Spartan fans watched in horror as a University of Michigan halfback named Dennis Fitzgerald bludgeoned his way down the field for a 99-yard kickoff return. At the time, that play was by far the longest kickoff return in Michigan football history, but it wasn’t the most remarkable thing about the 5-foot 9-inch Wolverine halfback. He stood out from everyone else on the field that day for a different reason.
In 1960, Fitzgerald was the last man in all of college football to compete wearing a classic leather helmet. Every other player chasing him down the field that day was shielded by a shiny plastic dome and thick facemask.
A decade earlier, in 1950, the plastic helmet had already become universal in the NFL, but the high schools lagged behind. Fitzgerald graduated from St. Thomas High School in Ann Arbor in 1954, since renamed Fr. Gabriel Richard High School after the legendary Michigan priest and University of Michigan co-founder. He wore a leather helmet throughout his high school career, and then went off to join the U.S. Marine Corps from 1954 to 1957.
After his service, he walked on to the University of Michigan football team and found the idea of upgrading to a newfangled piece of plastic headgear preposterous, apparently unfazed by the fact that every other player in the country had already made the switch.
“I don’t remember my dad ever explicitly saying why he did not wear the new helmet, but one of his dominant characteristics was his love of tradition and utter disdain of most anything new,” recalled his daughter Maureen. “To the end of his life, he said ‘Holy Ghost’ in his prayers, rather than the new-fangled ‘Holy Spirit.’ In his forties and as a father of six, he refused to use a microwave, suspicious that it would make him sterile.”
After being recognized as the team MVP of the 1960 Michigan football team, Fitzgerald went on to compete as a wrestler at the 1963 Pan American Games in São Paulo, where he won a gold medal representing the U.S.
He then spent more than 35 years working as a football coach. He worked as an assistant coach at Michigan, Kentucky, Kent State, Syracuse, Tulane, and Grand Valley State University. He was the head football coach at Kent State from 1975 to 1977. One of his players at Kent State was a defensive back named Nick Saban, who later became his linebackers coach.
Fitzgerald also spent seven years in the NFL (1982–1988) as an assistant coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers. When Steelers legend Jack Lambert was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he asked Fitzgerald to introduce him at the ceremony.
Lambert said, “I chose coach Fitzgerald because I felt he, more than anyone else, taught me the techniques and the fundamentals that I used throughout college and professional football. But even more importantly, he took a raw talent and raw toughness in me and refined them into a mental discipline; a discipline that is necessary to excel.”
Fitzgerald’s last coaching role was as the defensive coordinator for the Albany Firebirds of the Arena Football League. He was diagnosed with lymphoma prior to their 1999 season, and, despite going through chemotherapy throughout the season, he never missed a day of practice and even helped lead the Firebirds to an Arena Football League championship.
It was Fitzgerald’s final year of coaching. Due to his illness, he retired after the season. Dennis passed away in 2001 and is buried in Ann Arbor.
If he was alive today, it’s not hard to guess what Fitzgerald would think of the ever-encroaching safetyism that has paralyzed institutions and families into believing that whatever path holds the least short-term risk will lead to the highest good.
Ann Arbor used to be the kind of city that produced great men like Fitzgerald: devoted Catholics who loved their country, loved tradition, and refused to bow to the false gods of safety and progress.
Chris Russ is a Catholic, husband, father, and lifelong Michigander.
