[Rhodes22-list] Packers, Roofs, and Rummy

[Brad Haslett]

Ex-Packers star McGee dies in fall from roof in Deephaven

Max McGee, who lived in the Twin Cities for more than 30 years, died at age
75 after falling from the roof of his Deephaven home.

*By Steve Karnowski,* Associated Press

Last update: October 21, 2007 – 5:17 PM
Max McGee, the free-spirited Green Bay Packers receiver who became part of
Super Bowl lore after a night on the town, died when he fell while clearing
leaves from the roof of his home. He was 75.

Police were called to his home in suburban Deephaven on Saturday afternoon,
Sgt. Chris Whiteside said. Efforts to resuscitate failed.

"I just lost my best friend," former teammate Paul Hornung told the St. Paul
Pioneer Press. "(His wife) Denise was away from the house. She'd warned him
not to get up there. He shouldn't have been up there. He knew better than
that."

McGee caught the first touchdown pass in Super Bowl history in 1967, a game
he expected to watch from the sideline. When it was over, he had caught
seven passes for 138 yards and two TDs and Green Bay — coached by the great
Vince Lombardi — had beaten the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10.

"Now he'll be the answer to one of the great trivia questions: Who scored
the first touchdown in Super Bowl history?" Hornung said. "Vince knew he
could count on him. ... He was a great athlete. He could do anything with
his hands."

McGee had only four receptions for 91 yards during the 1966 regular season.
He didn't plan to play in the title game against the Chiefs because he
violated the team curfew and spent the night before partying. The next
morning he reportedly told Dowler: "I hope you don't get hurt. I'm not in
very good shape."

Dowler separated a shoulder on the Packers' second drive, and Lombardi
summoned McGee. He had to borrow a helmet because he left his in the locker
room. A few plays later, McGee made a one-handed snare of a pass from Bart
Starr and ran 37 yards to score.

"When it's third-and-10," McGee once said, "you can take the milk drinkers
and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time."

Jerry Kramer played 11 seasons on the Packers with McGee, and they remained
friends. He said McGee's humor defused the tension on a team run by
Lombardi's iron hand.

"When everyone else was looking at their feet wondering what to do, Max
would come up with something," he said.

Kramer said McGee had a stubborn streak and it was not altogether surprising
he went on the roof by himself.

"It's hard to admit and distinguish the fact that you're no longer what you
were and you're no longer capable of certain activities," Kramer said. "And
I think we push the limit a little bit."

Packers historian Lee Remmel recalled McGee's "great sense of timing" and
his "knack for coming up with big plays when you least expected it to
happen."

Lombardi once showed the team a football at a meeting and said, "Gentlemen,
this is a football."

"McGee said, 'Not so fast, not so fast,"' Remmel said. "That gives you an
index to the kind of humor that he served up regularly."

McGee was a running back at Tulane and the nation's top kick returner in
1953. Selected by the Packers in the fifth round of the 1954 draft, McGee
spent two years in the Air Force as a pilot following his rookie year before
returning in 1957 to play 11 more seasons. He finished his career with 345
receptions for 6,346 yards — an 18.4-yard average — and scored 51 touchdowns
and 306 points.

After retiring from football, he became a major partner in developing the
popular Chi-Chi's chain of Mexican restaurants. In 1979, he became an
announcer for the Packer Radio Network with Jim Irwin until retiring in
1998.

McGee and wife Denise founded the Max McGee National Research Center for
Juvenile Diabetes at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in
1999.

According to the center's Web site, his brother fought diabetes in his
lifetime, and Max and Denise's youngest son, Dallas, lives with the disease.


In addition to his wife, McGee is survived by four children and several
grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

———

Associated Press writers Carrie Antlfinger and Emily Fredrix contributed to
this story from Milwaukee.