PHILADELPHIA — The March 28, 1968, edition of the Camden Courier-Post carried, on page 38, a seven-paragraph story of some local interest, though it didn’t promise much more than that. Franco Harris, who lived in Mount Holly, N.J., and was the star fullback at Rancocas Valley Regional High School, had decided that he would attend Penn State and play football there for Joe Paterno.
“It offers a fine course in hotel management,” Harris said in the article, “and … I think Coach Paterno is a great guy.”
It was impossible to know then, of course, what was to come for Harris in the years after that news item was published: that, upon his death Wednesday at 72, he would have become one of the most recognizable figures of one of the greatest dynasties in sports history, the “Steel Curtain” Pittsburgh Steelers, who won 77% of their games from 1972 through 1979, including four Super Bowls in a six-year period. That he would be the first Black man to be selected as the most valuable player in any Super Bowl. That he would rush for 12,120 yards in his 14-year NFL career, which culminated in his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990. That the son of Cadillac Harris and Gina Parenti — the former a supply sergeant who served in Italy during World War II, the latter a native of Pietrasanta who escaped the Nazis’ slaughter — would be immortalized in America’s collective memory for his central role in the most famous play in its most popular sport: “The Immaculate Reception,” his 60-yard touchdown catch on the final play of the Steelers’ 13-7 victory over the Oakland Raiders in the 1972 AFC playoffs.
