'He was just a great player. A great teammate': Former Green Bay Packers center Ken Bowman dies at 81

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Ken Bowman’s father offered him a piece of advice while growing up that always stuck with him during his career as a center for the Green Bay Packers under legendary coach Vince Lombardi and later as a local attorney.

“Don’t toot your own horn,” Oscar Bowman often told his son. “If you are good enough, someone will toot it for you.”

Bowman, who died at 81 on Dec. 27 at his home in Oro Valley, Arizona, never did have to brag about himself. His accomplishments did it for him.

The Chicago native had two loving parents, but they didn’t have the money to send him to college. Oscar told him if he was good at a sport, it still might be possible to go.

When Bowman tried out for the football team at Rock Island High School in Illinois, it initially was at fullback. He didn’t even know what a fullback was, but Oscar was thrilled when he told him because it meant he would get to carry the ball.

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Bowman instead ended up as an offensive lineman, so good that he earned a scholarship to the University of Wisconsin.

He was a starter as a junior and co-captain in the Rose Bowl in 1963. The No. 2 Badgers lost to No. 1 USC, 42-37, in what still is considered one of the best bowl games in college history.

The 6-foot-3, 230-pound Bowman was selected by the Packers in the eighth round of the 1964 NFL draft and spent 10 seasons with the team before ending his career with the Honolulu Hawaiians of the World Football League.

He made six starts as a rookie for the Packers after the team traded all-time great Jim Ringo to the Philadelphia Eagles during the offseason, and his toughness made him a favorite of Lombardi even if the two were never best friends.

Bowman’s claim to fame on the gridiron might not even be helping the Packers win Super Bowl I and II.

It instead came during the NFL championship game against the Dallas Cowboys in 1967 — known by most as the Ice Bowl — when Bowman helped execute the “31 Wedge” block that sent Packers quarterback Bart Starr across the goal line with 13 seconds left in a 21-17 comeback win.

Bowman’s teammate, Jerry Kramer, often gets most of the credit for that block. But those who were there knew both men helped pave the way for Starr’s sneak by blocking Cowboys star Jethro Pugh out of the way and into the end zone.

“A big block that Jerry Kramer says he made,” former Packers linebacker and Pro Football Hall of Famer Dave Robinson said. “It was a double team between him and Kenny Bowman. Bo had a big hand in it.”

Still, the Ice Bowl block wasn’t the first memory Robinson brought up.

It was about Bowman’s performance in Super Bowl I against the Kansas City Chiefs one season earlier.

Bowman was the backup to Bill Curry at center after Bowman had lost the starting job when he sustained a dislocated left shoulder in a preseason game.

When Curry injured an ankle in the second quarter of the Super Bowl, it was Bowman who was forced into action despite not being particularly healthy. When his shoulder popped out of place during the game, he popped it right back in and kept playing.

One day and a Super Bowl win later, Lombardi had nothing but praise for Bowman and his gutsy performance.  

“His shoulder was bad,” Robinson said. “They had to put a leather strap around his waist, around his chest. And then just one above his elbow and arm. And a dog chain that tied the two pieces together so he couldn’t extend his arm.

“He played like that the whole game. Ken finished the game like that. Had a hell of a game, too.”

Curry never played another down with the Packers after he was selected by the New Orleans Saints in the expansion draft.

Bowman started 85 of the next 91 games from 1967 until his final season in 1973, often staying on the field despite injuries, just like he did in Super Bowl I.

He was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in 1981.

“I’ll tell you this, he was something else,” Robinson said. “They don’t make guys like Ken Bowman anymore. The guys now, they are pampered so much. When he and I played, it was mano a mano and you expected to stay in and slug it out.

“Kenny, the guys he had to fight, big defensive tackles. That’s who he had to block every game. Some of the biggest men on the football team are the guys he went up against, and he came up big. He was a center, and everything revolved around him.”

Bowman stood up for player rights off the field

Bowman’s biggest fights came off the field, and it cost him both his career in the NFL and likely any chance to coach in it after his playing days.

He became vice president of the players’ association and also was part of the negotiating committee in both 1970 and 1974.

Bowman was front and center during the players’ strike in the summer entering the 1974 season. He even organized a picket line at Lambeau Field and was jailed for a brief time because of it.

Robinson was in a similar role with the Packers before leaving to play for Washington in 1972. He got lucky. The team was coached by George Allen, who took several player reps on his team when other NFL clubs wanted nothing to do with them.

Bowman wasn’t so fortunate. He was placed on the injured reserve list to start the 1974 season with a phantom back issue — it went against his wishes — and was released by the Packers the following spring before heading to Hawaii.

“The league started cutting players, to get rid of all the quote-unquote troublemakers like me and Kenny,” Robinson said. “Most of the player reps were all good football players.”

Ken Bowman was more than just a football player

Bowman always had plans for life after football. He flipped a coin at one point to decide if he’d go to law school or medical school.

The law won. Which is probably good, since his hands were too big and beat up to be a doctor.  

He attended law school during the offseason and graduated cum laude from Wisconsin in 1972.

He started his law career in the late 1970s in De Pere, where he met his future wife, Rosann.

The two married in 1983 and were inseparable until the day he died. It was the second marriage for both.

“We were the best of friends,” Rosann said. “He was a truly loving man to my children and grandchildren.”

After his time in De Pere, Bowman was part of a law practice in Green Bay near the courthouse for almost a decade.

In some of his cases, he represented NFL players who filed workers compensation claims against the league after their playing days.

It wasn’t completely uncommon to see legendary Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford in Bowman’s Green Bay office. Deford stopped by a handful of times to interview him for stories he was working on.

“Everybody knew who Ken was,” said attorney Tom Camilli, who worked with Bowman. “Great sense of humor. He was a great family man.”

Turns out, Bowman was still a pretty good athlete years after his playing career. All those injuries did nothing to rob him of that.

“The (law) bar would have these monthly meetings, and one time we had a meeting at the Packers Hall of Fame,” Camilli said. “They used to have this game, a hole in the wall, maybe 6 or 7 feet high and half as wide as a football. The idea was to throw the football through the hole.

“Ken got the ball, turned around, and hiked it right through the hole. Everyone was standing there with their mouths open. Everybody had been hitting the wall.”

Beginner’s luck, maybe?

“He bent over and did it a second time,” Camilli said.

Bowman and his wife moved to Arizona in 1994, where he continued to practice law for a decade with the state public defender’s office in Tucson before finishing his career as special magistrate for Tucson, Oro Valley and Marana.

“He probably would have been a much more public person had it not been for me,” Rosann said. “We had a great marriage. We were two peas in a pod, and we did everything together. Worked together. Played together. Traveled together. When we were done, and when he was done, it was all about being home with me.”

Robinson perhaps summed up Bowman the best. Whether it was football or being an attorney, husband, father or grandfather, he was pretty darn good at everything he did.

He just didn’t feel the need to tell anyone about it.

“Every time I saw him, he was cheerful,” Robinson said. “He would call me and say, ‘Hey, Robby, what’s going on?’ We’d talk on the phone all the time. Always a big embrace.

“He was just a great player. A great teammate.”