My Father’s Friend
Salem native Joseph O’Day recalls Wayne Millner, Salem High School’s greatest-ever football player
By Joseph O’Day
I arrived home one afternoon, many years ago, to find my father standing in our kitchen with a stranger.
“Jody,” my father said, “this is Wayne Millner, an old friend of mine.” Millner offered me his hand, and it shrouded mine. If a handshake could be an embrace, that’s how it felt. I sensed the man’s physical strength, and his tenderness. I also sensed an air of goodwill, a quiet contentment, two old friends, together again after all the years.
My father had told me about Millner, that he’d been a fabulous receiver for the Salem High football team, and for Notre Dame, and the Washington Redskins. He’d told me Millner had been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. When I met the man, he looked to be sixty, lean, and rugged. His player stats had him at 6’0” and 184, but his statuesque posture and self-assured manner made him seem larger.
“I’m actually meeting a Hall of Famer,” I said. “Wow!”
Millner smiled. He’d come to Boston for business, he said, but wanted to visit Salem and check in on my father. After he left, my father told me how much Millner enjoyed the adulation I’d given him. “He loves that stuff,” Dad said, laughing.
I was a college undergraduate at the time, my high school football days behind me, but I was a fan and had my heroes. Like Bob Hayes of the Dallas Cowboys, Joe Namath of the New York Jets, Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris of the Miami Dolphins – greats of my time, the sixties and seventies. Wayne Millner’s time was the thirties and forties, when players played both sides of the line and wore leather helmets without masks. Until my father mentioned Millner’s name, I’d never heard of him.
There were players of old whose names I knew, from movies I’d seen – like Knute Rockne, All American – and from flipping through big picture books about history of the sport. I knew of Jim Thorpe, for example, and the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, and the legendary George Gipp (“Win One for the Gipper”). I’d also heard of quarterback Sammy Baugh of the Washington Redskins, and was surprised to discover, on the Pro Football Hall of Fame website, his connection to Millner: “Wayne became the favorite target of the brilliant passer, Sammy Baugh … Millner was among the last of the outstanding two-way ends. When he wasn’t catching Baugh’s passes, he was blocking for him. He was competitive, determined, and known for his sure hands.”
The Hall of Fame suggested a couple of reasons Millner’s name wasn’t so well-known. “Had [Millner] played for any other pro team, he might have captured more headlines but the Redskins had Baugh who gained most of the publicity. There may have also been one other factor. So often did Millner deliver under pressure, the press and fans and even his own coaches came to take his clutch performances for granted.”
I gathered as much information as I could find on Millner, and it was plentiful. Sifting through it was, at times, frustrating. I couldn’t always find backup sources for stories I was reading, and even when I could, details sometimes conflicted. I found myself making occasional best guesses on what I thought to be true.
Wayne Vernal Millner was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 31, 1911 (some sources say January 31, 1913). At some point in his young life, he moved with his family to North Salem, and lived in a house on North Street, close to Nursery Street, a block away from my father’s Woodside Street address. “Even when Wayne was twelve you could see he had abnormal physical ability,” said Fred Kelleher, one of Millner’s boyhood friends … “You could see it in those football games the gang played in the back of the 13th hole at Kernwood [Country Club]. He had big bones…”
I knew well “the back of the 13th hole at Kernwood.” For North Salem youth, it was an extra park in the neighborhood, a patch of rough grass, down the hill and to the left of the 14th tee. I’d played pickup games with my own friends on that patch, in the sixties, and never imagined that guys of the 1920s, Kelleher and Millner and my father, had done the same, and like us, had ducked occasional errant golf balls coming their way.
Millner and my father became teammates on Salem High’s football team, and Millner earned All-State Honors. Following high school, he played for prep schools, including Malvern Prep in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The author of a profile on Millner, Jack Thomas Tomarchio, sent me a piece he’d published in the Spring 2012 issue of Malvern Magazine (“Off The Wall”): “[Wayne Millner] came to Malvern in September 1930 and played on both the football and basketball teams. He starred as the starting fullback for the Friars, who went 5-1-1 that season. After graduation, Wayne went to the University of Notre Dame [1932 – 1935], where he had been recruited by its great head coach Knute Rockne.” Rockne was the legendary Notre Dame coach who died tragically at age 43 in 1931.
Tomarchio describes a 1933 Notre Dame game, where Millner delivered a much needed uplift for a distraught football team. “In 1933 Notre Dame, still reeling from Rockne’s death in a plane crash two years before, was having a miserable season. Winning only two of its first eight games, Notre Dame was playing unbeaten Army. With only one minute to play, the Cadets were leading 12-6 and were forced to punt. Wayne blocked the punt, scooped it up and ran in for the touchdown. Notre Dame went on to win 13-12.”
In 1936, Millner began his professional career, selected in the draft by the Boston Redskins. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, “When Wayne Millner joined the Boston Redskins in 1936, the news so excited the team’s new coach, Ray Flaherty, he promised to resign if ‘we don’t win the championship with that big Yankee playing end.’ …
The Redskins did win the Eastern Division title that year and Millner, a star on both offense and defense, was a major contributor.” Although they lost to the Green Bay Packers in the 1936 NFL Championship Game, Flaherty didn’t resign. “Instead, he stayed on with the Redskins, who moved to Washington in 1937, for six more years. In all, he led the team to two NFL championships and four divisional titles.”
From 1942, Millner served in the Navy during World War II, then rejoined the Redskins as a player-coach in 1945, his final year as a player. He made the NFL’s 1930s All-Decade Team, was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968 (with coach Ray Flaherty presenting), and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1990.
When Millner was becoming a two-time All-American at Notre Dame, my father was attending the University of Miami (Florida) on a football scholarship. Like Millner, he served during the War, but in the Army, as a medic. Following World War II and for decades thereafter, their lives diverged – Millner’s post-playing days as coach and scout taking him to Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, Texas, and Florida. My father, at home in Salem, focusing on his family and carwash business. The kitchen reunion I’d witnessed so long ago must have awakened fond memories of younger days, when they had each other’s backs, when their futures felt boundless.
I wanted to know more about Millner’s high school years, his accomplishments on the gridiron and his friendships. I found articles comparing him to the top local high school football players in history. The Salem News published a piece on August 18, 2014, titled, “The Fantastic Five: Salem High’s all-time greatest football players.”:
Former Salem High School, University of Notre Dame and Washington Redskins end Wayne Millner is the North Shore native who has been elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is the No. 1 player in Salem High football history. [His traits and triumphs]: Ferocious blocker and tackler as a two-way end who was also Salem’s top receiver; Had touchdown off of blocked kick on Thanksgiving Day 1927 vs. Beverly; Led Bill Broderick’s Witches to 8-1-2 mark in 1928; Became All-American end for Notre Dame; Played for Boston/Washington Redskins for 7 seasons; Named to NFL’s All-Decade team of 1930s; Member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The Boston Globe, in a piece on November 24, 2015, designated Millner fifth best of “The 10 best high school football players in Massachusetts history.” They also included quotes by my father:
Millner earned All-Scholastic honors in 1928 and 1929, years in which the Witches posted a combined 19-1-3 record, including an EMass championship in 1929. Bill Broderick, the legendary Salem coach, would have Millner spit on the ball before each game for good luck… “Wayne was like a piece of steel,” Salem teammate Joe O’Day told The Salem News in November 1976. The guy was tough as nails. He was good and he knew it, although he was never sure how good he was.”
My father’s words reminded me of the interview he’d done when Millner died, on November 19, 1976 (Arlington, Virginia). I found a column in the microfiche archives at the Salem Public Library, written by sports editor Bill Kipouras, with my father’s quote as its title:
The Salem, Mass., Evening News. November 20, 1976, “He was like a piece of steel.”: Joe O’Day, a tackle on Millner’s Salem team in ’28, said Wayne simply was too much for words … “Hard as a rock … and the greatest ever out of Salem. An overwhelming athlete in football. He didn’t look like he was much, but played against you, he’d kill you. He was simply a natural, that’s all … A lot of people thought he was a fat head too … But he really wasn’t … He was extraordinary. He only weighed 195, at best, but very fast. I really mean it when I say he was made of steel … I think … that the teams we played feared Wayne. He was so good. He was far superior to anybody around. I can’t even think of anybody else who could equal his ability.”
Kipouras’ piece was a treasure-trove of interesting stories: Ed Graczyk, ’29 Salem High captain, “recalled that Millner and O’Day had some great pool battles at “The Social Hour,” on Essex Street … ‘In our time, if you were at the pool hall … you were a real tough kid. Millner was as tough as nails. But he had a joyful personality.’”
I knew of my father’s prowess as a pool player, and I’d heard of The Social Hour, but I never knew he’d played against Millner. If Millner was competitive with my father, if they indeed had “great pool battles,” Millner must have been exceptional. From what I was reading, that wouldn’t have been a surprise. As Salem High quarterback Norman Foote, “the quarterback of the time,” says, “Wayne … was good at anything he did, sports or anything else.” Perhaps my father’s pool-playing prowess got fine-tuned by Millner’s shear drive.
Kipouras mentions a famous Ohio State-Notre Dame football game, which the NCAA would declare “The Game of The Century.” Held at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, it was a first meeting between the 4-0 Ohio State Buckeyes and the 5-0 Fighting Irish. “A classic played November 2, 1935, before 80,000 people. Ohio State had led 13-0 starting the fourth quarter. Millner caught the winning touchdown pass between two Ohio State defenders in the 11th hour. Only 32 seconds remained …That pass, from Bill Shakespeare, ended one of the greatest college football games in history. Notre Dame won it, 18-13.”
Of that game, Norman Foote has a “special remembrance”: “I was at Miami and a bunch of Salem guys were there at the time: Bill L’Italien, Johnny Bates, Joe O’Day, Toots Carroll, and we all listened to the radio to that Ohio State-Notre Dame game and cheered like crazy when Wayne caught that pass.”
When I thought I’d read just about everything available on Millner, I discovered something new, an article by Bill Kipouras, giving a personal glimpse into the spirit of the man my father knew:
‘“But he never forgot his friends in Salem,’ Fred Kelleher wanted it known, ‘and when he was retiring, he told me he was quitting even before he told the Redskins. He was the type of guy who would do anything for you.’”
Especially if some local went out to see him play. Usually, Wayne made arrangements for the friend to sit on the bench.”
Kipouras gives the example of “Fred J. Cloutman, a Salem attorney and former school committee member, [who] did sit on the bench for Notre Dame’s 18-13 victory over Ohio State in ’35.”: Upon his return to Salem, Cloutman told of his experience on the bench, and said how he watched [Coach] Elmer Layden [one of the legendary four horsemen] give Millner instructions before the great catch in the dying moments, and that Millner gave Layden an assuring nod, as if to say, “Don’t worry coach. Everything will be all right.”
Later, when he entered the Notre Dame dressing room, Cloutman found Layden with his arm around Millner, and Wayne’s teammates were swarming all over him. But when he spotted Cloutman, Wayne forgot the celebration to greet his visitor from Salem.
- Bill Kipouras, “Everlasting fame,” The Evening News, August 24, 1999, p. C2
- Bill Kipouras. “Wayne Millner – Football Hall-of-Famer held Salem years dear,” The Salem, Mass., Evening News. Centennial Edition. October 16, 1980. P. E-3
Joseph O’Day’s writing focuses on family relationships and life transitions. His work has appeared in The Bluebird Word, Oyster River Pages, Spry Literary Journal, The Critical Flame, bioStories, and other publications. He served as Director of Pharmacy at Brigham and Woman’s Faulkner Hospital for many years until his retirement and received his MA in English from Salem State University.
