I want to salute my friend who was just inducted into the pro football HOF

[Bandwagon King]

Today Sam Mills was posthumously inducted into the pro football Hall of Fame. A more deserving player & most of all person to be honored so never lived. Sam was a friend of mine whom I met some 34 years ago at Disneyworld. It was the spring after the Saints had their first winning season & their first trip to the playoffs. We didn't know it but Disneyworld happened to be honoring players from that Saints team that day with a parade.

We saw Moten Anderson & Brian Hansen & in the last car of the parade was Sam Mills. When I saw Sam I recognized him immediately & yelled out his name with a Big Saints Whodat. he looked over at me & the my wife & oldest daughter & yelled back Whodat to us. Well the parade broke up about a half a block down the street & when Sam got out of the car he was riding in & came over & patted me on the back. I turned around surprised to see him & he asked are you guys the big Saints fans? Naturally I couldn't deny my fandom & told him how much he & his team meant to all of us in Louisiana.

I asked him if he minded me taking a picture of him & he told me that he did. But he didn't mind at all if my wife got a picture of us together. Then he grabbed me around the neck like we were best third grade buddies & told the wife to commence to shooting. Then he took pictures with my wife & my little girl. Of course it didn't take long before he knew I knew all about him & his story of how he got into the league. But that wasn't what he wanted to talk about. He wanted to know my family story. Where I was born & where we lived. What kind of work I did & what Lafayette was like.

He hung out with us for almost an hour sharing stories & telling me about New Jersey where he grew up. I finally said how much I appreciated him hanging out with us, but I knew he was a busy man & probably had other more pressing business to attend to. But I asked him before he left if he minded me telling my buddies back at the house if I referred to him as a friend. He looked me in the eye for a second & told me he'd be disappointed if I didn't think of him as a friend. That was Sam Mills in a nut shell. I loved watching him play & the way he commanded the field for the Saints defense.

But much much more than that, he was a very kind, very good & decent man. And his kindness, humility & decency has been remembered now, well over 30 years later for me. I never quit following his career. And I followed his battle with cancer praying along the way. He might have lost that battle. But he was a consummate winner in life & death. I pray for his family as I have prayed for him in the past. And I want to say how proud I am of my friend Sam Mills.

[ultracajun]

Great story Kyle. Congratulations Sam. Keep Pounding!!

[CajunSaint]

Thanks for sharing that story, Kyle. Sam Mills was a winner, on and off the field.

[ColoradoCajun]

That is a very cool story. It’s awesome to see a Saints/Panthers legend get a HOF induction.