Who is nile kinnick

Courtesy of Ginger Baird Robbins. The stadium can be located on our map of Tokyo. He died on the morning of 2 June , having crashed into the sea while on a training flight in the Caribbean Sea - off the coast of Venezuela in the Gulf of Paria, near Trinidad. He was only four miles from the carrier Lexington's deck which was on it's "shakedown" cruise and on it's way toward the Panama Canal from Pensacola, Florida and then to the Pacific Ocean , when his F4F's engine suddenly froze from lack of oil, causing his stubby plane to crash into the sea.

When the "Lex" arrived at the scene, only a petroleum slick remained. His brother George died recently of natural causes. While at Iowa State, he played three years of collegiate football, though weighing just one hundred and thirty five pounds. He was a quarterback and was adept at drop-kicking, a trait that would be keenly developed by his son during his football days at the other college down the road, in Iowa City, two decades later. Though Frances had her heart set on a career as a professional concert singer, she gave it up to come back to Adel and marry Nile Sr.

They moved into the Kinnick family house on North 12th Street in December of and eventually had three sons — Nile Jr. In fact, all they had to do was cross the street. Adel High school was just a football toss away, and remained the high school until?

His number was never called, however, and he stayed busy with the farming chores. Stump in his biography, Kinnick: The Man and the Legend. Among the thousands of Iowans who did serve in World War I were two famous athletes. Earl Caddock, the heavyweight wrestling champion of the world, came off a farm near Anita and saw considerable front-line action in France. He suffered lung damage but returned home to resume his mat career. He served in France with the U.

Army and died on July 18, , in the battle of Chatteau-Thierry. Ben followed just thirteen months later, while George appeared on October 19, It was a rather idyllic childhood for the Kinnick boys, growing up in a loving family environment where everyone was encouraged to work hard and dream big.

Life was split between the large house in town and doing chores on the family farms, owned and operated by uncles and cousins. When not in the schoolroom, he handled some farm chores, worked various jobs and participated in rough-and-tumble football games in the Kinnick front yard.

In the winter, he played basketball in a barn where his dad had rigged up baskets, and went ice skating on the Raccoon River with family and friends. He played marbles in the spring and baseball in the summer.

He also worked to earn money. At age nine, he took on a newspaper route for the Des Moines Register; at age 12, he was a bagger at a grocery store and also earned money by cutting weeds and shoveling grain. All the time, the Kinnick household was filled with conversation after supper, with the parents engaging their children in lively discussions about a wide variety of subjects.

In the Kinnick home, thinking and conversing were every bit as important as playing sports. At Adel Junior High School, Nile was a three-sport star, excelling in football, basketball and baseball.

He helped the team to undefeated seasons in both football and basketball. He continued the same success in high school, and in , his junior year, Adel posted its first undefeated season ever in football. Kinnick was versatile…and carried the ball brilliantly in the open field.

He was also the man whose fate was the envy of no one. Nile Kinnick is someone who reminds us how overused the word "hero" is in sport, since he is one of the few who actually fits the description. He was a Heisman Trophy winner, Phi Beta Kappa student and a man of letters who chose not to parlay his varsity block into a professional football career.

Yet even with all these accomplishments, Kinnick's life tends to be paraphrased more by the way he died. Kinnick became one of , Americans who lost their lives in military service during World War II. Less than four years after he accepted the Heisman by saying, "I thank God I was warring on the gridirons of the Midwest and not on the battlefields of Europe," Kinnick was killed in a training flight in the Caribbean waters near South America.

Such is the legacy of Kinnick that his likeness is on the face of the coin tossed at the start of every Big 10 football game. He was born on July 9, , in Adel, Iowa, the grandson of a governor.

He was a star athlete in football and basketball at Adel High School for three years before the family moved to Omaha, Neb. Kinnick grew to be and pounds. He never was very imposing, nor was he a particularly quick athlete. As a youth, Kin nick excelled in several sports. In three seasons of high school basketball, Kinnick scored more than 1, points. Kinnick finished his last two years of high school at Benson High School in Omaha, then enrolled at the State University of Iowa, where he excelled academically.

As a freshman, he played on the baseball, basketball, and football teams. In his sophomore year, he dropped baseball, and as a junior he dropped basketball, in order to concentrate on his studies and football. After successful freshman and sophomore football seasons, Kinnick struggled his junior year with a painful ankle injury for which, as a Christian Scientist, he refused treatment.