The Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl this Sunday. The championship trophy that they will be vying for bears the name of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. One former Williamsporter, Heinie Miller, had the distinction of coaching Lombardi in an all-star game in 1937.
Henry J. “Heinie” Miller was born in Williamsport on January 1, 1893. He played football for one year (1909) for Williamsport High School. He then played three years at Mercersburg Prep Academy.
Miller played his collegiate football at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he spent most of his football career as a player and coach. His brother Allie also excelled in football there, and another brother, Ray, would also have a promising career at Penn. Three other brothers also played football.
Heinie excelled on Penn’s 1916 and 1917 teams as a defensive end, and his playing was interrupted for one year by service in the Army during World War I.
He returned in 1919 and had his greatest season. That season, he was named to the Walter Camp All-America team. He was one of only three former Williamsport High School footballers who earned this coveted All-American designation while playing collegiate football. The others being, Garrett Cochran in 1897 and Larry Kelly in 1936, who also won that year’s Heisman Trophy.
That 1919 Penn squad went 6-2-1. Their losses were to Penn State and Dartmouth, and they tied Pitt.
One of Miller’s teammates on that Penn team was future Philadelphia Eagles owner and coach Bert Bell. Bell also served as the Commissioner of the National Football League.
Friends of Miller can remember how proud he was when he received the letter from Walter Camp telling him he had been named to Camp’s All-America team. According to a 1964 Philadelphia newspaper article following Miller’s death, Camp’s letter cited Miller’s prowess at following the ball and making tackles, which was made very apparent in Penn’s big win over Cornell 24-0 in 1919.
After graduating from Penn, Miller spent the period 1920 to 1925 playing semi-pro and professional football for the Union Club of Phoenixville, the Buffalo All-Americans, the Milwaukee Badgers of the NFL, and the Frankford Yellow Jackets, which later became the Philadelphia Eagles.
There was an interesting connection between the Phoenixville team and the Buffalo team. The All-Americans had a sharing agreement with the Union Club, which was a side project managed by Miller. Miller would take himself and seven other All-Americans to Phoenixville to play games on Saturdays (Pennsylvania had blue laws that prevented play on Sunday) and then return to Buffalo on Sundays. This sharing agreement lasted into 1921 when Miller formed the new Union Quakers of Philadelphia. Still, All-American owner Frank McNeil halted the agreement halfway through the 1921 season after the Quakers played the Canton Bulldogs and wore out the All-American players.
In 1925, Miller became the first football coach at Temple University. He coached there for eight years. His first Temple squad went 5-2-1. His 1927 team was powerful, slaughtering Blue Ridge 110-0, thumping Washington College 75-0, drubbing Gallaudet 62-0, and beating Juniata 58-0.
During his eight seasons, Miller had no losing season at Temple. In those formative years, the Owls upgraded their schedule, taking on Villanova, Washington and Jefferson, Carnegie Tech, Lafayette, and West Virginia.
Miller was succeeded as Temple’s coach in 1933 by the legendary Glenn “Pop” Warner.
After leaving Temple, Miller served as an assistant coach at St. Joseph’s College and Penn Charter, both in Philadelphia. He was the head coach for one season, 1942, at West Chester State Teachers College. Miller’s overall coaching record was 55-18-9.
While at St. Joseph’s in 1937, Miller was given the opportunity to coach future Green Bay coaching great, Vince Lombardi. It was a contest between the Eastern College All-Stars and the Philadelphia Eagles held on August 27, 1937, at the Temple football stadium.
It can be speculated that Miller probably gained his coaching assignment in this game due to his close friendship with former teammate Bert Bell, who owned the Eagles.
Looking at the roster of the All-Stars, Lombardi’s and Heisman Trophy winner Larry Kelley’s are the only recognizable names. The Eagles had almost no recognizable names, though that squad did have future NFL Hall-of-Famer Bill Hewitt on it.
Having Kelley on the squad was a big thrill for Miller’s then 13-year-old daughter, Mary Jane, who regarded Kelley as her football hero. She was thrilled and delighted to be able to meet him, according to an August 27, 1937 Philadelphia Inquirer article
Lombardi was a member of Fordham’s legendary “Seven Blocks of Granite” offensive line.
I was unable to determine the score of the game played that night. It is unlikely that Lombardi’s name would have been featured in any account of the game since he was toiling in anonymity as an offensive lineman. Nonetheless, former Williamsporter Miller did have this brush with a future legend.
Miller’s friendship with Bell would come into play again when, in 1940, he became one of Bell’s assistant coaches with the Eagles for the 1940 and 1941 seasons. Bell even sold Miller some stock in the team.
His involvement in athletics ended following his one-year coaching stint at West Chester in 1942. He then went into the insurance business for a number of years before retiring.
Miller once compared present-day football with football in his day. He said, “They have more complicated plays, hit harder, and are faster today. I was 5’9 and weighed 174 pounds when I played. They’re growing them bigger now.”
Despite his seemingly small size, he had a reputation as a hard hitter, as borne out by this quote from Glenn Killinger, a former All-American at Penn State and later coach and athletic director at West Chester. “I was never hit harder than when I was hit by Heinie. He was a fierce competitor.”
This fierce competitor died on June 9, 1964, at 71.
He was inducted into the West Branch Valley Sports Hall of Fame in one of its early classes in the mid-1970s.
