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T he end for Bert Bell came suddenly and without warning on October 12, 1959, about four months shy of his 67th birthday. He was stricken with a heart attack in the final two minutes of an EaglesSteelers contest at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, watching the game he loved, between two teams he once owned, at the stadium where he began his football career as a Penn quarterback in 1914. “It was like Caruso dying in the third act of Pagliacci,” wrote Phil Musick in PRO! magazine. Philadelphia’s future Hall-of-Famer Tommy McDonald had just scored the go-ahead touchdown with a leaping catch of an 18-yard-pass from Norm Van Brocklin to cement a 28–24 Eagles victory. He was walking back along the sidelines and looked up toward the stands. “Half of the stadium was cheering but the whole mob of people on the other side of the stadium were yelling and running the other way,” he recalled. “Ten minutes later we learned that Mr. Bell had died. I’ll never forget it.” McDonald had fond memories of Bert Bell. “He kept me out of jail one time when I was a rookie,” Tommy recalled . It happened in 1957 when he went into an airline office in Center City Philadelphia to confirm a return flight to Oklahoma where he had enjoyed an All-America career with the Sooners. Suddenly people started yelling , “There he is! There he is!” They mistakenly confused McDonald with the notorious “Kissing Bandit,” who had been holding up ticket offices in the city and then planting kisses on cheeks of victims before escaping. Police arrived and threw Tommy up against the wall. “I’m an Eagle,” he screamed. “If you don’t believe me, call Mr. Bell!” They did, and the commissioner quickly straightened the situation out. In his first start as a rookie, Tommy had caught touchdown passes of 61 and 25 yards from Sonny Jurgensen in a 21–12 win over the Washington 40. A Poetic Ending at Franklin Field A Poetic Ending at Franklin Field • 307 Redskins.“Bert Bell came up to me after the game and said,‘That 61-yarder was the greatest catch I’ve ever seen.’” “After we kicked off, I was covering Jimmy Orr or somebody,” recalled former Eagles defensive back Tom Brookshier. “And all of a sudden we all stopped and pointed to that section of the stands. Someone said, ‘Hey, there’s something going on over there.’ And [linebacker] Bob Pellegrini said, ‘Hey, the commissioner just passed away. He’s over there in the stands.’” At about 4:04 p.m. with about 90 seconds remaining in the game, Joe Labrum, Bell’s classmate at Penn and the NFL’s public relations director, was walking along the cinder track surrounding he football field. Suddenly he looked up into the stands and noticed that a lone figure had slumped and fallen. Labrum stiffened with shock and yelled, “It’s Bert!” [Full disclosure: The author was a young reporter working on the city desk of the Philadelphia Bulletin that afternoon. I took the phone call from Joe Labrum, who proceeded to give me the first details of the events surrounding Mr. Bell’s death. I passed my notes on to Anthony Day, who followed up by gathering additional information and writing fresh stories for various editions of the next day’s paper.] “I wasn’t sure what was going on,” said Jim Gallagher, who was the Eagles’ personnel director at the time.“You just saw some police and security people running into the stands.” Play was stopped while several stadium guards ran across the field to the Pittsburgh bench to summon Dr. Paul Schrode, a staff member at University Hospital, the physician who was regularly assigned to athletic events at Franklin Field. Dr. Schrode said Bell was “unconscious and pale white” when he reached his side. “We administered oxygen and adrenalin,” Dr. Schrode explained. “It must have been a very massive thing to take his life so instantly.” Within minutes a cabulance stationed at the field was driven through the big iron gates at the southwest end of the stadium. Dr. Schrode said that Bell was “barely alive” during the ride to the nearby University of Pennsylvania hospital, where he was pronounced dead minutes later. At his side were his two sons, Upton and Bert Jr., and his daughter, Jane. The Rev. John Walsh of nearby St. James Church and the Rev. Joseph Marron...

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