KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If you had the happy fortune to spend time with Len Dawson on occasion, the conversation almost invariably touched on what he considered the serendipity of his own life — quirks of fate he reckoned were bestowed upon him by birthright as “the seventh son of a seventh son.”
Never mind that the arc of his remarkable journey was far more about pluck than luck. And that most of the folklore about seventh sons of seventh sons emphasizes that the legacy conferred powers of healing and clairvoyance more than luck, per se. And that he was in, fact, the ninth of 11 children overall.
Because when it came to Dawson, it was a little bit like Stanley Kowalski said in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”: “Luck is believing you’re lucky.”
