I don’t make a habit of sending birthday greetings to sports personalities I’ve met, especially if they were casual acquaintances… especially if we talked perhaps a dozen times… and especially if we hadn’t seen each other in almost 50 years.
The exception is Marv Levy.
Next week, one of the two coaches in Halls of Fame on both sides of the border will celebrate his 100th birthday. Levy will be the lone centenarian head coach in the hallowed halls of Canton (National Football League) and Hamilton (Canadian Football League). Only Levy and Bud Grant are HOF coaches in the two halls, and Levy is already the oldest living Hall of Famer.
He coached the Alouettes during my 11 years in Montreal, and while I never knew him well, I knew him well enough to find out he was kind and thoughtful, literary and ethical, intelligent and inspirational. Since we can all be a mosaic created by those we meet along the way, I’d hoped some might rub off on me — not that he ran marathons at age 95.
Levy is likely as consequential as any head coach Montreal ever had. The team he inherited had a 4-10 record. Only two winning seasons in 15, with one Grey Cup game, a shockingly unexpected victory in 1970. In 84 games, just 24 wins since the revered days of Sam Etcheverry, ironically the coach Levy replaced.
I’d arrived in Montreal 10 weeks before Levy. I wasn’t THE football writer at the Montreal Star, I was A football writer. He coached the Alouettes for five seasons, in three Grey Cups, winning two and missing the third on a fumbled snap for what would’ve been the game-winning field goal. I covered the two that Levy’s team won, one in the cold driving rain and the other on an icy, snowy field. Yes, he knew how to win in Canadian winter.
In the NFL, Levy was known as the only man to coach in four consecutive Super Bowls, with Buffalo, although Kansas City’s Andy Reid could catch him in February. Levy, Grant (Minnesota) and Dan Reeves alone have 0-4 Super Bowl records. Grant died at 95, Reeves at 78.
After reading his 2004 autobiography, I sent Levy a complimentary note. He wrote back, of course, because that’s Marv Levy. What followed were sporadic communications which sometimes included his birthday, like his 85th. “Yes, I am 85,” he replied, “but I only feel 84.”
There were attempts at reuniting in Chicago, where he lived and where I visited. “Fran and I will be off on a trip to France, so we will be unable join you,” he explained, “…unless you want to meet us at the Eiffel Tower, of course.”
I remembered his birthday maybe three times. He always wrote back. Maybe he even bothered to because that’s just him. Or maybe because we’d met in Montreal, a city we both loved.
“Only five of the 47 years I spent as a coach were in Montreal,” he told me, “but it is a time and association with such fine people that I will always treasure and revere.”
Next week, there’ll be another birthday wish for someone who really is “the old coach.”
