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any historical reference to the 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 

PURELY COMMENTARY

Alan 
Muskovitz