Pete Rozelle

* Your many stories of tribute about Pete Rozelle were well deserved. He was truly the father of the NFL and a fine man.

Pete was also an Olympics fan! Your Dec. 7 article mentions that “after three years as the Rams’ publicist, he left for a year to work for a public relations firm but returned in 1957 to become the Rams’ general manager.”

This is true, but what is of interest is that during that missing year, Pete worked as a publicist for the highly successful 1956 Melbourne Olympics. That cemented his regard for the Olympic movement.

In 1978, we tried to recruit Rozelle to run the 1984 Olympics. He was interested, and at that time confirmed his interest in the Olympic movement, but he eventually turned the job down, stating that because his daughters were doing so well in school in the East he didn’t want to disrupt them.

Of course, it all worked out for the best, because Rozelle continued to ably lead the NFL for nine more years, and no one could have done a better job of assuring the success of the 1984 Games than Peter V. Ueberroth and Harry Usher.

JOHN C. ARGUE

Los Angeles