(EDITOR'S NOTE: To read the 2022 story on Kalsu, please click on the following link: Memorial Day Salute: The Price Bills' Bob Kalsu Paid for 'a Promise to Serve' - Talk Of Fame (talkoffametwo.com)
Of the 17 NFL players killed in military combat, Arizona defensive back Pat Tillman -- who died in Afghanistan in 2004 -- is the last and best known. But before Tillman, there was Buffalo Bills' offensive lineman Bob Kalsu.
He was killed in Vietnam on July 21, 1970, two days prior to the birth of his second child and only son.
Like Tillman, Kalsu's death didn't have to happen. An ROTC student at the University of Oklahoma, he could have sought a deferrment or entered the reserves like some pro athletes in the 1960s. Instead, he embraced his military obligations and joined the U.S. Army one year after he was named Buffalo's Rookie of the Year.
Sent to Vietnam in November, 1969, he died there eight months later -- the victim of a mortar blast -- at the age of 25.
Kalsu's death is what the Pro Football Hall-of'Fame's Joe Horrigan termed "the sad all-American story" in an interview we did with him a year ago ... and he should know. The son of a Buffalo sportswriter who later became the Buffalo Bills' public relations director, Horrigan served as a ballboy for the Bills and met Kalsu when Horrigan was 17.
He never forgot him.
We reprint his interview with the Talk of Fame in observance of Memorial Day and in remembrance of Bob Kalsu, who "made a promise to serve" his country ... and did. To read the complete story, please click on the following link: Memorial Day Salute: The Price Bills' Bob Kalsu Paid for 'a Promise to Serve' - Talk Of Fame (talkoffametwo.com)
More must-reads: