Rome memorializes the near-death of football in Georgia

Posted 5:30AM on Thursday 30th October 2003 ( 21 years ago )

ROME - Two granite tablets have been unveiled in Rome to honor the University of Georgia football player whose death threatened and then revived the sport. UGA Athletic Director Vince Dooley and 150 people attended the dedication of the monument on Tuesday for Richard Vonalbade ``Von'' Gammon, the Rome native who died playing football in 1897. Dooley described Gammon's death as a ``happening 105 years ago that has an incredible impact on us today. ... There's no greater love than the love of a mother for her son.'' Gammon, a sophomore fullback, was fatally injured during the Georgia-Virginia game at Atlanta's Brisbine Park. Playing without a helmet, as everyone did at the time, Gammon rushed headlong into every play. After one play, he lay motionless and died the next morning at Grady Memorial Hospital. Gammon's death prompted the Georgia Legislature to introduce a bill outlawing football. But then Gov. William Y. Atkinson got a letter from Gammon's mother, Rosalind Burns Gammon, asking him not to outlaw the sport that her son had loved so much. ``It would be inexpressibly sad to have the cause he held so dear injured by his sacrifice,'' she wrote. Upon reading the letter, the governor refused to sign the bill. ``We've heard it all our lives. It's been passed down generation after generation. But we didn't know whether other people knew the story,'' said Marilyn Gammon Allison. The tablets were unveiled at the corner Broad Street and Fourth Avenue to ``tell people what we want them to know about the story of a mother and her son,'' said master of ceremonies Mike McDougald. ``We wanted to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the story,'' said Lisa Smith, a member of the Myrtle Hill/Oak Hill Memorial Association, which helped on the memorial. ``It was way past time.''

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