Jack Elam saw Lombardi in action, screaming.
Former Mayor Jack Elam said a feature in last Monday's News & Record about the Green Bay Packers training here for a week in Greensboro from 1955-59 brought back memory of an nnstance he witnessed 47 years ago.
It involved the Packer's violatile coach Vince Lombandi, who in 1959 became coach of a Packer team that won only one game the year before.
During that annual week in Greensboro, the Packers worked out mostly at War Memorial Stadium on Yanceyville Street.
One rainy day, Elam, who was an officer in the Navy Reserves, had business at the Naval-Marine Corps Reserve Center next to the stadium. The building is now the city-owned Sanford Smith Center.
When he entered he heard the "damnest racket and screaming I have ever heard."
Elam looked into a room and saw a group of Packers. Lombandi, who was short, stood on a stool, in the face of a tall player. He was letting him have it for a poor performance on the practice field.
"He was really telling him what he thought of him," Elam remembers.
When coaches explode at players these day they get criticized for too harsh. But bluntness worked for Lombardi.
He took a woeful team and led them to five National Football League titles. His Pack also won the first two Super Bowls. At his death in 1970 from cancer, he had never experienced a losing year.