to do with winning football games," and I walked through the railroad car to where he was sitting.

"How's this?" I asked, handing him the sheet of paper.

"If you do that," he said, "I'll ... I'll ... he was almost apoplectic with anger. I couldn't help laughing, and then neither could he.

Dick didn't do any of the Giants' game this summer or through the first three games of the season. When asked, team VP of Communications Pat Hanlon responded: "He's under the weather, but he should be back by the regular season."

Just Tuesday, I inquired again. Pat's response this time was far more sinister. "He apparently is in bad shape. He has obviously wanted his condition to remain private, which is why I know nothing more than that."

The next morning, we all found out he had gone, and it's kind of warming to know that the last game he broadcast was the Giants when they won Super Bowl 42. Oh, my, how he cherished that day.

I'm going to miss my friend Dick Lynch, but I won't be alone. Everybody who ever knew him misses him already.

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

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