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Local Legends A.D. Benson Sam Brunelli Todd Millikan Suzanne Youngberg Rigg

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617 W. Sheridan Ave Shenandoah, IA 51601 712.246.3097 www.valleynewstoday.com PUBLISHER Kate Thompson EDITORIAL STAFF Tess Gruber Nelson - Managing Editor Kristan Gray - Staff Writer Jason Glenn - Staff Writer GRAPHICS DEPT Heidi Woods - Graphic Design-Production Manager Tori Hopp - Graphic/Ad Designer Anna Bruening - Graphic/Ad Designer ADVERTISING Jon Denton (Sales Representative) Erica Matya (Sales Representative) Kathy Harvey (Sales Associate) If you would like to place an ad in an upcoming issue of our Sports Legends tab, please contact us at ads@ valleynewstoday.com. © 2014 The Valley News

Brunelli laid it all out on the field By TESS GRUBER NELSON Managing Editor

When it came to football, Sam Brunelli might not have been the biggest, strongest, or fastest, but he certainly was one of the most dedicated and determined players to ever wear a Denver Broncos uniform. In fact, it’s that dedication that still leads Brunelli to be a Broncos fan today. “I follow the game very closely and will always be a Denver fan,” said Brunelli. “You don’t sweat and bleed all over the field for the Broncos and not be a fan.” Brunelli, a native of Weldona, Colo., excelled in high school football and basketball. He attended Colorado State College, which is now known as the University of Northern Colorado, and paid his tuition by washing four police cars every day after football practice. Not only did Brunelli play four seasons for CSC, but he also obtained a degree in mathematics, with a minor in physical education. Following college, Brunelli got a job teaching math and coaching football at Greeley West High School in Colorado, but his position didn’t start until August. He started a weightlifting program for about twenty Greeley West student athletes, continued working out himself, and played in the annual spring alumni game for CSC, where he said he had a terrific game. “I really wanted to go on and play pro football, but nobody was talking to me,” Brunelli recalled. He tried out for the Toronto Argonauts, a Canadian football team, and made it, but was getting calls from his high school football kids asking him if he would be coming back to coach them. “I went back and coached football for Greeley West. I learned that I really loved the game and learned the game from a coach’s point of view. We had a great football season that year; beat the cross-town rival,” Brunelli said. The following June, Brunelli said he was still itching to

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on in the grass.” Brunelli ran a second 40-yard-dash in 4.7 and a third 40-yard-dash in 4.65. “He said he could offer me the minimum contract. I wanted to play football with every fiber of my being, so I didn’t care what they paid me. If I could have, I would have paid them.” A football contract was signed and Brunelli started camp with the Broncos the following Friday in Golden, Colo., at the School of Mines. There wasn’t enough room in the main dorm, so Brunelli was assigned a bed in a coed dorm. One morning, a coach announced that Brunelli had not made bed check and would be fined $500. Brunelli explained to the coach that he’d been assigned a bed in a coed dorm, the fine was canceled, and Brunelli was moved into the dorm with the other Denver players. When camp was over, and the cuts had been made to the team, Brunelli was still there – he was an official Denver Bronco. “The first exhibition game as a rookie, we played against the Chiefs in Denver. I remember walking out on the field and looking out over the crowd. I could hardly contain myself.” His rookie year as a Bronco, Brunelli played left defensive end, but halfway through his second season the coaching staff moved him to left offensive tackle. “They didn’t have anybody that could play left offensive see BRUNELLI, Page 7A

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play pro football, so he went to the Denver Broncos’ front office and told the receptionist why he was there. “I sat there for about two weeks before anyone came out to talk to me. It was the weekend before July 4 and camp was to open on July 10. Coach Ray Malavasi came out and talked to me.” Malavasi asked Brunelli if he had his football cleats with him, which he did. The two then went down to the field, where the coach took Brunelli to warm up. “He then timed me in a 40-yard-dash. I ran a 4.65, which was not bad with cleats

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Benson’s mile record at Sidney still standing after 50 years By TESS GRUBER NELSON Managing Editor

In 1964 Sidney High School senior, Albert (A.D.) Benson ran the mile in 4 minutes, 33.3 seconds during a track meet in Sidney. Fifty years later, Benson’s record still stands. Sadly, he passed away in July 1969 in the Quang Nam Province of South Vietnam while on patrol as a second lieutenant. Born June 28, 1946 to Gilbert and Nella Benson, A.D. excelled academically and athletically while a student at Sidney. “Our dad was a miler and he held the record in Fremont County until, I believe, A.D. broke it. Dad did everything he could to encourage the boys. He even built a pit in the back yard so the boys could pole vault,” said A.D.’s older sister, Linda Peterson, who resides in Lincoln.

A.D. Benson in his Marine dress blues.

Peterson said her brother was a character. Not only did he have a great sense of humor, he was very intelligent and liked to read. She recalled a story she heard years ago from a lady who lived at the edge of Sidney. “She said one day as A.D. was running around town, he showed up at their house, opened their front door, ran into the house, into the kitchen, lifted up the lid on what was on the stove for dinner, said “Hi,” and went out the back door – he was quite a character.” Following high school, A.D. attended Wayne State College on a track and cross-country scholarship. He majored in speech and had aspirations of being a coach and teacher. While at Wayne State, A.D. won numerous conference championships in track and was a NAIA All American in cross-country his junior year. That year he also finished 14th in the national meet with a time of 21:05 over the fourmile course. He is one of just four All-Americans in crosscountry at Wayne State College. Additionally, he was named the Fred Dale AthleticScholar in 1967 at Wayne State and was President at the “W” Club, their letterman’s club. A.D.’s other sister, Kaye Hummel, said her brother was tall and handsome, as well as a good dresser, and very organized. He was voted Best Dressed at Wayne State, Hummel said. To help with college expenses, Peterson said A.D. signed up for the Marine Leaders’ Class Program while at Wayne State. He completed basic training the summer between his junior and senior year at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia. “We recently returned from a reunion at Quantico and heard a lot of stories about A.D.,” Peterson said. “During training they’d have to run, a lot, and when everyone else was exhausted and collapsing, A.D. would be running in place, ready to run some more. When we were kids, we lived in the Bluffs near Sidney and he’d run down around the bluffs and come back up. He ran all the time.” She added that everyone at the base didn’t necessarily

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know him as A.D., but rather, “the runner.” Peterson also said at the reunion they heard numerous times that A.D. was a born leader and that he stood out amongst others. Hummel and A.D.’s sister-in-law, Marilyn Benson attended the reunion with Peterson. “They never forget their own, so it was very moving,” said Hummel of the reunion. “He really, really cared about the guys under him. In letters he sent home, he would call them kids, and he was 23 at the time, but to him the 18-year-olds were the kids. “He was always very mature,” Peterson said. Upon graduation at Wayne State, A.D. was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. He then completed an additional six months of training, before leaving Omaha on March 7, 1969 for Vietnam. The letters his family received from him while in Vietnam weren’t very specific about where he was or what he was doing, but in one letter a section of a Robert Frost poem was written, which read, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.” In another letter, he confessed that the most difficult part about being in Vietnam was writing letters home to parents. “I think my most prized picture of him is him teaching these little Vietnamese children to brush their teeth,” said see BENSON, Page 7A

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Shenandoah’s Millikan became Husker Hall of Famer By JASON GLENN Staff Writer

The first time Todd Millikan suited up and took the field, following a legendary Shenandoah football career that culminated in 1983 first team all-state honors as both a linebacker and punter, the atmosphere was only slightly more intense than a Friday night at Mustang Field. It was Sept. 6, 1986, Millikan was a sophomore tight end for the eighth-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers and their opening night opponent at a packed, fever pitch Memorial Stadium was No. 11 Florida State. By night’s end, Millikan’s debut on one of football’s grandest stages would include a 12-yard touchdown reception, the first of 14 in a collegiate career that put Millikan in the Nebraska record books and earned him a spot on the Husker Hall of Fame roster. Brought to Lincoln as a linebacker, Millikan made the shift to offense and hauling in passes at the suggestion of Coach Tom Osborne. He caught 11 passes for 230 yards and four TDs by the end of his sophomore season, had just three scores in 13 catches his junior year, but upped his average gain to a career-high 22.1 yards, and got back in the six-point business as a senior, finding the end zone almost every other catch, with seven scores among his 16 receptions. That last stat line earned Millikan a first-team Big 8 spot in his final season. A fruitful career that boasted the school record for touchdowns by a tight end and the longest scoring catch by a tight end in the history of Husker football – an 82-yarder against Missouri in 1988 – got him a spot alongside the Big Red immortals. Millikan was selected by the Chicago Bears in the 10th round of the 1989 NFL draft. He now works as a parole and probation officer and lives in his hometown of Shenandoah.

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In September 2010, Millikan was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame. On the website Huskers. com, it said of Millikan, “A part of Nebraska’s rich tradition of big play tight ends, Todd Millikan hauled in a school position record 14 touchdown passes among his 40 career catches as a Husker. He also had a touchdown catch in the 1987 Sugar Bowl. The 6-3, 235-pounder from Shenandoah averaged 20.6 yards per reception in his career, totaling 825 yards. As a senior in 1988, Millikan earned first-team, All-Big Eight honors after catching 16 passes for 308 yards while tying NU’s tight end record with seven touchdowns. Millikan’s 82-yard touchdown catch against Missouri in 1988 also ranks as the longest reception by a tight end in the Husker record book. A four-year letterman (1985-88), Millikan added 13 catches for 287 yards with three scores as a junior, after hauling in 11 catches for 230 yards and four touchdowns as a sophomore, including a 73-yarder.” In an Omaha World Herald article from 2010 about his upcoming induction into the Hall of Fame, Millikan said he thought he had been forgotten about until he received the letter. The article continued to say that, “He (Millikan) wasn’t much of a star during his heyday, either. He caught only 40 balls his entire career. But, 14 went for touchdowns, an astounding 35 percent. He earned first-team All-Big Eight honors as a senior in 1988. Not bad, for a guy who didn’t catch passes in high school. Nebraska recruited Millikan as a linebacker out of Shenandoah. That’s where he played on the freshman team in 1984. The next summer, Tom Osborne suggested that he switch to tight end. Whatever gets me on the field the quickest, Millikan said. As a sophomore, Millikan emerged in the 1986 season opener against Florida State. Under the lights at Memorial Stadium, Nebraska rolled over Deion Sanders and the Sem-

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inoles on national TV, 34-17. The fresh face at tight end caught his first touchdown pass that night, a 12-yarder from Steve Taylor. “I just remember catching that ball, going to the sideline, and thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, everybody back home was watching that,’” Millikan said. “I probably had a good game because I was running scared.”

Millikan as No. 43 for the Cornhuskers.

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Rigg went the distance from Essex to the Olympics By JASON GLENN Staff Writer

When Suzanne Youngberg Rigg was a junior at Essex High School, she was the Trojanette cross country team. That’s not just hyperbole alluding to how much better she was than the other runners, it’s the literal truth. There were no other runners. A gifted track athlete in junior high, once Rigg reached her sophomore year in 1979 she decided she wanted to try the longer distance and more challenging course layout that cross country offered. With the help of the school’s principal, but no coach, she entered a few races and did well, but, largely due to the exhaustion of also competing for the Essex volleyball team at the same time, contracted mononucleosis and had to sit out the second half of the season recovering. The next year, she came back on a mission. Training with a Shenandoah team that had just a few years prior won back-to-back state championships and, unbeknownst to her at the time, initiating a decades-long collaboration between the schools, Rigg went on to claim a state championship of her own that fall, wearing her Trojanette track uniform as she crossed the line. Forging her own path would become a motif for the talented young athlete who had grown up on a farm northeast of Essex. One that would lead her to the highest level of college competition, through doubt and tragedy, across the Atlantic, and ultimately, to the pinnacle of international athletics, the Olympic games. “Suzanne was born at the right time period. We had the 10Ks,” said her father, Dick Youngberg, of the booming popularity of road races and the Title 19 revolution in women’s sports of the early 1970s. “Every little town had a 10K at that time.” Active in all sports, as well as other extracurricular activities and a driven student who would eventually become valedictorian of her Essex class, Rigg was recruited by Iowa State and in the fall of 1982, joined a Cyclone women’s cross country program that had dominated both Big Eight Conference and national competition for the prior seven years. From 19751979, ISU women had won five straight conference and national championships and pulled off the same feat just a year before

Suzanne Youngberg Rigg, right, poses with British Olympic teammate Helen Slatter prior to the 1996 games in Atlanta. Rigg, an Essex High School and Iowa State University graduate and cross country and track star, competed in the marathon for the U.K. she got there. Making the transition from a small, rural school team – which had grown to include a male runner by her senior year, but still was essentially adjunct to Shen’s – to the preeminent collegiate squad in the country was one of the biggest challenges she’s

ever faced, Rigg said. “It was a huge, huge jump in a very short space of time and I guess I look back at that now and think I didn’t know any better, but I was just very fortunate that my body was able to handle that and I didn’t get injured,” she said. “Sometimes it’s better not to know

any better.” Having previously trained by running three to four miles five times a week. and competing in the occasional road race, she ramped up to around 80 miles a week in the three months from accepting a scholarship offer to arriving on the Ames campus. The grueling work paid almost immediate dividends, as Rigg not only made the starting lineup but finished the season as the highest-placing freshman at the national championship meet in Bloomington, Ind., taking 29th and the first of three All-American honors she would ultimately claim. She ran track in the winter and spring, also earning a national championship meet bid to close her freshman year, returned the following fall and again finished 29th at the national cross country championships. But by February of 1984, Rigg had reached a point where she questioned her desire to continue competing at that level with the year-round training and pressure of competition. So she took a break. For a year-and-a-half, Rigg concentrated on her studies and pursuing an elementary education degree, but a devastating event in November 1985 brought her former team back into the forefront of her mind and heart. Returning home from a runner-up team finish in the women’s national championship meet at Marquette University, a small plane carrying three Cyclone cross country runners, an assistant coach, student trainer, and the man who had brought Rigg to Iowa State, Head Coach Ron Renko, crashed into a Des Moines neighborhood, just two miles short of its intended destination, killing all aboard. “I got back into running then because I went back to the team to help in the office and just do anything that I could. It was a really hard time for everybody,” she said. “Eventually, because I was around the team and started doing a little bit of running with them, I went back and started training again.” As the team tried to heal its emotional wounds, and Rigg reconnected in a deeper way with the sport that had been such an integral part of her life, it didn’t take long for her to realize her path should lead back to running. “This is what I really love to do. It was very, very bittersweet, but it’s what brought me back, I guess,” she said. see RIGG, Page 9A

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It not only brought her back, it also set in motion a future course that the small town Iowa girl might never have dreamed possible. During the time she was helping out around the office and not yet competing again, she started bumping into a new men’s track recruit from England, 400and 800-meter runner, John Rigg. The relationship, as well as her once-dormant career, flourished, and by the late fall of 1986, she was once more an All-American and telling her parents she would be moving to the U.K. and marrying John in the not-too-distant future. Fate intervened again and, as a result of cuts to the ISU scholarship program, John was forced to return home early and finish his degree in Britain. With her diploma in hand, Rigg started substitute teaching in Des Moines and, as her savings would allow, intermittently ventured across the pond to see him. Detoured but not diverted, on Dec. 28, 1988 she packed her bags, hopped a flight and moved to the country that would become her home for the

next 20 years. After a couple of those years, the two were married and she gained the permanent legal status to remain in England, but she still wasn’t an official citizen. That would come, as so many other things, via the life path running had laid before her. Living in England, Rigg had taken full advantage of the country’s ubiquitous athletic club culture, where competitive opportunities abound, even beyond the secondary and university level. Training primarily with men who would push her to a new threshold of ability and competing professionally all across Europe, she took on races of ever-increasing difficulty and length until her prowess at the marathon attracted the attention of the British Athletic Federation. They asked if she would consider becoming a legal citizen so she could compete for her adopted country. She was married to a British citizen and had lived there for the required three years but still needed to get a passport, a process she was told could take from five to eight years and past, perhaps, her athletic

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prime. With a couple calls from Federation officials and a little help, courtesy of her local Member of Parliament, that time was legitimately reduced to just two months as a result of her exceptional talent and value to the country. Because people had been so welcoming and friendly to her ever since she set foot on English soil, Rigg said she was delighted to become a legal citizen, in addition to retaining her native-born American status. Deciding to wear the British uniform in international competition, especially with an eye on making the 1996 Olympics, instead of undertaking a difficult and costly process of returning to the United States for various training and qualifying meets in an attempt to make the U.S. team simply came down to pragmatism, she said. “I felt proud to represent England and Great Britain ,and I would have felt equally proud to represent the U.S.,” Rigg said. “It’s like being married, you’re part of two families. I didn’t agonize over it, because I didn’t have a choice.” Maxing out at the five kilometer distance of a cross country course and 3,000- and 5,000meter track events in college, Rigg had spent her mid- to late-20s working up through 10-kilometer races, into 13.1-mile halfmarathons and eventually to the full 26.2 agonizing miles of a full-blown marathon. In 1994, she com-

peted in the 10,000-meter run for England at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, British Columbia, finishing fourth in what she called her introduction to Olympic-sized competition. Focusing on making the Atlanta-bound 1996 British Olympic team, she achieved a qualifying time at the 1995 Berlin Marathon, crossing the line in a personal record 2:34.21 for seventh place in the women’s division. She said she found it funny that the event she had the least experience in was the one in which she would ultimately compete on the grandest stage. Much like she had in that summer following her senior year at Essex, Rigg upped her training regimen in the months leading toward Atlanta and her return to competition on native soil. Maybe too much, she admitted, as she arrived in the hot and muggy southern climes with nagging injuries to boot, something that left her feeling, even prior to the race, that it wasn’t going to be a record showing. But, with her parents there cheering from the throngs, Rigg said she couldn’t give anything less than her best effort. Her dad said it was truly an amazing experience to see her compete on that level, but that he couldn’t think of a worse place to run 26.2 miles than Atlanta in late July. “I swear it was about 90 degrees temperature and 90 percent humidity, and that was at 6:30 (in the morn-

ing),” Dick Youngberg said. “There were a lot of people that just couldn’t handle that type of atmosphere.” In fact, 21 of the 86 women who toed the starting line tapped out before finishing the course, primarily due to the oppressive conditions. Suzanne Rigg wasn’t one of them and neither, she said with great pride, were either of her two British teammates. At that level of international competition, she said, many runners will drop out – even in the Olympics – to prevent injury or exhaustion and save themselves for another upcoming race where they might earn a significant amount of money with a top finish. To her, though, that wasn’t what the Olympics as envisioned by founder Pierre de Coubertin, were about. Citing a quote by de Coubertin on the importance of taking part and fighting well over winning or conquering, Rigg said nothing was going to keep her from going the distance. “I was going to crawl over the line if I had to,” she said. And looking back on it, she added, the most affecting aspect, more than being able to compete in the Olympics, was getting the rare opportunity to experience the Olympic ideal its founder had in mind in the first place. “I wish every person on the face of this Earth could be an athlete in the Olympic Village,” Rigg

said. “It’s just so amazing seeing people from every country in the world. It just gives you goosebumps. It’s like you’re a member, you’re a part of the world. Everybody’s there to compete, you respect everybody no matter if they’re a track runner or a tennis player or a rower, there’s just a tremendous amount of respect. It’s almost an ideal world, like a utopia.” Six years ago, Rigg’s path brought her back to the U.S., almost full circle to the Indiana campus where the journey of her adult life began. Her husband, a chemist with Eli Lilly at the time, was transferred to Indianapolis where they moved with their two young children, a son and a daughter. They were again relocated to Puerto Rico just six months later, but, after a two-year stay, returned to make their home in Zionsville, a bedroom community on the outskirts of the metro area. Last year, the Essex girl who launched a high school program, brought it almost immediate statewide acclaim, found success at the highest collegiate level and then competed among the best athletes in the world, entered the newest stretch of her ongoing uncharted course. In the summer of 2013, Rigg became the head coach of the Zionsville Community High School girls’ cross country team and, once more, had an all see RIGG, Page 7A

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but instantaneous effect on her surroundings. The Eagle ladies, who had never qualified for a state meet before, won their Sectional Meet, were runners up in the Regional Meet, and ended the season ninth out of 24 teams competing for a state crown. And in Indiana there are no small or big schools separated by classification, everyone runs together regardless of where they came from. Reaching the milestone of a 50th birthday less than a month after that latest remarkable accomplishment in a lifetime full of them, Rigg said she was compelled to revisit some of the moments along the way, particularly her decision to leave competitive running in college, the tragedy that befell her teammates and coaches while she was gone, and how the years since have led her to constantly seek and recognize purpose in everything. Now, she said, she feels nothing but blessed for the chance to pass on all that she’s learned and experienced through running – the sacrifice, the determination, the mental toughness – to another generation and show them how that path doesn’t end at a finish line, or even with a final competitive event, it goes on. In England, Rigg said, they don’t refer to a runner’s fastest time as his or her “personal record” or “PR,” but rather as a “PB” or “personal best,” a more fitting and all-inclusive term she imported and incorporated into daily use with her girls. “I think that describes it better because it’s not just about your time, it’s about the effort you put into your training, it’s about how you treat your teammates. It’s all your personal best. And not just in running, but in school and in life,” she said. “There are so many aspects that you can relate just to try and help them feel like they’re achieving that.”

these little Vietnamese children to brush their teeth,” said Hummel. It was during a search and destroy mission on July 6, 1969 that A.D. stepped on a land mine and was severely injured. He was taken to the nearest hospital by helicopter, where he later died. Usually the sergeant was out in

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tackle. Left offensive tackle is about five times harder to play than any other offensive line position because you are protecting the quarterback’s blind side and usually the opposing team’s best pass rusher is on the right side, so that’s against the left offensive tackle.” During the off-season, Brunelli continued his education and received his masters in kinesiology. He even completed the coursework for a PhD in kinesiology. In Floyd Little’s book, “Promises to Keep,” Little referred to Brunelli as “tough” and “strong as hell.” “We nicknamed him ‘Blowfish’ because he had these huge Popeye forearms and used to pretend he was pumping them up by blowing into his thumbs.” In Little’s book, it is also mentioned that Robin and Sam Brunelli had three different numbers during his career with the Broncos, 64, 68, and 72. “I used to tease him that they were based on his three highest IQ scores. He’d say, ‘I’m smarter than I look.’ I’d reply, ‘I sure hope so!’” However, after seven seasons of giving his all to the Broncos, Brunelli suffered a career ending knee injury, which he referred to as “heartbreaking.” Even more so now, because with today’s medical technology, Brunelli would have been back playing within a few games. Despite not being able to play the game competitively again, Brunelli helped create the annual NFL Honors Dinner. He also got involved in politics through good friends Joe and Holly Coors of Coors Brewing Co. In 1976, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan had Brunelli speak to delegates at a breakfast at the Kansas City Republican National Convention. Brunelli did his best to persuade the delegates to vote for Reagan instead of incumbent President Gerald Ford.

front during a search and destroy mission, but for one reason or another, A.D. was in front that particular day. A.D.’s body was returned to Sidney and his funeral was held at 10:30 a.m. on July 22, 1969 at the United Methodist Church. Interment took place in the Sidney Cemetery. Each year at the Corner Conference Track Meet, the A.D. Benson Memorial Mile trophy is awarded to the winner of the 1,500 meter

race, since the mile (1,600) is no longer run. The winner’s name is added to the trophy and the winning school hosts the trophy for a year. In 1980, A.D. was inducted into the Wayne State Athletic Hall of Fame. That same year, he was inducted into the Sidney High School Hall of Fame for cross-country. “He’s always in our hearts,” said Hummel. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him.”

Despite that convention not ending with a Reagan victory, Reagan was sworn in as President of the United States in 1981. With Reagan as president, Brunelli served as the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the U.S. Department of Education. In October 1988, he assumed the role of Executive Director of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Sam revived ALEC, financially and in other ways, and with Sam’s leadership, ALEC played a key role in the Republicans winning control of Congress in the 1994 election. It was actually at a political event where Sam met his soulmate, Robin Read, a native of Shenandoah, then a deputy governor of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and who would become from 1992 to 2012 the President of the National Foundation for Women Legislators. Sam said the first time he saw Robin he said “wow” and was totally smitten, with Robin being just as smitten with Sam after first laying eyes on him. The couple has two daughters and six grandchildren, the loves of their lives. Looking forward and reflecting back at the same time, Sam muses that “I hope to pass onto my grandchildren the values and lessons I learned on the gridiron. That victories are worth the effort. That life is about working your heart out to achieve worthwhile goals. That you never let anyone limit your expectations, but you hold onto your dream and you totally dedicate yourself to achieving your dream.” Sam takes many of his life lessons from the legendary 1960s coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi. “Lombardi was a great personal example to me in life, and he made so many great statements. I urge everyone to read what Lombardi said and read about his life, and to live life with that kind of lion-sized heart.” Sam wrapped up by sharing his favorite Vince Lombardi quote: “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle -- victorious.”

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