Appreciation

By Melissa August, Val Castronovo, Fiona Carruthers, Matthew Cooper, Daniel Levy, Ellin Martens, Julie Rawe and Josh Tyrangiel

No one expected him to vanish from the sport. When he lost the Dallas Cowboys, the team he loved, everyone expected TOM LANDRY to move on to another, to lead a different tribe of men to even more victories, even more Super Bowls. After all, Landry was the third most winning coach in the National Football League, after Don Shula and George Halas. But following a graceless dismissal by Dallas' new owner in 1989, Landry remained a silent, mournful football widower, reproachfully if silently carrying a torch for the team that moved on without him to further victories. At his firing, he shed public tears, which shocked an America that saw him as the faultlessly tailored, taciturn but brilliant sideline tactician. "Fireproof, bulletproof, emotionproof," the writer Pete Axthelm once said. Landry had a right to the tears. He had been coach since Dallas joined the NFL in 1960 and had nurtured the team from its winless first season through five Super Bowls and two world championships. In Landry's 29 years at the helm, Dallas won 13 division championships and had 20 consecutive winning seasons. His team became America's team. On Saturday night, after having undergone treatment for leukemia over the past nine months, he passed away in Dallas. He remains an icon of control and loyalty.