Susan Lombardi (front), the only daughter of Vince and Marie Lombardi, has passed away at age 73 in Florida. She is survived by her older brother, Vince Lombardi, Jr. (right), who is 78. The following is a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article from 2012, written by Gary D’Amato. At the time, she had recently moved back to the Green Bay area:
A Lombardi revels in Green Bay life again
Susan Lombardi remembers growing up as Packers coach's daughter
By Gary D’Amato of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
December 8, 2012
GREEN BAY — She lived in Florida for more than 30 years and, sure, there was an upside. The weather. The beach. The sun warming her aching joints.
Home? No, it was never really that. Home was far away, and as the years passed she pined for it more and more. There are few things as powerful as the pangs of nostalgia for the best, most carefree days of your life.
And so, last December, at 64, an age when many retire to warmer climes, she went the other direction: north, to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Back, in a sense, to the 1960s.
Her life had come full circle.
Susan Lombardi was home.
"A lot of my youth haunts are gone," she said. "But there's just something about this town and my youth that I couldn't let it go. I really believe that I couldn't have had the childhood I had anywhere else."
Green Bay in the '60s was a magical place. Vince Lombardi was building a dynasty the likes of which the National Football League had never seen and in many ways will never see again.
For his only daughter, however, it was the place where she rode her horse at Oneida Golf & Riding Club, where Hall of Fame football players treated her like a kid sister, where she shared late-night snacks with her father — sliced apples and cheese were a favorite — and ran into his arms when he returned from West Coast games.
It was the place where she once got a speeding ticket and her father went straight to the sheriff and growled, "Don't you ever give my daughter a ticket. You bring her home and I'll take care of it."
It was the place where she sneaked into bars, underage, for her first beers and players saw her and ran the Packers sweep for the exit, worried that she was spying for the old man.
"I wasn't going to rat on them," Lombardi said with a laugh. "I said, 'Stop running away from me. You tell, I get in trouble. I tell, you get in trouble. And the punishment is about the same.' "
Could a teenager have any more fun than Susan Lombardi had in Green Bay in the 1960s?
Paul Hornung, every schoolgirl's crush, hung out in her basement; she has a photo of the Golden Boy with his arm draped around her, an oh-my-gosh look on her face. She had her own car, a Ford Mustang convertible, red with a white ragtop, and an "entourage" - her girlfriends from St. Joseph Academy, many of whom have remained close through the years.
'A Very Hard Man'
That's not to say being the daughter of the most famous football coach in America was always easy. Vince Lombardi was as demanding on his children, Vince Jr. and Susan, as he was on his players.
"He was a very hard man," Susan said.
She rebelled. Her father wanted her to learn how to play golf; she hated the game. She'd tee off on the first hole at Oneida and then, when out of eyesight of the members, go do her own thing. When she complained about having to carry her clubs, he bought her a golf cart. She crashed it in a creek.
There were the parties. The drinking. The cigarette smoking, of which, as a former smoker who had kicked the habit cold turkey, he strongly disapproved.
Once, she was cruising in her Mustang, puffing away, when her father's familiar voice crackled over the radio: "Hi, this is Vince Lombardi. I quit smoking and so should you… " He was talking to her. She quickly snuffed out the cigarette in the ashtray.
"I did a lot behind his back, but he found out," Susan said. "I asked my mom (Marie) after he died, 'Did Daddy know anything I did when I was growing up?' She said, 'He knew everything.'
"I asked her why he never really came down on me and she said, 'Because he knew what it was like to live in a town of 60,000 where your father was god.'
"He gave me a lot of leeway."
Susan Lombardi never wanted to leave Green Bay. In 1968, her father helped find a job for her first husband and announced, "You're moving to Chicago."
"I cried," she said. "I didn't know why he was making us move. His exact words were, 'You'll figure out why.' It took me a long time to figure it out. It was time for Susan to grow up and be away from mommy and daddy."
When Vince Lombardi accepted the job as head coach of the Washington Redskins in 1969, Susan wanted to move her family - by then, she and her husband had a daughter, Margaret - to Washington. Vince told her to stay put. Then he went in for a hernia operation, and doctors discovered the colon cancer.
"He lived 68 days after that," Susan said.
A Move To Sunny Florida
She moved from the south side of Chicago to Schaumburg, Ill., and then to St. Louis after her husband's job got transferred. After 10 years, he lost his job and in the late '70s they moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to be close to her mother, who was living in Palm Beach.
Every year for the next 30 years, Susan Lombardi returned to Green Bay for one week to reunite with old friends. She had so much fun that when she went home she'd tell her three children, "Someday, I'm moving back to Green Bay." They didn't get it. What could Green Bay possibly have that Florida didn't?
Her marriage dissolved and she moved her children to Jacksonville. She taught neighbor kids how to swim at the pool in their gated community, and one of the mothers played matchmaker and introduced her to "J.T."
"After a couple dates I asked him what his name was and he said, 'James Taylor,' " Lombardi said. "I almost fell over. I said, 'You know, we had a pretty good ballplayer named Jimmy Taylor.'"
J.T. knew all about the '60s Packers. Jim Taylor was one of his boyhood heroes. But he had grown up in Modesto, Calif., spent 22 years in the Navy and semiretired to Florida, where he managed an apartment complex and drove a taxi. The last place he thought he'd wind up was Green Bay.
The move turned out to be his idea.
"We were here in Green Bay and I was happy," Susan said. "I smiled all week. We were in the hotel room one night and J.T. said, 'I've been giving it some thought and I guess I have to bring you home.'
"The kids had heard it enough times that when I announced I was really moving, none of them were in shock."
All Roads To Lombardi Ave.
Married now for four years, J.T. and Susan live in De Pere, a 15-minute drive from Lambeau Field. Their house is decorated with Packers memorabilia; iconic photos of Vince Lombardi grace the living room walls.
The weather is tough on her. She'll be 66 in February and has had both knees and both hips replaced. She needs the right knee and hip redone. She's got a bad shoulder. An orthopedic surgeon once jokingly asked her what position she played.
J.T. isn't crazy about winter, either.
"I've bounced around," he said with a shrug. "I can live anywhere and adapt."
Once in a while, Lombardi will get turned around in a newer subdivision, but it isn't long before she comes to a street she recognizes and finds her way. In Green Bay, all roads lead to Lombardi Ave.
The main thing is, she is back in the city she grew up in, grew to love… and never outgrew.
"Even though it has changed, I still feel that I live in that little, small town," she said. "The people are just different here. Friendlier."
She has a good relationship with the Packers organization but pays for her tickets to games.
"I think they've done a wonderful job of honoring my father and his players," Lombardi said. "I think a lot of that was (former general manager) Ron Wolf. He really appreciated the history and tradition here."
Often, she'll be in the grocery store or at the gas station and strangers will approach her.
"They'll say, 'You know, you look like Vince Lombardi,' " she said. "I say, 'Yes, I do look like him, because I'm related to him.' "
She smiled.
Yes, there it was. That familiar Lombardi smile. Home, again, in Green Bay.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Susan Lombardi On Favre, Others
Susan Lombardi touched on a number of subjects during a two-hour interview at her home in De Pere. Here are some highlights:
On what her father, Vince Lombardi, would have thought of Brett Favre: "Brett would have been my father's favorite quarterback. Not that he didn't think (Bart) Starr was wonderful. He built his team around him."
But what about Favre's sometimes reckless style of play and all those interceptions? "It wouldn't have happened. My father would have nipped that in the bud. If my father would have been coach during that Giants game (loss in the NFC Championship Game following the 2007 season), I'd have gone and hid in the basement, When he came home after a loss like that - which we didn't have that many - he was horrible."
On Reggie White: "Reggie was a great ballplayer. My father would have loved him. But he loved the ones he had."
On what her father would think of the current Packers: "He'd appreciate the Packers of today. Very, very much so."
On Christmas in 1960: "We went to play the Eagles (in the NFL Championship Game). My mother put up a tree, but we got on a plane and went to Philadelphia. My father had a pre-Christmas party and I walked in the room and I started crying because there wasn't a Christmas tree. My mother sent me to the ladies room to blow my nose. I came back and there was a fully decorated Christmas tree. Now, tell me where my father got that one?"
On politics in the Lombardi household: "I lived in a split house. My father was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. My mother was a Republican. When Kennedy and Nixon ran, my mother put Nixon signs in our yard. She did it as a joke. My father came home and ripped them out. They were mangled. He yelled, 'We don't put these signs in our yard.' Oh, they fought about politics."
On her last name: "I'm very, very proud of my name. I wouldn't do anything to shame it. He (pointing to husband James Taylor) is Taylor. I'm Lombardi. I won't give up my name."
Our condolences to the Lombardi family and Susan’s friends.
