Roger Shoals, former co-owner of Kutztown Auto, retired sales executive, and 1964 NFL champion, has died at 86
He said he never forgot the thrill of winning a championship with the Cleveland Browns. He told the Baltimore Sun in 2014: “That was heaven.”
Roger Shoals, 86, of Gladwyne, former co-owner of Kutztown Motors in Berks County, retired vice president of sales at Gould Paper Corp., and NFL champion with the 1964 Cleveland Browns, died Monday, June 30, of complications from pneumonia at Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood.
Mr. Shoals was an all-American football lineman in high school in Connecticut, a two-time all-Atlantic Coast Conference selection at the University of Maryland, and a 16th-round NFL draft pick by the Browns in 1961. He played two seasons with the Browns, six with the Detroit Lions, and one with the Denver Broncos.
“He is intelligent, has a good reputation, and should get even bigger,” Browns coach and general manager Paul Brown told the Associated Press in 1961.
Over nine NFL seasons, from 1963 to 1971, Mr. Shoals played in 104 games and started 70 at offensive tackle. He was 6-foot-4, 260 pounds, and he could run, block, and tackle.
He started every game over his last four years and said he never forgot the thrill of winning the 1964 championship with the Browns, when he was 26. He told the Baltimore Sun in 2014: “That was heaven. The league sent us our rings. I still wear mine all the time even though people look at this old man and think ‘What the hell is he doing with a diamond?’”
Mr. Shoals opened holes on the line for star running backs Jim Brown in Cleveland, Mel Farr in Detroit, and Floyd Little in Denver. He was buddies with Lions Hall of Famer Alex Karras and Oakland Raiders star quarterback Ken Stabler, and he played himself in the 1968 movie Paper Lion about writer George Plimpton trying out for the Lions.
A career highlight came on Nov. 29, 1964, when Mr. Shoals recovered a fumble in the end zone to score a touchdown for the Browns on the game’s opening kickoff against the visiting Eagles. “What a dream,” he told the Sun.
Affable, engaging, and candid, Mr. Shoals was quoted often in newspapers, and he was popular as a speaker at banquets and group functions. In 1967, the Kalamazoo Gazette covered his visit to the Hackett High School Father and Boosters Club, and the headline of the story was: “Big tackle pulls no punches.”
He was traded by the Lions to the Broncos before the 1971 season, and he talked to the Detroit Free Press when the Lions visited Denver in November. “It’s unfortunate in this game you have to get shuffled around,” he said. “But if you don’t like it, you can get out. I had some pretty good years and a couple bad years. Everyone has those problems. I’ll never knock it. The game has been good to me.”
He suffered serious knee and ankle injuries with the Lions and lived the rest of his life with back and shoulder ailments. He was part of the financial settlement in 2013 between the NFL and its players regarding the long-term effects of head injuries. His brain is to be examined for chronic traumatic encephalopathy at the Boston University CTE Center.
After football, Mr. Shoals worked for 30 years in New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, at Gould Paper Corp., and other businesses, and in Fleetwood at Kutztown Auto. Friends said in online tributes that he had a “big caring heart” and a “generous spirit,” and was “kind, warm and full of wit.”
One friend said: “Roger embraced life and any challenges that it presented. He coached everyone that he loved. He just had that spirit for hard work and success.”
Roger Richard Shoals was born Dec. 13, 1938, in Baltimore. He delivered newspapers as a boy, was a star player at Norwalk High School in Connecticut, and went to Greenbriar Military School in West Virginia for a year before attending Maryland.
He tried out for the wrestling team at Maryland on a whim, and won the ACC heavyweight title in 1961. In 1963, he played in the college football Senior Bowl all-star game.
He met Jean Allen after high school, and they married in 1959, and had a son, Mike, and a daughter, Hollie. He served briefly in the military, and they lived in Ohio, Michigan, and Connecticut before moving to Gladwyne in 1972.
Mr. Shoals enjoyed golf, fishing, and boating. He doted on his wife, children, and grandchildren, and they spent memorable weekends at their homes in Stone Harbor and West Palm Beach, Fla.
He never boasted about his football achievements, family and friends said, and he attended services practically every day before work at St. John Vianney Church in Gladwyne or St. Paul in Stone Harbor. “He was known for his strong work ethic and generous spirit,” his family said in a tribute.
Rob Casper, his son-in-law, said: “To know him was to love him.”
In addition to his wife and children, Mr. Shoals is survived by four grandchildren, two brothers, a sister, and other relatives.
Services were held July 10.
Donations in his name may be made to the Boston University CTE Center, Boston University Development, Gift Processing, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Box 22605, New York, N.Y. 10087.