4 | JANUARY 12 • 2023

for openers
Remembering Detroit
Lion Chuck Hughes
H

appy, healthy new
year. I’m writing this
just two days after
the horrific medical emergen-
cy that occurred on the field
during the nationally televised
Monday Night
Football game on
Jan. 2 between
the Buffalo Bills
and Cincinnati
Bengals.
I don’t have
the benefit of
knowing the fate
of the Bills’ Damar Hamlin,
the 24-year-old defensive back
who suffered a cardiac arrest
in the first quarter of the game.
He had just made a tackle that
was described as a “routine
football play.”
As the saying goes: “Life can
change on a dime.” On this
particular night, it changed
at the 50-yard line of Paycor
Stadium in Cincinnati. I pray
that as you read this Damar is
on the road to recovery.
Tears welled up in my eyes
as I watched the collective
emotional reaction by players
and coaches who were bearing
witness to lifesaving measures
being taken to save Damar’s
life.
I was riveted to the tele-
cast on ESPN. At times over
the next two hours, I flipped
to other news sources look-
ing for any morsel of good
news. I listened to a myriad
of in-studio hosts and former
players describe the incident as
“unprecedented.”
Not if you’re a Detroit Lions
fan it wasn’t. A Google search
would’ve been so simple and

instantly informed anyone
involved in the dissemination
of information about our
very own Detroit Lion Chuck
Hughes.
I know firsthand. I was
16 years old, sitting with my
father in Tiger Stadium a
half-century ago on Oct. 24,
1971, when Lions’ wide receiv-
er Chuck Hughes, having had
no contact with any other play-
er on the field, fell lifeless to
the ground; he, too, the victim
of a cardiac arrest. Our family
learned of Hughes’ passing
later while watching the eve-
ning news around our kitchen
table.
While first and foremost my
attention was on the well-be-
ing of Damar Hamlin, I have
to admit I eventually began
feeling a growing sense of
frustration over not hearing
any historical reference to the
Hughes story.
Of course, this tragedy
occurred without warning,
turning a sportscast into a

national, even a global human
interest story. Immediate
responses are required without
the benefit of forethought or
facts. I get that. I’ve experi-
enced that when as part of the
Dick Purtan radio show we
were forced to react to the 9-11
attacks on the Twin Towers as
it was happening.
From the moment the
Hamlin tragedy unfolded, I
also began wondering if any
of Chuck Hughes’ family were
tuned into the game. I can’t
even imagine what they must
have been thinking, reliving,
reprocessing upon viewing or
hearing about this tragic news.
A day after the game, I
came upon a piece written by
author Jeff Pearlman for the
opinion page at CNN.com. He
spoke to Hughes’ son Brandon,
now 53, who shared with him
the impact the coverage of
Damar Hamlin’s peril had on
him. “Everything they were
saying was so familiar to me,”
Brandon told Pearlman, “but

they kept talking about how
this was unprecedented. I
thought, no, no it’s not at all.
Not at all.”
Brandon shared his mother
Sharon’s reaction to the news
coverage. “
All these news peo-
ple are too young to remem-
ber,” Hughes widow, now 77,
told her son. “But I’ve seen this
before. I’ve seen it.”
Michael Wilbon of ESPN
would echo Sharon Hughes’
sentiments. “I was 13 years old.
I’ll never forget it,” he said. “It’s
not unprecedented. You have
to be older like us.” Older, yes,
but still a fact just an internet
search away.
Sharon Hughes would later
tell nbc.com that she was very
emotional and felt an immedi-
ate bond with the Hamlin fam-
ily that night, staying awake as
late as she could, forcing her
eyes open, needing to know
that history was not repeating
itself. Brandon added that if
Hamlin’s family needed one,
“they have a support system
here.”
The more the narrative
spread in the news and social
media that what happened to
Hamlin “has never happened
before,” the more rebuttals
surfaced.
“They never mentioned
Chuck Hughes,” a friend of
Chuck’s told an Abilene, Texas,
television station, where Chuck
was a high school gridiron star.
A former teacher at the high
school told the same station:
“They kept saying there had
never been anything like this
on the field, and I thought,
‘Yep. We had an Abilene High

Damar Hamlin is removed from Paycor Stadium in an ambulance. The
Buffalo Bills, in white, kneel in prayer at the bottom left of the image.

BY SCHETM

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Alan
Muskovitz