Football great Gerald Irons, RIP

 

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Seneca

 

 

Ten-year NFL veteran linebacker Gerald D. Irons passed away recently from complications brought on by Parkinson’s Disease.  He grew up in Gary and graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1966.  In those days Roosevelt had an abysmal football team, going 2-13-1 his final two years, the only wins coming against doormat Horace Mann and twice losing to city champ Lew Wallace by over 30 points. Irons also played basketball for Roosevelt and was just one of two juniors (the other being Chuck Hughes, CEO of the Gary Chamber of Commerce) on a 1965 squad that, led by Don Crudup and Dolph Pulliam, advanced to the state semi-finals before getting upset by Fort Wayne North.  Hughes recently told Gary Crusader reporter David Denson, “I knew his work ethic.  We’d be in the locker room, and he said what he was going to do and that was to make the pros, and he dedicated himself to making that happen.”

 

Irons graduated from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where he not only starred in football but was a topnotch student and leader in student government.  Drafted by Cleveland, he played for the Browns for six years and for the Oakland Raiders for four seasons.  Irons was on the field in December of 1972 when the Pittsburgh Steelers pulled off what many believe was the greatest play of all time, the so-called Immaculate Reception. In the final minute of the AFL championship, Terry Bradshaw attempted a pass to John Fuqua. The referees ruled that the ball bounced off Raider Jack Tatum’s helmet and into the hands of Steeler Franco Harris, who galloped for the winning touchdown. Some Raiders, branding the play the “Immaculate Deception,” claimed the ball ricocheted off Fuqua and may have touched the ground, there rendering it an incomplete pass. Most experts disagree.

 

During his playing career Irons completed an MBA at the University of Chicago and took courses at John Marshall Law School.  In retirement his family moved to Woodlands, Texas, and he began a 32-year career with a development company that was a subsidiary of Howard Hughes Corporation.  With wife Myrna he co-authored a motivational book titled “When Preparation Meets Opportunity.” Amending Roman philosopher Seneca’s maxim, he claimed that success was what resulted when preparation meets opportunity.  In motivational speeches Irons also advised: “You are not a product of your circumstances. You are a product of your decisions.”