National Football Foundation

Joseph J. Tomlin, the founder of the 59-year-old Pop Warner youth football program, led the program as it evolved from a local junior football league in Philadelphia in 1929 to an organization with about 4,100 teams and 200,000 participants across the country and in Mexico and the United Kingdom. The son of immigrant parents, Mr. Tomlin had been an all-city tackle during his days at Frankford High School, but pursued a career on Wall Street after graduating from Swarthmore College and attending a year of Harvard Law School. The stock market crash of 1929 changed that.

Mr. Tomlin returned to Philadelphia, and within a week, he had organized what he at first called the ''junior football league." He renamed the program "the Pop Warner conference" in 1934 when Glen Scobie "Pop" Warner came to the city to coach the Temple University Owls. In 1959, the first national season began. Today, the program is the football counterpart of Little League baseball. It also has a strong emphasis on academics, reflected in its scholar program to recognize children who excel in school. Tomlin received the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award in 1955 from the American Football Coaches Association. Tomlin died in 1988 at the age of 85.