Born 120 years ago, he led Wesleyan’s football team to an undefeated season his freshman year and a two-loss run the next. He took the Cornhuskers to a 29-game unbeaten streak and national glory.
In six years coaching the pros, he won five championships. He made the college and pro football halls of fame. The University of Nebraska named a trophy after him and bronzed his silhouette on the gate that unleashes the tunnel walk.
Then Morris tells the fourth-graders what she hopes they will remember most.
Before Guy Chamberlin became a legend, he was just like them -- a child of the same Gage County town, a product of these farm fields in the Big Blue River Valley.
“I want these kids to know their football heroes aren’t in a big stadium far away,” she says. “They’re growing up right around them.”
Soon, every student at Southern Elementary will get a similar history lesson. Morris, a Blue Springs native now living in Lincoln, has managed to pull off something hall-of-fame worthy herself: In just months, her team of volunteers finished the planning, secured the permission and raised most of the money to make a lasting memorial to the man who became known as The Champ.
