This post was published in Pillars of the NFL by Patrick McCaskey and is Copyright Sporting Chance Press:
Early Life
On February 2, 1895, George Stanley Halas was born to Frank and Barbara
Halas on the lower west side of Chicago. George was the youngest of eight
children, but of those eight, only four survived to adulthood. He would grow
up with his brothers, Walter and Frank, and his sister, Lillian.
The Halases
owned a three story building. The family lived on the ground floor and rented
the upper two. They built a second building on the property to serve in part
as Frank Halas’s tailor shop—a business that flourished when large clothiers
started buying his ready-cut suits. The business grew, employees were added,
and Barbara worked in the business as well.
When Frank suffered a stroke, he
sold his tailor business and built an apartment building with a corner store that
Barbara used to open a grocery and dairy. The Halases doubled the size of this
second property when they added three more apartments. While George was
in high school, his father died. His mother carried on and she managed their
properties with plenty of help from her children.
The family lived comfortably,
and Barbara was determined to see her boys get a college education. Tall and thin, George Halas was tough and he loved to play rough. Halas
played baseball and lightweight football at Crane Tech in Chicago. He also set
many records in track and field. After graduating from high school in 1913, he
worked for a year at the Hawthorne Works of Western Electric in Cicero, Illinois,
before starting college. The Hawthorne Works was the manufacturing arm of
the Bell Telephone System, an industrial city in itself, and the site of seminal
industrial studies. It was a good workplace for a boy with engineering interests.
In Pillars, each chapter is devoted to one of the 10 greatest coaches in NFL history. Each chapter includes various sections like "Early Life" reproduced here, which coaches the early days of the coach.
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