Elmhurst History Museum teams with Pro Football Hall of Fame on century of Chicago football stories

It took Sarah Cox two years to put together what promises to be a thrilling exhibit for fans of football — especially the Chicago Bears, a franchise that dates back over a century.

Cox, curator of exhibits for the Elmhurst History Museum, is putting the final touches on “Bear Down: Football in the Windy City,” an exhibit that opens Friday and runs through Jan. 24.

She has been busy working with Bears officials in Lake Forest, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, and private collectors of football memorabilia.

“The Bears are kind of unique because they have a staff of people who deal with the heritage of the team. I’ve been working with them about what stories I wanted to tell, what artifacts I wanted to feature.”

“It’s not just about the Bears. I talk about the Chicago Cardinals, the one year of the Chicago Tigers, the Chicago Rockets who became the Hornets for a year. I even look at our own local semi-pro team that had ties to the Bears, the Elmhurst Travelers,” Cox said.

The Travelers played other semi-pro Midwestern teams and were based in Elmhurst for 41 seasons.

“We always try to tie in a local hook,” Cox said of the Travelers, who played in town from 1927 to 1968 before they moved to Rockford.

Another hook is college football, like Northwestern and the University of Chicago, which won seven Big Ten titles from 1892 to 1924.

You’ve probably heard of another college player from Wheaton who pretty much made the National Football League legit: Hall of Famer Red Grange — The Galloping Ghost — who starred for the University of Illinois and Bears.

“We have Red Grange’s football shoes, a Red Grange doll, a Red Grange football and some promotional things. His Wheaties bowl, his Coca-Cola bottle,” Cox said.

Yes, they have a program from the college game when he scored six touchdowns against Michigan to open Memorial Stadium on Oct. 18, 1924, possibly the greatest college football performance of all time.

“He was the first superstar of college. And we talk about the barnstorming tour,” she said.

The first leg of that tour had Grange and the Bears playing 10 games in just 18 days, starting on Thanksgiving Day 1925. They played another eight or nine games after that whirlwind start.

Grange’s ties to the Bears include his flipping the kickoff coin to start Super Bowl XX in 1986, won by the Super Bowl Shuffle Bears.

Walter Payton, Brian Urlacher and Dick Butkus — three more Bears legends — are featured, along with other stars who played football in Chicago; players like Pat Fizgerald, who played and later coached at Northwestern, and University of Chicago’s Jay Berwanger, the first draft pick and first Heisman winner in 1935.

Late Bears owner Virginia McCaskey and late former GM Jim Finks, architect of the Super Bowl championship team, are given their due.

So is team founder George Halas, Virginia’s dad, who recruited Grange to be on the Bears. Halas was head coach for 40 seasons, won 324 games and eight NFL titles.

Beyond the Bears, the Cardinals, who were Chicago’s other NFL team until they flew off to St. Louis in 1960, also get some love. Items associated with players such as Ernie Nevers and Charley Trippi are on display.

Nevers scored all 40 points — still an NFL record — in a 40-6 route of the Bears on Nov. 28, 1929. He had six rushing touchdowns and kicked four extra points.

“A lot of people don’t know we had two teams. They were here before the Bears. They were the Morgan Athletic Club because they were in Morgan Park,” Cox said of that South Side neighborhood where the Cards began in 1898.

She thanked the Hall of Fame for lending a “beautiful Chicago Rockets jacket.”

The Rockets played in the All-America Football Conference from 1946 to 1948. They were rebranded the Hornets in 1949, their last year. That conference produced the Cleveland Browns, who enjoyed great success in the NFL in the 1950s behind quarterback Otto Graham, another Northwestern star.

Of all the items, Cox said “my ‘pièce de résistance’ is a Sid Luckman jersey on loan from the Hall of Fame.” Luckman set the tone for quarterbacks back in the day, leading the Bears to four NFL titles.

“I appreciate their partnership on this,” she said of the Hall of Fame.

Sarah Ficek, marketing and communications specialist for the museum, said Bears legend Dan Hampton, a member of the Hall of Fame and the Super Bowl champion team, will speak at a meet-and-greet event at 6 p.m. Oct. 23 at Elmhurst University.

Tickets cost $45 per person. Those who spend another $20 get to visit in person with Hampton.

“I think the exhibit is going to be a lot of fun, really exciting,” Ficek said. “I’m not a huge football fan, but the things our curator has put together are so interesting.”

The museum is located at 120 E. Park Avenue in Elmhurst. More information is at (630) 833-1457 or elmhursthistory.org.

Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.