Why Did This Pittsburgh Steelers Legend—Owner Art Rooney—Attend the Funeral of Someone He Didn’t Know?

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Say free this week into your Xfinity voice remote. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, we bring you Jim O'Brien, a Pittsburgh native, a sports journalist, and the author of the Pittsburgh Proud series of books. Today, Jim brings us a story about Steelers legend, the chief, the founding owner of the franchise, Art Rooney Sr. I'd like to tell you a story about my favorite person in all of pro sports. He's like the grandfather that I never had.

My grandparents were all gone by the time I was a little boy, so I guess I needed a grandpap, and Art Rooney filled the bill. He was the nicest guy that I ever met in the sports world. I met him when I was a teenager, and I went out to see the Steelers practice one day at the fairgrounds in the South Park area of Pittsburgh.

Boy, was that a dump. They had horses out there during the week, and sometimes the players had to watch where they stepped on the grass. But somehow the Steelers back in the 50s managed to practice there, and Art Rooney was normally on the sideline. I met him one day on the sideline and talked to him, and he told me who some of his favorite players were, some of his favorite sportswriters, and just to show you what kind of a man he was. The next day, he sends me a postcard, and he apologizes for having the temerity to tell me who his favorite sportswriters were.

Now, I was a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh. I was 19 years old, and Art Rooney is apologizing to me. You know, I was the sports editor of the student newspaper, and he's apologizing to me, but that's what a humble man he was. And Art Rooney is responsible for the reason that I go to so many funerals today. He says you can't miss a funeral of a friend or an acquaintance. You've got to show up, and if you never hear another story about Art Rooney, this one should suffice to tell you exactly what a wonderful man he was. I went to the funeral when his wife Kathleen died.

I was covering the Pittsburgh Steelers at the time for the Pittsburgh Press, and she had died while we were in Seattle. And a couple days later, they had a funeral at what they called the Rooney Church, which was St. Peter's on the north side of Pittsburgh. The reason they called it the Rooney Church was twofold. One is Mr. Rooney was always seated in one of the first pews in that church on a daily basis.

And secondly, no one in the community gave more money to St. Peter's than did Art Rooney. So his wife Kathleen dies, and the funeral was held at Devlin's Funeral Home, also on the north side of Pittsburgh. And just about everybody in Pittsburgh showed up for the funeral, and just about every priest, when they had the Mass at St. Peter's, just about every priest showed up for the funeral. George Young, a good friend of the Rooney's and at the time the general manager of the New York Giants, said that nobody in Pittsburgh, no Catholic should be dying at that particular time because there wouldn't be any priest to offer the last rites.

So a friend of mine, Dan Lackner, who owned a paper company in Pittsburgh and of course had the Steelers' account, he was a good Catholic and he had worked for the Steelers when he was a teenager at Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, a school well known for later producing the likes of Danny Marino, who went on to become an All-America quarterback at the University of Pittsburgh, and then an All-Pro quarterback for the Miami Dolphins. So Art Rooney's at the door greeting all of his friends and acquaintances as they come through the front door of Devlin's funeral home and offer their condolences for the death of Kathleen. And Art Rooney was almost dismissing most of their comments because they were usually the same, and my friend Dan Lackner showed up. And Dan was getting in line, getting ready to talk to Mr. Rooney when all of a sudden somebody to his left went, Pssst!

Pssst! Hey, Dan! Dan! And Dan looked over and it was a fellow named Joe McNamara, been a classmate of his at Central Catholic, and Dan said, What are you doing here? And he said, I'm here because my father died and we have him in the back room here. He said, I didn't know what to do. He said, We don't have many people left that still knew my dad. My mom's been gone, but I thought I'd have him here for at least a day. I didn't know that Art Rooney's wife was going to be at the same funeral home.

But we're doing the best we can. And since Dan Lackner had to wait a while before he could get to see Art Rooney, he said, Come on, I'll go in the back with you to offer my condolences. And you're listening to author Jim O'Brien, a sports journalist, a Pittsburgh native, and the author of Pittsburgh Proud, a series of books about his hometown, telling the stories of the legendary Art Rooney, Sr. You can't miss a funeral, he said.

A friend, anyone you know or care about, you've got to show up. When we come back, more of the story of Art Rooney, Sr., is told by the man who considered Art Rooney, Sr., his grandfather, the grandfather he never had, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.

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Say free this week into your Xfinity voice remote. And we're back with Our American Stories and Jim O'Brien's story about the Pittsburgh Steelers founding owner, Art Rooney Sr. We just left off with Jim's friend, Dan Lackner, at the funeral of Rooney's wife, Kathleen. While in line to give Rooney his condolences, Dan ran into a friend and former classmate whose father was also being remembered at the funeral home, Joe McNamara.

Let's pick up where we last left off. So he gets in the back room with his former classmate, Joe McNamara, and he walks into the room and there's a little dais there, so to speak, a table where you could sign your name that you had paid your respects. And he signs his name, and he said there were only about three or four other signatures on the pad. And he said there weren't many flowers in that room at the funeral home. He went back out, and as he entered the lobby of the funeral home, Art Rooney spied him, and Art Rooney walks over to him, and he didn't miss a trick. And he said, hey, Dan, what are you doing in the back room?

Kathleen's over here. And Dan Lackner said, oh, an old friend of mine from Central Catholic High School. His father died, a guy named Joe McNamara, same name as his son. And Mr. Rooney says, well, come on, let's go back, show me where he is, and I'll pay my respects to your friend. You've got to remember that Art Rooney was known for going to more funerals in Pittsburgh than anybody. He just always showed up, said a prayer, and he had a very comforting effect on people.

I remember when my brother Danny died. I was editing a newspaper that had a circulation of about 5,000 at best, and Mr. Rooney and all the club officials from the Steelers showed up at that funeral home to pay their respects. And everybody he touched in the room felt like a cardinal or a bishop had just blessed them. So Art Rooney is in the back room with his friend Dan Lackner. He signs in, he tells the son that he's sorry that his father had died, and he learns that his father had lived on Dawson Street in Oakland, not far from Forbes Field or Pitt Stadium.

And he had died at the VA hospital in Oakland. Mr. Rooney was very familiar to Art Rooney because in addition to going to so many funerals, he also paid many visits to friends that were in hospitals in the community. So he's back there talking to Joe McNamara. You'd have thought he was the mayor of Pittsburgh. And Mr. Rooney remembered that his dad had been a city fireman.

He always had a soft spot in his heart for them. So now he goes back out in the lobby, and lo and behold, the mayor of Pittsburgh is in the doorway, and that was Pete Flaherty, good Irishman from the North Side. And another North Sider, Tom Forster, the Allegheny County Commissioner, one of the top politicians in the city, he was in the doorway with his friend Pete Flaherty, and they were ready to offer their condolences to Art Rooney and said how sorry they were that Kathleen had died. And Art Rooney kind of shrugs it off and he says to him, he says, hey, listen, he said, you fellas, don't forget to go to the back room and pay your respects to our friend McNamara. And Forster shoots a look at Flaherty to see if he knows the McNamara that Art Rooney is referring to, and he gets a blank look.

And Forster says, I don't know any fireman named McNamara. And Rooney rather testily, he was a little upset with him, says, yes you do, the one from Dawson Street out in Oakland. So Forster and Flaherty look at each other, and they sort of gave a look like they knew what Mr. Rooney was talking about.

And Forster says, oh, that one. And he and Pete Flaherty go back to the other room. So the rest of the day, that weekend, Art Rooney had everyone pay their respects to our friend McNamara, and he had them sign the visitor's book. It went like that the rest of the day. And when I came back the next day, my friend Lackner was still there, and so was McNamara.

He said, we decided to stay another day. So Dan Lackner said that he went into the back room to see Joe McNamara's father once again. And he said you could hardly see Joe McNamara in the casket. He said the room was full of flowers. It looked like Phipps Conservatory. And young McNamara showed the visitor's book to Dan Lackner, and there were so many famous Steelers who had signed the book, such as Joe Green and Mel Blount and Terry Bradshaw, Andy Russell, so many Hall of Famers.

Get this. It was signed by Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner, and Al Davis, the owner of the Oakland Raiders. They'd been there, too. Everybody who was anybody in the National Football League had signed the book. That's just showing you the way that Art Rooney was and how respected he was in the league and how he got all these people who had come to see him and offer him their condolences, that he got them while they were there to sign the book for his friend, McNamara.

And I'll tell you, at the church itself, funny things happened. Al Davis was seated in a pew on the aisle in front of Pete Rozelle. They had been at odds with each other because they were fighting about things and Davis was threatening to take the NFL to court and so forth for differences that they had.

But even on that day, when the priest who was officiating the mass told everybody to give the sign of peace to the person in front of them or behind them, I saw Al Davis shake hands with Pete Rozelle. And somehow I thought that Art Rooney arranged it, I guess, in his own way. But think of that.

Just think of that. Art Rooney's wife has died and Art Rooney is steering everybody that comes to the funeral home to a man that he doesn't even know. But he's from Pittsburgh, he was a fireman, and as far as Art Rooney was concerned, he was the best of friends. That's all you need to know about Art Rooney.

And a terrific job on the production by Robbie and a spectacular piece of storytelling by Jim O'Brien about a legend in the sports business, an owner's owner, literally one of the men who started the NFL and started it from scratch when there was nothing there and built it up. And anyone who's known Art Rooney or his family will say one thing. He was a Catholic. He was a Catholic before he was anything. And this is what the Catholic Church aspires to be. It's what any church or synagogue or mosque aspires to be.

And that is a servant to the city and a servant to the people around them. And there is no better story to tell about Art Rooney than that story. It shows his heart. It shows his compassion for others, even at the greatest moment of his grieving, the loss of his wife, who was everywhere with him in Pittsburgh and always at that church, the Daily Mass.

The story of Art Rooney, Sr., a Catholic story, a story of faith, and then so much more here on Our American Stories. Week after week, Xfinity Flex unlocks access to premium networks and apps so you can try fresh entertainment for free each and every week. Catch the season premiere of Outlander from Starz. Journey through the sounds of Black Music Month with pics from Lifetime Movie Club and Revolt. Celebrate Pride Month with stories from OutTV and HearTV.

Then kick back with nature scenes from Music Choice Relax and jam all June with iHeartRadio's Songs of the Summer radio. Discover new shows and movies for free, no strings attached. Say free this week into your Xfinity voice remote. For each person living with myasthenia gravis, or MG, their journey with this rare condition is unique. That's why Untold Stories Life with myasthenia gravis, a new podcast from iHeartRadio in partnership with Argenics, is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with MG. Host Martine Hackett will share these powerful perspectives from real people with MG so their experiences can help inspire the MG community and educate others about this rare condition. Listen to find strength in community on the MG journey on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find the perfect Roku player for you today at roku.com. Happy streaming!