National Football Foundation

General James Van Fleet, while a cadet at the United States Military Academy, played fullback on an Army football team that went undefeated in his senior year. Soon after graduation, he was contending on other fields: the mountains of Chihuahua in pursuit of Pancho Villa. Then the Meuse Argonne of World War I, where as commander of a machine gun battalion, a week before the armistice, he was wounded in combat.

After the war, Van Fleet served as Professor of Military Science and Tactics at a series of colleges. While directing the Reserve Officer Training Corps programs, he was also assistant football coach at Kansas State. He then moved to Gainesville, Fla., to take a backfield coaching job at the University of Florida, and worked his way up to the head coaching spot. After another tour of duty outside the country, he returned to Florida to serve as an assistant.

Van Fleet served again in World War II, and won the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism and combat. He was sent by President Harry Truman to post-war, communist-threatened Greece to lead the war for Greek independence. Statues of Van Fleet still stand in Athens and Kastoria. He retired from the Army in 1953 and went on to engineer construction of a pipeline to bring fresh water to Athens.

Van Fleet was the recipient of three Distinguished Service Crosses three Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts for wounds received in combat, and his most prized possession—the Combat Infantryman's Badge of the common foot soldier. He passed away in 1992 months after celebrating his 100th birthday in Florida.