If it had been up to Sam Dana, he never would have become part of the National Football League record books.
About two decades ago, Bob Dana and his two sons came across a copy of Total Football, the NFL’s official encyclopedia, in a bookstore. Knowing that their grandfather had played a few games in the league early on in its history, the sons flipped through the pages expecting to find him. What they discovered, however, is that the NFL, in a clerical mistake, had declared Sam Dana dead in 1969.
For years, Sam resisted his son’s entreaties to write the NFL and let them know that they were in error. Finally, four years ago, after his father turned 100, Bob told him that he was going to let the NFL know the truth. But both father and son were shocked to learn that Sam’s apparent resurrection had made him the oldest living NFL alum.
Dana was to enjoy that distinction for another four years, dying at the age of 104 on Oct. 29. What made him unique, however, was not just his longevity or his ties to the earliest days of the NFL. Sam Dana was one of the few people still alive who could boast that he had once taken the field alongside Lou Gehrig in his time at Columbia.
Dana, a Brooklyn native whose original name was Sam Salemi, came to Columbia in 1922, trying out for and making the football team, then coached by Frank O’Neill. For Dana, the timing couldn’t have been better—Gehrig had come to Columbia that same year and played football for the Lions at the time. The two occasionally faced off against each other in practice, with Gehrig getting the better end of one particularly memorable exchange.
“Dad tackled him head-on one time when he was on defense,” Bob Dana said. “Lou Gehrig busted through the line ... and took a chip out of his shoulder. He put him out of practice for a couple of days.”
Nonetheless, the two were good friends off the field, even past their collegiate careers and into the professional leagues. Gehrig, of course, went on to become one of Major League Baseball’s greatest players, while Dana, after finishing up his college years at St. John’s and Canisius, moved on to a brief playing career with the Hartford Blues and the New York Yankees, both original NFL franchises in the 1920s. At one point, the two former teammates crossed paths as professionals.
“When Dad was playing with the Yankees football team and Gehrig was with the Yankees baseball team, Dad happened to be in the locker room after practice one day with the football players, and Gehrig happened to be walking through,” Dana said. “He looked over at my father and said, ‘Hey, Smoke, what’re you doing here?’ He found Lou to be still the shy, very polite gentleman that he always was.”
After playing five games for the Yankees in 1928, Dana essentially retired, later serving in the Armed Forces during World War II. It was after the war that Sam Salemi became Sam Dana, with his explanation being that too many people pronounced his name as “salami.” Dana later went on to become a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service, before retiring in 1969.
The discovery of his status as the oldest living NFL alum in 2003 made Dana a minor celebrity, and his death two weeks ago has once again brought him into the public spotlight. Bob Dana has received requests for interviews from all over the country, including Hawaii and Canada.
“I haven’t had a chance to grieve,” Dana said. “But I guess in a way, it helps. I’m proud of my father. He was a humble man. He never thought he was any big celebrity, and the one thing I’m proud of most was that he found a way to give it back.”