Vince Lombardi - Middletown, NJ - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
- Vince Lombardi

The NFL has had many colorful coaches over the years, but none more iconic than Vince Lombardi. When he took over the Green Bay Packers in 1959, they were coming off a horrible year with a 1-10-1 record (they hadn’t had a winning season in over ten years). Over the next nine years, with Lombardi as both head coach and general manager, the team compiled an 89-29-4 regular season record winning the championship in five of those nine years, including Super Bowls I and II.

So dominate were the Green Bay Packers during the decade of the 1960s that when the U.S. Postal Service celebrated that decade with 15 postage stamps issued in 1999, the packers were directly or indirectly featured on two of them (alongside The Beatles, the Vietnam War, Star Trek and the moon landing). Lombardi himself was honored on a U.S. postage stamp issued in 1997 and the Super Bowl Trophy was renamed the Lombardi Trophy in 1970.

Vince Lombardi, who at one time considered the priesthood, began his coaching career in Englewood, NJ, with the St. Cecilia High School football team during the 1940s. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he coached at the college level as an assistant, first with his alma mater, Fordham, then with Army. In the last half of the 1950s, he was the offensive coordinator for the NY Giants of the NFL. At this same time, Tom Landry was the Giant’s defensive coordinator. Landry would go on to become a legendary coach with the Dallas Cowboys and would face off against Lombardi and the Packers in several memorable games including the infamous ‘Ice Bowl.’

After his nine years with the Green Bay Packers, Lombardi became head coach of the Washington Redskins, turning that franchise around in just one year. But his tenure with the Redskins was short-lived when he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of colon cancer in 1970 and died less than three months later at the age of 57.
(Sources: wikipedia.org, packers.com.)

Description: Vince Lombardi is laid to rest at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Middletown, NJ. Date of birth: 06/11/1913 Date of death: 09/03/1970 Area of notoriety: Sports Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: none Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

Visit Instructions:
To post a visit log for waymarks in this category, you must have personally visited the waymark location. When logging your visit, please provide a note describing your visit experience, along with any additional information about the waymark or the surrounding area that you think others may find interesting.

We especially encourage you to include any pictures that you took during your visit to the waymark. However, only respectful photographs are allowed. Logs which include photographs representing any form of disrespectful behavior (including those showing personal items placed on or near the grave location) will be subject to deletion.

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.