Max McGee, Packers WR

Goodbye to 'Maxi'

Former Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr smiled as teammate Paul Hornung, told a story about Max McGee at a press conference before a memorial service at Grace Church in Eden Prairie on Sunday.

Green Bay Packers legends and fans joined friends and relatives Sunday in Eden Prairie to celebrate football great Max McGee.

By Allie Shah, Star Tribune Last update: October 28, 2007 – 9:59 PM

To football fans and trivia buffs, Max McGee will always be the guy who scored the first Super Bowl touchdown. Or as the voice of the Green Bay Packers, doing color commentary in his distinctive Texas drawl with Jim Irwin on the radio. The Twin Citians who flocked to Chi-Chi's and the Original Pancake House over the years will no doubt remember McGee as the entrepreneur who started restaurants everyone knows.

But on Sunday at Grace Church in Eden Prairie, McGee's many friends and family members told side-splitting stories about "Maxi," the fun-loving, easy-going, wise-cracking, hard-working spirit they admired and adored. Hundreds attended the service for McGee, including several former teammates and Irwin.

McGee, who was 75, died Oct. 20 after falling from a ladder at his home in Deephaven.

Just before the service, McGee's old teammates held a news conference to share memories from their glory days. McGee wore the green and gold from the 1954 to 1967 seasons, a magical era for the Packers.

"It was not only the best football team," former lineman Fuzzy Thurston recalled. "It was the greatest bunch of guys who loved each other on that team."

Football memories

Quarterback Bart Starr told a story about the night before the inaugural Super Bowl, in 1967 against the Kansas City Chiefs, when McGee missed curfew.

Starr said he saw McGee walk into the hotel lobby at 6 a.m., returning from a late night out and wearing his coat and tie. That was the dress code for players back then, Starr said.

But, the story continued, when starting wide receiver Boyd Dowler went down with a shoulder injury, coach Vince Lombardi put McGee in the game.

"Whenever he was in trouble," halfback Paul Hornung said of Lombardi, "McGee would make a play for him. McGee was a playmaker. He had the best pair of hands I've ever seen."

Sure enough, McGee made NFL history when he caught a 37-yard pass from Starr on the Packers' second possession.

But it was another moment 10 days after the Super Bowl that Starr remembers best.

The team was at an event, and a sportswriter in the back of the room said to McGee: "You are an enigma. I don't understand you. You come running down the field, full speed, and the ball is thrown right here. Thank God in the game the other day against the Chiefs, at least you caught it after you bobbled it. Yet in that same game, the ball is thrown two feet behind you. You reach back, catch it with one hand, pull it in, elude two tackles and on for the score. Could you explain that?"

McGee, Starr recalled, looked at the quarterback and then answered the reporter: "That's easy. I never get to practice this kind," he said, holding his arms out in front of him as if to catch a perfectly thrown pass.

When his football playing days were over, McGee became a successful businessman and radio broadcaster. He moved to Minneapolis in 1971 and cofounded the Left Guard and Chi Chi's Restaurant chains. He also ran Maximillian's, a nightclub.

Irwin, one-half of the popular Packer broadcast duo, said when McGee first started, he would scream into the microphone, "Lookie here, lookie here!" whenever there was a big play. Irwin told him that wasn't very descriptive. But the fans loved it, and Irwin came around.

"I decided that was descriptive because it told the listeners that something really big was happening," he said.

A beloved husband and dad

In a Saturday interview, members of McGee's family reflected on the devoted husband and father they knew.

Dallas McGee, a student at DePaul University, said his dad loved to give other people gifts but hated to receive presents. Denise McGee said her husband would tear up when talking about juvenile diabetes, which Dallas has, and cared deeply about finding a cure for the disease. Together, they started the Max McGee Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes.

On Sunday, Denise told the audience that her husband had Alzheimer's disease.

Bob Daly, a longtime friend and former business partner, said McGee was magnetic. "Max had a certain aura about him that made people feel good when he was in the room," he said. "He was kind of a combination of a John Wayne and a Ronald Reagan. He really was."

He also was a natural at whatever he did. "When it came to eye-hand coordination in any type of athletic endeavor, whether it was shooting pool or pitching quarters against the wall, he just was an absolute natural," Daly said, adding that McGee had great business instincts and a knack for telling stories which made him a terrific broadcaster.

But it was playing for Lombardi that truly shaped him.

"He used to talk about him a lot," Daly said. "When we were going to Wisconsin, we traveled by car down there a lot. It was like 150 or 180 miles. So I would meet Max a lot of times at 5:30 in the morning, and I'd get there at 5:15 because I always like to be on time and hell, Max would be there.

"After about six or seven times, I said, 'Max, for Chrissake, don't you ever sleep?' He said to me, 'Bob, Mr. Lombardi told me if you weren't at least 15 minutes early you were late. I've just gotten into that habit all my life and that's what I do.'"

Also at the church service Sunday were members of the "breakfast bunch," a group of friends who regularly ate breakfast and did crossword puzzles with McGee at the Original Pancake House, and the players and coaches from the Minnetonka High School football team.

McGee is survived by Denise and their sons Max and Dallas; and two daughters from his previous marriage, Marla McGee and Mona McGee Olson. Memorials are preferred to the Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes, c/o Children's Hospital Foundation, M.S. 3050, P.O. Box 1997, Milwaukee, WI 53201.

Inside the program were the words to a favorite Frank Sinatra song: "My Way."If anybody ever lived the words to that song, it was Max McGee," said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. and former Minneapolis City Council Member Dennis Schulstad.

Allie Shah - ashah@startribune.com