Hall receives Rozelle mementos

The daughter of the late Pete Rozelle sent several artifacts from her father’s tenure as the Commissioner of the National Football League to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The mementos arrived in Canton on Thursday and included one particularly timely piece.

The pen used by President Lyndon Johnson to sign a law that permitted the merger between the American Football League and the National Football League was among the items the Hall of Fame received. The AFL’s 50th Anniversary Season is being celebrated in 2009.

“The pen is such a unique piece,” commented the Hall of Fame’s curator Jason Aikens. “After all these years, to have an artifact to represent one of the game’s most important events added to our collection is terrific.”

Other memorabilia from Rozelle, who began his NFL career as the public relations director for the Los Angeles Rams, included his typewriter, desk pen set, and an ashtray from his office at the NFL headquarters in New York.

Rozelle was widely regarded as the preeminent commissioner in all of the major sports leagues. Among the footprint he left on the NFL is the growth of the Super Bowl game into a global event. He was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.

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