Let's start this column in early December of 1968, 11 games into Robert Patrick Bleier's rookie season with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
A letter had just reached the locker room with Bleier's name on it. And as the University of Notre Dame grad noted during a speaking engagement this past weekend for the Sunrise Rotary Club fundraiser in Cleveland, Tenn., "I never got any mail. My mother never even wrote me a letter."
But the U.S. Army wrote. It was Bleier's draft notification. He was about to join Company C, 4th Battalion, 196th Infantry Brigade. He was about to fight in Vietnam.
Recalling the Aug. 20 day in 1969 that altered his life - 48 years and 360 days ago today - Bleier painstakingly described the predicament his company found themselves in as they attempted to rescue B Company following an ambush by the Viet Cong.
"We saw leaves rustling about 100 yards ahead of us," he said. "We were in a rice paddy. A bullet went through my left thigh. Then I looked up to see a grenade tumbling through the air. It bounced off my captain's back and landed right next to me. I jumped, but not in time. It tore into my right foot, right knee and right thigh."
Fourteen hours after that attack, he finally got his first shot of morphine to dull the excruciating pain. More than 100 pieces of shrapnel later were removed from his right foot, which was damaged to the point that it became shorter than the left one. He now wears a size-10 shoe on his right foot and a 10 1/2 on his left.
Doctors told him he would never play football again. He might never walk again without a limp.
But while he was in the hospital for nine months, two things happened to Bleier beyond receiving a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for serving his country with such courage and valor. One, he received a letter from Steelers owner Art Rooney that read, "Rock, the team's not doing well. We need you."
Second, another soldier recovering from war wounds in that hospital, one who had lost both his legs and one arm, would come by every day, his lone remaining limb holding a bar that made him upright, telling every other injured soldier, "Hey, you look better today. You feeling better? You look so much better than yesterday."
Said Bleier: "When I saw him and how positive he was despite all he was going through, I thought, 'The worst that can happen to me is not playing football again. I'm going to be all right.'"
If you're old enough to remember those four Super Bowls the Steelers won from 1974 to 1979, you know that "Rocky" Bleier wound up being more than all right. He not only eventually made the roster thanks to much kindness and patience from Rooney, but he became a starting running back in the same backfield with Franco Harris, eventually running for more than 1,000 yards during the 1976 season.
Said Bleier as he addressed the Rotary gathering: "We really only have two choices in life. We can be less than we should be. Or we can be more."
A disclaimer is in order here. I'm not a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Never have been. Never will be. But I will be forevermore a huge fan of Rocky Bleier. And if there's a better word than huge - colossal, perhaps, or gargantuan - I'm those, too.
Here's a guy who was the 417th pick in the 1968 NFL draft who was later declared 40 percent disabled by the military yet somehow became a key member of four Super Bowl champs.
This is a guy who said of his current relationship with the Steelers, "I'm not an avid fan. But I come (to events) when they want me. There are still times when the old guys have some value - we're the only ones who'll say 'yes!'
This is a guy who said with a smile, "It's taken me some time, but I have come to realize that I share this world with some people who could care less about the game of football."
Bleier is 71 now, and temporarily walking with a cane after having both his knees replaced four weeks ago. They said it might take him four months to move this well, but they obviously didn't know their patient.
What Bleier knows is that the game is rough, even if not quite so rough as Vietnam.
Asked about his longtime friendship with the Hall of Famer Harris, he said, "I've had my left shoulder repaired, my right shoulder scoped and both knees replaced. That's my contribution to his success."
Regarding the current concern with concussions he said, "I'm glad it's creating dialogue. The sport needs to be safer. But at the professional level, there's an assumed risk to playing this game."
As for quarterback Terry Bradshaw, he smiled and said, "Terry loves to talk about he always called his own plays. What he doesn't tell you is that we only had four plays - two running and two passing."
A single glimpse into how the trappings of the game have changed: When Pittsburgh won its third Super Bowl in 1978, the team was invited to the White House. Jimmy Carter was the President.
"The Steelers were pretty tight with money," Bleier recalled. "Mr. Rooney chartered an old DC-3 and about 25 of us who lived in the area during the offseason went. When we got there, a bus took us to the White House. They served us cupcakes and punch at a reception. After we shook hands with President Carter, we got back on the bus and headed back to the airport. We were all so hungry that Dwight White and L.C. Greenwood forced the bus driver to stop at a McDonald's."
As he was wrapping up his talk Saturday night, his appearance expected to net the Sunrise Rotary Club more than $80,000 for needy folks in Cleveland, Bleier said, "We're all really in the hope business."
There just aren't many people who exemplify the positive power of hope more than Robert Patrick Bleier.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.