- Admin
- #1
Offline
The story of New Orleans being awarded the Saints
By Peter Finney, Jr. -- Special to the Picayune
By Peter Finney Jr., Special to NewOrleansSaints.com
Frank Dixon was a sophomore at Jesuit High School in 1966 when his father Dave, the incurable optimist and visionary, got the word from NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle: After years of showcasing the Crescent City as a potentially powerhouse pro football market, Dave Dixon and the equally powerful Louisiana Congressional delegation had delivered on their decade-long quest to acquire an NFL expansion franchise for New Orleans.
And now, the announcement was set, for Nov. 1, 1966 – All Saints Day – in a city where Catholicism, St. Louis Cathedral and football are embroidered into one seamless garment.
Frank Dixon was supposed to be at Jesuit for an All Saints Day Mass for the student body, followed by early dismissal, but leaning on his family’s salesmanship genes, he convinced his father to let him attend the NFL press conference at the Pontchartrain Hotel on St. Charles Avenue.
“I was dressed in my Jesuit uniform,” recalled Frank, a commercial and residential realtor for Dorian Bennett Sotheby’s International Realty in New Orleans. “My mom (Mary) was the only woman in the room, and I was the only teenager. We stood in the back of the room with my dad.”
MORE -- Picayune