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No player in college football history meant more to a whole state than Nile Kinnick meant to Iowa becoming its most popular hero and is still today its most revered icon. Following his Iowa career, in which he won the Heisman trophy, Kinnick chose to go to law school and join the Naval Air Corps Reserve. On June 2, 1943, while flying a routine training mission in the Gulf of Paria, his plane suddenly developed a serious oil leak. Since landing on board would have endangered many lives, Nile instead decided to ditch at sea. No trace of him or his plane was ever found. Program from the first annual Charles City Junior Chamber of Commerce Father Son Banquet, held at the Ellis Auditorium in Charles City, Iowa, on April 11, 1940, 4 x 6, two pages. Signed inside on the left hand page in pencil, “Nile Kinnick.” Kinnick is listed last in the program’s itinerary on the page opposite the signed page, and the back cover features a full-length photo of Kinnick in uniform. In good to very good condition, with central horizontal and vertical fold passing through (and somewhat smudging) the last name of the signature, scattered creasing, wrinkling, soiling and handling wear, and a few small tears to back cover.
At the end of the 1939 season, Kinnick won nearly every major award in the country including the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year—beating out such notables as Joe DiMaggio, Byron Nelson, and Joe Louis. He was the first college football player to win that award, which he added to his Heisman Trophy. Kinnick rejected several lucrative offers to play professional sports and instead entered the University of Iowa College of Law. The grandson of a former governor, the law...and politics...seemed to be in the young man’s blood.
While a law student, Kinnick delivered speeches to Young Republican audiences across Iowa—not to mention admirers at the Charles City Junior Chamber of Commerce Father Son Banquet—and introduced 1940 presidential candidate Wendell Willkie at a campaign rally. Like many young men of the era, however, he set all other pursuits aside and enlisted in the Naval Air Reserve, reporting for induction three days before the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite his legendary status in the Midwest and amongst college football aficionados, his signature remains an elusive part of most collections. Pre-certified Steve Grad/PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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