Solid as a Rock

It is a story even Hollywood couldn't make up. Robert Patrick Bleier, a scrawny Midwest kid, earns his way to Notre Dame as legendary coach Ara Parseghian arrives to transform the once mighty Fighting Irish. After four years, including one national championship season, this same kid gets drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Against all odds, he makes the team, only to get sent to Vietnam, where he is wounded in battle, only to return and become an integral member of the most dominant team of an era.

To understand Rocky Bleier, you have to go back to the corner of Lawrence and Walnut Streets in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Bleier's tavern was located. Above the bar is where Rocky lived growing up, the first of four children born to Bob and Ellen Bleier on March 5, 1946.

"It was an ideal time in our country," Bleier remembers. "There was no conflict going on. Prosperity was in the air. Doors were unlocked; all of that 'Americana' was taking place. At the time it was our little world."

Eventually, Bleier's little world would take him from unimaginable heights to the lowest of lows, only to have that storyline recycle more than once.

Bob Bleier used to tell patrons at his tavern that his newborn son looked "like a little rock." Rocky Bleier's persona proved to be prophetic while still in the crib. Rocky and his friends didn't play in any organized leagues until around the fourth grade, and that was only in basketball.

Lifelong friend and high school football teammate Kelly Kornely remembers a young Bleier that always felt he had something to prove. "Rocky wasn't the first guy picked when you chose your team," Kornely recalls today. "He was the scrawny little kid even when we got to high school, but you couldn't beat the guy's desire or work ethic."

It was on the playgrounds of Appleton as a youth where young Rocky Bleier met Gene "Torchy" Clark. Clark was just beginning as a football and basketball coach in the 1950's, but he would have a profound affect on athletes for generations to come. Eventually, Clark would go on to become the first men's basketball coach at the University of Central Florida in 1969. He retired in 1983 and passed away in 2009 at the age of 80.

"Torchy was always the coach to beat!" Bleier says of Clark. "His desire to win; his ability to get the most out of his players was tremendous. Kids wanted to play for him. He just had that touch."

That was one of the reasons Clark was tabbed to be the first basketball and football coach at Appleton Xavier High School when it opened its doors in 1959, one year before Bleier's freshman year.

The 1961 football season saw some changes at Appleton Xavier. Although it had opened its doors two years earlier, this was the first year it was a full four-year accredited school. It was also the football season that saw Rocky Bleier make a touchdown run that they are still talking about almost 50 years later.

Hated Green Bay Premontre were the kings of the Fox Valley Catholic Conference when they hosted their neighbors to the south.

They were the dominant school; they had all the great athletes," Bleier remembers. "It was a hard hitting back-and-forth game. It was late and we needed a touchdown to win. (Quarterback Dick) Weisner pitched me the ball, and I got around the corner, tiptoeing down the sidelines, keeping my balance as they tried to push me out of bounds. My left foot stayed in bounds, my right foot is hanging out over the line. I bring it back in to score the touchdown and we go on to win the game."

"He threw about five or six Premontre players off of him," teammate Kip Whitlinger remembers today. "It was an incredible play. From that time on, word got out that this guy was something special."

Bleier says that game was a turning point because Xavier they felt like they could beat anyone. It turns out that is exactly what happened; as the Hawks went on to win 31 straight football games.

After three straight years of being named all-conference and two straight years on the all-state team, Bleier was named to the Parade All-American Team. From there, after receiving several offers, he chose to go to school and play football at Notre Dame.

As Bleier arrived in South Bend, so did legendary coach Ara Parseghian. With Bleier in the backfield, the Fighting Irish won the 1966 national championship. "I found a role, I found a niche, and I got a chance to play," he says today.

In 1968, Bleier was drafted in the 16th round by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Undersized and slower than his new teammates, he was a long shot at best to even make the team. It was another draft that almost cut short not only his NFL career, but also his life, an entire world away.

On August 20, 1969, Army Specialist Bleier was an infantryman in Hiep Duoc in South Vietnam when his C Company platoon was suddenly ambushed in a rice paddy by the Viet Cong. Every member of Bleier's unit was either wounded or killed. Rocky was shot in the left thigh and had a hand grenade explode into his right foot as he tried to maneuver into a safe position. Considering the fate of many of his fellow soldiers, Bleier's injuries were quite minor. However, after doctors in Tokyo removed more than 100 pieces of shrapnel from his foot, they proclaimed his football career over, telling him a more realistic goal would be to walk normally again.

Bleier went home with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, becoming the only such decorated NFL player in Vietnam. But he also brought home a determination that he would play football again. Bleier admits it would not have happened if not for the owners of the team that had taken a chance on him back in the 16th round of the 1968 draft.

"The first year they gave me a gift and put me on injured reserve," Bleier remembers. "I hung around and had an operation, which gave me time to heal. The year after that I was on the taxi squad. That gave me time to be around the team, time to learn, time to heal, time to get bigger and faster, and I took advantage of that. In 1972, I came back and played special teams."

Bleier played special teams for the next two seasons as well, but finally got his chance early in the 1974 season when both star Franco Harris and backup John "Frenchy" Fuqua got injured. Harris only missed two early games, but Bleier had made his mark by supplanting Fuqua in the backfield, "because I fit into the system," Bleier recalls. "The role was that of a blocking back for Franco, without complaining about not getting the football." With Bleier leading the way for Harris, the Steelers won their first of four Super Bowl championships in the 1970's.

After retiring from the NFL in 1980, Bleier wrote a book about his life entitled "Fighting Back." Knowing a story of inspiration when they saw it, Hollywood made the story into a television movie, starring Robert Urich as Bleier.

Unfortunately, hard times found Rocky again in 1995. Estranged from his first wife, Bleier was forced to declare bankruptcy and even had to sell his Super Bowl rings to pay off back taxes. At the time, his debts were listed at nearly a million dollars. Embarrassed by the whole situation, all Bleier would say is that he had been through tougher times and he would be all right. Over the years, he recouped the money he lost by earning an estimated $300,000 per year in speaking engagements, and went on to become the founder of RB VetCo, a construction company based in Pittsburgh. He even made enough to buy back the Super Bowl rings he had to sell.

Rocky Bleier has been beating the odds his entire adult life. As a 16th round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1968, he was a long shot to make the team. After being drafted into the Vietnam War as an infantryman, he might have been considered a long shot to survive. After sustaining a serious leg injury in combat, doctors told him that playing football again was impossible.

Forty years later, how is it possible that the kid from the corner of Lawrence and Walnut would have beaten all of those odds? How could a wounded Vietnam Veteran go on to win four Super Bowl rings, have a movie made about his life, have had to endure an embarrassing bankruptcy; only to rise yet again to run a successful company at a time when most of his contemporaries are at retirement age?

Those that have known him his entire life say it's because he never learned how to fail.

In 2007, Appleton Xavier re-named their football field "Rocky Bleier Stadium." Former teammates Whitlinger and Kornely were on the project's planning committee. "It was a labor of love," Whitlinger says.

Bleier also addressed the next generation of Xavier Hawks while he was in town. "You could hear a pin drop in that assembly," Kornely recalls. "Rocky 'had' those kids, and they just loved him."

Bleier says he was humbled yet proud of the honor.

"It was a great honor," he says. "It was a wonderful recognition that people that come to Xavier will come to the field and see my name attached to it. Maybe a story will be told, and hopefully it can help or inspire someone so that they can be they can be the best they can be."