Bryan Bartlett Starr was born January 9, 1934, in Montgomery, the son of Ben and Lula Starr. As the son of a master sergeant in the Army Air Corps during World War II, Starr learned the value of discipline and order early in his life. He lived briefly in Columbia, Tennessee; Gainesville, Florida; and Ord Village, California, returning to Montgomery shortly before entering the first grade. Bart's younger brother, Hilton, died from an infection at age 11, when Bart was 13.
Starr became quarterback for Montgomery's Sidney Lanier High School as a junior in 1950. Sidney Lanier had one of the state's premier programs under head coach Bill Moseley, and Starr would earn all-state honors as a senior quarterback and punter. During the summer before his senior season in 1951, he received personalized instruction from University of Kentucky quarterback Babe Parilli, a move that enhanced his high school career and helped him earn scholarship offers from every Southeastern Conference school except Tennessee. He wanted to play for Kentucky coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, but his girlfriend, Cherry Morton, had decided to attend Auburn University. In part to please his father and in part to live closer to Morton, Starr accepted a scholarship offer from the University of Alabama.
By 1955, J. B. "Ears" Whitworth became the head coach and benched Starr and most of the seniors in a disastrous 0-10 season. Surprisingly, the Crimson Tide's basketball coach, Johnny Dee, helped Starr land a spot in the Blue-Gray All-Star Football Classic in Starr's hometown. Unfortunately for Starr, however, the Gray team's coach sat Starr on the bench for all but a handful of plays. Undaunted, Dee called his friend Jack Vainisi, the director of player personnel for the Green Bay Packers of Wisconsin, who agreed to draft the quarterback, picking him in the 17th round of the 1956 NFL draft.
Starr won the starting job with the Packers in 1957 under Green Bay coaches Lisle Blackbourn and Raymond McLean. In that same year, he celebrated the birth of his son Bart Jr. In 1959, Green Bay officials hired Vince Lombardi as head coach. Starr, accustomed to an organized regimen under his father, was perfectly suited to the new coach's philosophy of strict discipline and a firm work ethic. In Starr, Lombardi had a quarterback who understood what he wanted and strove for perfection in execution.
Starr was the epitome of what Lombardi wanted in a quarterback, a leader on the field who called almost every play and balanced a strong rushing attack with play-action passes. He was a three-time NFL passing champion and a four-time Pro Bowl selection. Despite these achievements, Starr never threw 300 passes in any season with the Packers, perhaps being the reason many considered him only an average passer. He did set an NFL career passing percentage record (57.4) in his 16-year career, however. Additionally, after losing the 1960 NFL title game to the Philadelphia Eagles in 1960, the Packers never lost another playoff game with Starr as its quarterback and Lombardi as its coach.
Starr spent much of his last years as a motivational speaker, traveling throughout the country to speak about the Lombardi era and the coach he considered his most valuable mentor. In 1988, his youngest son, Bret, was found dead in his Tampa, Florida, home at the age of 24, from a cardiac arrhythmia. In 1989, Starr moved back to Alabama, settling in Hoover. He would later become the chairman of Starr Sanders Projects, a company that developed medical centers for health care groups, retiring from that position in 2006. Starr died on May 26, 2019.
Additional Resources
Kramer, Jerry, and Dick Schaap. Instant Replay. New York: New American Library, 1968.
Additional Resources
Kramer, Jerry, and Dick Schaap. Instant Replay. New York: New American Library, 1968.
Maraniss, David. When Pride Still Mattered. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
Starr, Bart, with Murray Olderman. Starr: My Life in Football. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1987.
