In the photo above Dick “Night Train” Lane is being chased by the ghosts of people clotheslined past (WNCC Sports Information). Lane is one of the most interesting characters in the NFL. If you don’t know him, you’ll love getting to know him. If you do know Dick Lane, you just might hear something about him you didn’t know. It would be easy to overlook some because he has had such an eventful life.
The Very Beginning
With a guy like Dick Lane, it may be the beginning of his life that proves to be the most interesting. Richard Lane was born in 1928 in Austin, Texas, to a prostitute, Etta Mae King, and a pimp named “Texas Slim.” At three months old, Lane was thrown away in a dumpster covered in newspaper. Dick recalls that a pimp told his mother to throw him out, but he doesn’t know if it was Texas Slim. People heard the infant’s cries, originally thinking he was a cat in the trash can. It wasn’t the last time he would be compared to a feline.
Abandoned baby Richard was adopted by Ms. Ella Lane. She already had four kids and decided one more was okay. Little Lane has been working ever since he was young. He would bus tables at a hotel, shine shoes, and help his mother with her backbreaking home laundry business. His first nickname wasn’t Night Train, it was actually “Cue Ball.” He remembers getting the name one day while playing pool at a hall for money and winning. Dick’s opponent ran to avoid paying. Lane ran out, cue ball in hand, and threw it at the guy, hitting him upside the head. That’s athletic prowess foreshadowing.
Dick Lane As A Youth
In high school, Lane played basketball and football well. After graduating, he played some semi-pro baseball in Omaha while reconciling with his birth mother. Dick would go on to do a single year of Junior College in Nebraska as the only black player on the team. Cue Ball’s journey to the NFL was a long one; he next went into the army for four years, playing for their football team. Entering Civilian life again in 1952, Dick would see the Los Angeles Rams facilities. He passed it on his bus ride to work at an aircraft plant.
Dick Lane Goes Pro
One day, Dick walked into the offices and asked for a tryout. He carried with him a scrapbook of newspaper clippings of his achievements (an olden day LinkedIn page). He also had a recommendation from another player, Gabby Simms. Lane was signed as a free agent and quickly moved from wide receiver to defensive back. He was so good that the offense and defense fought over who got him. In his very first game, he wowed the team, earning himself a steady position on the roster.
Lane would go on to play with the Rams for two seasons, the Chicago Cardinals for six seasons, and the Detroit Lions for six seasons. Dick would retire in 1965 at age 37 after being laid off by the Lions. This was after an off-season knee surgery, being brought back on the practice squad, and then being fired. Dick Lane was actually a relatively healthy guy. He played through appendicitis, was described as having the reflexes of a cat, and seemingly only sprained his ankle injury-wise before his knee went bad.
During his 14 seasons, Lane had 68 interceptions, 1207 interception return yards, and five touchdowns on interceptions. He also had 11 fumbles, 57 fumble return yards, and one touchdown. In 1969, Dick Lane was named a member of the all-time All-Pro team selected by the HOF. Dick was also inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1974. In his speech, he called the league out for its mistreatment of black players. There were no black coaches, no black managers, and no black quarterbacks, and he was not there for it. Say it again for the people in the back, Lane!
A Few Dick Lane NFL Stories
Night Train?
Ever wonder where Dick Lane got the nickname “Night Train?” There were a lot of different stories, but all have been debunked except one. Tom Fears (the first Mexican-American NFL head coach and the first Mexican-American to be enshrined in the HOF) would play the popular song “Night Train” by Jimmy Forrest on his record player. Every time Lane heard the song, he would start dancing in the hallway outside of Fears’ room; hence the nickname.
Dick was concerned with the potential racial implications of the nickname given to him by his mostly white teammates but grew to not mind it after he saw how catchy it was in newspaper headlines. I researched as much as possible, but I couldn’t figure out what the racial implications of the nickname were. I did, however, use it sparingly in this article due to his discomfort. In some sources, it seemed that he didn’t know if there was a racist meaning behind the nickname, but he was concerned at first that there was. What was not a nickname given by teammates were all of the horrific words the media used to describe him in newspaper articles.
The Night Train Necktie
“Cue Ball” had a way of doing alarming things on the field and getting rules made to stop him from doing them. It happened twice. The first time was when he grabbed Jon Arnett by the face mask and was described as “nearly decapitating” him. The next year, 1962, grabbing the facemask became illegal.
The clothesline technique, a legal move, was nicknamed the Night Train Necktie due to his proclivity for using it. He preferred the clothesline because “grabbing them around the neck” would stop them quickly so he could go sit down again. If he got them by the legs, they might make a first down, and his job has become harder. The clothesline would also become an illegal play because the NFL wanted the players to keep their heads on their bodies for some reason.
Dick Lane was known as one of the most ferocious tacklers in the NFL of all time. In 2009, he was ranked by an NFL-produced film as the second most feared tackle behind Dick Butkus. He was described as “knocking the plays” out of a quarterback’s head.
The Black Widower
With this nickname, I kid. Dick Lane was married three times and divorced twice. Both of his marriages ending in divorce lasted roughly 10 years, like he had a timer. His first marriage to end in divorce was to Ms. Geraldine Dandridge from 1951 to 1963, and the next was to Ms. Mary Cowser, a school teacher, from 1964 to 1974. His marriage to famous jazz singer Dinah Washington (and Dina’s sixth marriage) started in 1963 and ended the same year with her being found no longer alive in bed with a bottle of prescription pills nearby.
It appears that Dick had at least three sons, although we only know two of their names: Richard Walker Sr. and Richard Lane Jr. The latter was born to Dick and his third wife, Mary Cowser. They never knew each other well and actually rekindled their sibling relationship at their dad’s funeral. The brothers plan on bonding over making a documentary on their dad, the football protégé.
Knocking the Plays Out of His Own Head
If you asked the NFL, Dick Lane died of a heart attack at age 74 in 2002 in his room at an assisted living facility, listening to jazz. They might even mention that he had been in that facility for a few years by then. Wheelchair-bbound patients struggle with diabetes and knee injuries. What the league absolutely wouldn’t tell you was all the brain stuff. When Lane died, CTE hadn’t been discovered yet, and it was too late to take samples of his brain. The NFL has dismissed any of his family’s claims that he had CTE because of the absence of brain tissue.
In the last few years of his life, he had to have his brain operated on due to “fluid on the brain.” The sons associated this with cognitive decline, and they’re not wrong. A side effect of CTE can be hydrocephalus. In Lane’s final years, he couldn’t bathe or put his own clothes on; he couldn’t really remember his grandkids names; he had to stop driving; and his sons were called in the middle of the night by police once. Dick somehow got to Denny’s but didn’t know who he was or where he lived.
Righteous Indignation
The Lane sons are angry about how the NFL treated their father in his older years—and for good reason. He was suffering, losing all semblance of dignity, and completely broke, living off a $695 per month pension from the league. The sons petitioned the Alumni Dire Need Fund and were turned away in their father’s darkest hours. It makes you wonder if they had people in more dire need than someone already in poverty. How many former NFL players are suffering like this?
Remember Jon Arnett? The man Dick Lane almost murdered on the field His wife, Jane Arnett, recalls that when Lane died, there was no money to bury him. He was facing a pauper’s funeral. People did rally together to cover the costs, but Jane took this to heart. This was clearly a red flag and a sign of greater need in the former NFL player community. Jon Arnett recently died in 2021 of congestive heart failure, and his wife continues to honor him and other former players like Dick Lane by advocating for better post-retirement care.
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