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FOOTBALL, WAR HERO 'MOTTS" TONELLI DIES 

Chicago Sun Times
By Bryan Smith
Staff Reporter
January 8, 2003

On crisp autumn Saturdays on the football field of Notre Dame, the life of a young fullback named Mario "Motts" Tonelli was measured in hashmarks and goal lines.

He was, by virtue of his ability to break into the clear, a hero, a man defined by athletic skill and physical power.

But looking back on his life--a life of survival, renewal and redemption, of extraordinary courage and a will to live stronger than a prison death march--his accomplishments on the field seem almost a footnote.

Mr. Tonelli did achieve true greatness, but a greatness realized through those traits that rarely bring a stadium crowd to its feet: honesty, humility, integrity and kindness.

The fullest expression may have been captured upon his induction to the Italian American Sports Hall of Fame just a few months ago. For four hours, other sports greats basked in the spotlight, recounting their own glory. At nearly midnight, Mr. Tonelli shuffled up to the microphones. He squinted at the bright lights, his voice soft and raspy in the microphone.

He merely asked the audience to pray for America's soldiers and expressed his love for his country. The moment brought a crowd to its feet, in tears. Mr. Tonelli shuffled off the stage and back to his table.

An American hero who not only survived the Bataan Death March and four years of captivity at the hands of the Japanese, but came back to play professional football after losing nearly 100 pounds, Mr. Tonelli died Tuesday morning at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The Skokie resident was 84. 

Born in Lemont to Italian immigrant parents, young Motts Tonelli faced his first battle for survival at 6 years old. Playing with a neighborhood boy, he tipped a burning garbage can onto himself and suffered third-degree burns on 80 percent of his body.Doctors cautioned he might never walk again, but his father rigged a gurney of sorts to help him get around, and eventually the boy ventured onto the field at Chase Park where he learned not only to walk, but run. 

In time, his family moved to Wilson Avenue in Chicago, where he starred at DePaul Academy in football, basketball and track. Recruited to the University of Notre Dame, he earned All-American honors and made his most famous run: a 70-yard gallop against archrival University of Southern California to help win a tight game.

Mr. Tonelli joined the then-Chicago Cardinals of the fledgling NFL, but World War II called, and he found himself not just a soldier, but a prisoner of war, forced into the Bataan Death March in the Philippines.

Allied soldiers who had surrendered on the Bataan Peninsula were forced to march while suffering from dehydration and hunger. Some 24,000 soldiers died, some gunned down.

One of the most extraordinary moments in his life came at the beginning of the march. A Japanese guard ordered Mr. Tonelli to remove his Notre Dame graduation ring at bayonet point. Moments later, a Japanese officer took the ring from the guard and returned it to Mr. Tonelli, saying in perfect English that he had attended USC and had watched his famous run.

Over the next four years, he broiled in the heat of prison boxcars, he sweltered in the rice paddies of Japan, and he endured 67 days in the stinking bowels of a "Hell Ship.

''He returned from the war a shadow of the 200-pound fullback who once slammed into the line like a sledgehammer. He was a little more than 100 pounds and wracked with malaria and intestinal parasites. But to reclaim his own life, Mr. Tonelli faced one more challenge: He had to play again.

The doctors said he shouldn't. But if Mr. Tonelli was going to see his NFL pension, he would have to be signed to a contract after the war. Cardinals owner Charlie Bidwill, moved by his determination, gave him a chance. 

And so, on a raw November day in 1946, not two months after coming back from the dead, No. 58 stood in the tunnel of an NFL football stadium in his high-top cleats and leather helmet, ready to run one more time into the blinding light of a waiting field.

In the years that followed, Mr. Tonelli entered politics, becoming the youngest member of the Board of Commissioners in Cook County history in 1946. He later turned down a chance to work in the Richard Nixon administration. Instead, he spent a distinguished 42 years in public service in Chicago before his retirement in 1988.

A devoted family man, Mr. Tonelli struggled for a time to come to terms with all he had been through. Eventually, he found his way through telling his story to schools and civic groups and, last year, in a lengthy feature article in the Chicago Sun-Times.

His daughter, Nancy Reynolds, says it was Mr. Tonelli's ability to make people feel special that made him so beloved.

"He had this uncanny ability to make everyone feel like they were a good friend," she said. "It was one of the things I loved most about him.

"The football part of Motts Tonelli's life, though exciting and glamorous, was not.

"I could have cared less about the football stuff,'' she said. "Who he was and his ability to inspire had everything to do with his character.

"In addition to Reynolds, Mr. Tonelli's survivors include a brother, Thomas, and a granddaughter, Mary. He was preceded in death by Mary, his wife of more than 40 years, whom he wed in 1941.

A wake will be Thursday and Friday from 3 to 9 p.m. at Drake & Son Funeral Home, 5303 N. Western.

A funeral mass will be offered at 10 a.m. Saturday at Our Lady of Lourdes, 4640 N. Ashland.

[RAA FOOTNOTE: One of the same surname are anxious to "asssociate" with this great Italian American, but have done little to promote our culture, and indeed have worked at cross purposes to that objective.]  

Football, war hero 'Motts' Tonelli dies 
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