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New P.a.l. Chief Night Train Is Back

New P.a.l. Chief Night Train Is Back image New P.a.l. Chief Night Train Is Back image
Parent Issue
Day
5
Month
February
Year
1976
OCR Text

Dick "Night Train" Lane, once the terror of NFL quarterbacks and pass receivers, is back in the Motor City athletic scene. This time around, though, it won't be his bone-jarring tackles and his nose for the football, but rather his human compassion and desire to serve Detroit's youth, that mark his return to the public eye.

Lane, the ex-Lions perennial all-pro and Hall of Fame defensive back, became the new Director of Detroit's Police Athletic League (PAL) in October, replacing Earl Lloyd (who had resigned to work with the federal Equal Opportunity Program in Washington).

Mayor Coleman Young recommended Lane not because of his past as a football celebrity, but because of his familiarity with the problems of Motor City's youth and his past involvement with them in the Mayor's Youth Opportunity Program.

Lane, as a poor foster child in Austin, Texas, personally faced many of the same problems plaguing Motor City kids today.

Looking back at Lane's 14-year Nationa! Football League career (he retired after the 1965 season), you'd wonder why he would desire another job associated with athletics.

But Lane, now 47, and a bit over his playing weight, remembers his childhood all too well, and PAL is definitely an organization that could help turn a kid's life around.

'That's the reason why I have this feeling for kids," says the former Detroit Lion. "Because I know how hard it was when I was out there all alone at 14 years of age. It was really rough," Lane recalls, "and I could have went in either direction."'

"Night Train" looks back to his foster mother as the key to his success.

While many of his peers spent their time as petty thieves to pacify their poor existence, Lane's foster mother kept him loaded with chores in an effort to keep him away from his buddies. "She also pounded it into me that it was wrong to get involved," he says.

When Lane wasn't doing his chores or tending to his schoolwork, he was on the football field. In fact, Lane had so many duties that he had to run some three miles home so he could complete his after-school chores and get back to school for football practice.

After a highly successful schoolboy gridiron career (his foster mother died during his senior year), Lane returned to his real mother in Scottsbluff, Nebraska and played one season at the city's junior college.

Lane wasn't exactly thrilled with the Scottsbluff program, so he and a friend decided to fly jets and joined the service in 1948. While stationed at Fort Ord, California, Lane in one season caught nineteen touchdown passes and became quite a sensation in military football circles. In his final year of the service, Lane married his first of three wives, Geraldine.

After his discharge from the armed forces, Lane accepted a scholarship from Loyola University of California and intended to play football there. But Loyola dropped its football program, so he left school and found a job with North American Aircraft. He was promised a job as a clerk, but wound up with a factory job instead and quit some three months later.

While looking for a job elsewhere in Los Angeles, Lane took an idle bus ride and noticed the offices of the Los Angeles. Rams.

After showing the staff his scrapbook, Lane was immediately signed to a contract for a one-year salary of $4,500. He then proceeded to set the NFL record for interceptions - fourteen in twelve games. Set back in 1952,'that record, incredibly, still stands.

Lane played just one more season in L.A. before moving on to the Chicago Cardinals for six seasons, and finally to Detroit for six more.

Like many football players, Lañe was a music lover and had many acquaintances in the music profession. "Athletes and entertainers get along fine," he relates. "Only entertainers have a longer longevity with less output."

While playing in Chicago, Lane (who got his nickname from his fondness for Buddy Morrow) began to follow such notables as Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, and Lou Harris. "A football game could often end in frustration," says the Night Train. 'I've always liked soft, soothing music, something with a little meaning. It helped control the escalation of temperament."

Someone else began captivating Lañe during his years in Chicago. Her name was Dinah Washington, and according to Lane, "She had a dynamic effect on individuals when she performed, and I was curious to know what kind of person she was.

Dick and Dinah became friends in Chicago, but nothing ever really came of it until the pair ran into each other in 1963. Lane had since been traded to Detroit and divorced from his first wife.

Lane, who was running the El Taco Stop restaurant at the time, delivered some food to Miss Washington, who was then performing at Detroit's Flame Show Bar.

It wasn't too long before the pair were married, and things couldn't have gone better until one December night that same year.

Dinah, "the Queen of the Blues", had just finished performing two weeks in Las Vegas which was preceded by a four-week stint in Los Angeles.

A lover of brandy and a user of barbituates for losing weight., Dinah simply overdid the combination with her resistance so low.

"She was a tragic loss in more ways than one," recalled Lane with slightly watery eyes. "She helped start a new era in my life."

With his marriage to Dinah, Lane took over her business just at the twilight of his pro football career. With both the business and Dinah gone, Lane played but two more seasons with Detroit before then Lions' Coach Harry Gilmer asked him to retire.

Lane was given a "front office" job, which did nothing but damage his pride. Imagine one of the best defensive backs in football history doing nothing but taking people out to lunch. But then again, football teams weren't exactly equal opportunity employers.

Night Train first became involved with kids during his playing career with the Lions. He worked with the Mayor's Youth Opportunity Program (YOP) in the early 1960s, where he developed some of the ideas he's ready to implement now.

Not every kid is lucky enough to have a skill such as football or to have as dedicated a mother as Lane's was. That's basically where PAL is hoping to fill the void.

"We're trying to get the kids to use their hands, we're trying to get them to think," Lane emphasizes. "Most kids have a pretty fair input as to how to put the ball into the basket, but they never realize that somebody makes the strings for that basket," Lane says that athletics is a great thing for children, but he admits that kids must learn that sports- and anything else worthwhile- is a constructive, not a destructive, activity.

To help get this across, Lane is planning several field trips for Detroit's inner-city kids, in an effort to show them neighborhoods and cities where people are concerned With building things up, not tearing them down.

Lane, and PAL, may certainly have fine ideas, but without proper communication of the many PAL programs, the organization will continue to be in trouble, as it is today.

The primarily volunteer organization reached over 25,000 kids last year, but neither Mayor Young nor Lane is satisfied.

"A look at our recreation centers shows that we have good programs," says Lane, "but some areas of the city don't have anything."

In fact, the Six Mile- Meyers area where Lane now lives has adequate facilities, but very few programs. Lane points out that the $35,000 Lions' President William Clay Ford donated to YOP in the form of football equipment back in the 60's really wasn't the answer.

Without a proper staff teaching football, all the equipment in the world would be meaningless. What PAL obviously needs is volunteers.

"The organization," says Lane, "doesn't just deal with athletics, and doesn't mean police dealing with police. We're trying to deal with all people: businessmen, youth, community leaders, and parents."

To help stimulate interest, Lane has in the works a Detroit Youth Week, where kids will take over City Hall as mock judges, commissioners, and other jobs of responsibility. A parade around Belle Isle by Detroit's youth, to display some of the kids' achievements, is also on the agenda.

Through the help of Detroit's firefighters and other civic-minded organizations, expanded programs in basketball, hockey, baseball, and football are being readied, while non-athletic programs are increasing at a reasonable rate.

A "Chaplaincy Corps" has been set up to act as a liaison between neighborhood kids and the Police Department, and PAL is encouraging local businesses to bring in the kid off the street and train him for a worthwhile position.

PAL's effectiveness has been somewhat. limited, however, by a lack of funds and a general lack of concern.

Its budget consists of just enough to pay Lane's salary and a small police department staff. PAL has a limited number of facilities but was fortúnate enough to get some room for its new headquarters in the old Jewish Community Center (Meyers and Curtis), which the city has recently acquired.

A major setback recently occurred when the Detroit Lions (owned by multimillionaire William Clay Ford) declined to donate even a small amount to PAL for the partial restoration of the old Trinity Church for use as a PAL center.

"We're completely out of Detroit now," says Ford. 'And we have a new set of problems in Pontiac."

It's a shame that an organization like the Lions would walk out on the city in the first place, then stab one of its all-time great players in the back by refusing to help PAL get on its feet.

There is much more to PAL than simply giving kids something to do.

"We want to help Mayor Young turn this city around," promise Lane. "And I feel youth is going to play an important part."

Joel Greer, who lives in Detroit, has written about sports for the Michigan Daily and the Ann Arbor News.