Joe DeLamielleure
Episode 05
04 MAR 2019
A Pro Football Hall of Famer (Buffalo Bills, 1973-79, 1985 and Cleveland Browns, 1980-84) who is also being inducted into a Catholic hall of fame. He also is on the Board for an orphanage in Mexico, for which he helped raise funding by riding his bike there all the way from Michigan! He also obtains Super Bowl tickets every year to help in raising money, along with a NFL Legends Golf Outing, for that orphanage.
Guest Quotes:
“They asked (my wife) when I got in the Hall of Fame, ‘When did you meet your husband,’ and she said, ‘When do you meet your brother?’ … We’ve just always known each other. God has blessed us.”
“The biggest deal my mum and dad would always say is, ‘You’re going to church. No matter what, you’re going to church.’ And, it just sunk in to all the kids. And I go to Mass every day now. I always have.”
“We adopted two Korean boys… Then I started coaching high school football after I retired from the NFL and we ended up raising three other boys, so we actually ended up with nine (kids) by accident.”
“Now we have twelve grandchildren – six boys, six girls – so, God has blessed my family, beyond belief.”
“We moved to South Carolina… The biggest problem we thought we’d have, it’s not finding a house, it’s finding a good church to go to. And God has blessed us. We found a really good church and the people are great. Sometimes you don’t get the church that appeals to you and you’ve got to kind of search around, like shopping doctors, sometimes there’s better parishes for you and your family, what you want, and we found a really great one.”
“That was the reason I went to Michigan State because (coach) Duffy Daugherty is Catholic. I got recruited to Notre Dame and (Ara) Parseghian was the coach and my dad said, ‘You can’t go there, he’s a phony, he’s a Protestant coaching at Notre Dame. You go to Michigan State ’cause Duffy’s Catholic’.”
“Nothing is as good as or as bad as you ever think it is. Ever.”
“I go to Mass every day because I think when you bring Christ into your body that you’re respons–, I feel very responsible that Christ is in me and I’m not going to embarrass myself… If people see me go to church, they don’t want to see some phony outside of church.”
“I devote my life to God and to Christ and my family.”
“What I always prayed was… for no one to get hurt seriously and to honor God with our play.”
Related links:
Joe DeLamielleure Pro Football Hall of Fame page
(Book) Joe DeLamielleure’s Tales from the Buffalo Bills (by Joe DeLamielleure and Michael Benson)
