Battles Continue For Hall-Of-Famer Buck Buchanan

In 13 pad-popping, helmet-banging, havoc-wreaking seasons of professional football, Buck Buchanan fought few battles quietly. But that is the way he has been waging the biggest fight of his life.

Shortly before his induction into the Hall of Fame late last summer, the 51-year-old Buchanan, husband, father, prominent Kansas City businessman and fearsome former All-Pro defensive lineman with the Chiefs, learned he had cancer. He has learned many things since.

``That football players, big and healthy as we might seem, get sick like everybody else. That adversity comes along and you deal with it the best you can. That nothing in life prepares you for that kind of news.

``But to be honest,'' Buchanan continued Thursday in a telephone call from the office of one of his businesses, ``I really don't want to talk much about it. I really don't want the attention or the sympathy. . . . Everybody deals with things in their own way and my wife and I have been trying to lead as normal a life as possible.

``Just say that I'm making progress and I'm optimistic, but there's still a long way to go. And once I get everything under control, I'll have a real story to tell about it.''

In the meantime, Buchanan wants people to know that he appreciates their concern.

But perhaps even more, he appreciates the way the people in Kansas City, gone football-mad once again over the resurgent Chiefs, have respected his wish for privacy in this matter even while his public profile has regained the larger-than-life status of his playing days.

``A lot of that, I think, has to do with the kind of person Buck is,'' said Len Dawson, who played quarterback for the great Chiefs teams of Buchanan's day.

``He knows battling (cancer) isn't going to be easy and the way he wants to do it fits his personality. Buck is a proud man and his game might have been loud, but he's one guy you never heard making brash or ridiculous statements . . . about anything.

``And as great a player as he was,'' Dawson added, ``his work in the community since has proven that he's an even better person. People here remember that and respect him for it.''

Nearly 30 years have come and gone since Buchanan took a flyer on the fledgling American Football League and became its top draft pick - in part because he wanted the light of that achievement to reflect on Grambling, his school, and all the other black colleges overlooked by the more-traditional NFL teams.

And 20 years have passed since he won his war in the trenches against Minnesota center Mick Tingelhoff and neutralized the Vikings attack in the 1970 Super Bowl, avenging a hurtful defeat by the NFL in the first Super Bowl just a few years earlier and bringing his adopted hometown its first world championship ever.

Indeed, though his size (6-foot-7, 287 pounds), speed (4.9 seconds over 40 yards) and skills made him the prototype for most of the defensive lineman who followed him into the pro game, it has been all of 15 years since Buchanan last appeared in a Chiefs' uniform.

Still, Buchanan is not an easy man to forget. And the memories of those salad days, stirred by his induction into the Hall of Fame in August and the success of the current Chiefs squad after just one playoff appearance in the intervening years, has made Buchanan and a handful of teammates from that bygone era men in demand again.

``This is a great sports town, and while all the talk about the old days was great, there were times, definitely, when it got embarrassing,'' he said. ``Sometimes, it was almost like there wasn't still a football team in town.

``It wasn't like we tried to attract attention. For a while, I think because of the way management looked at it, we made an effort to stay out of the picture. But it wasn't like we played here and then just disappeared. A lot of us were still very active in the community, between business and charity events, so there was always some exposure.

``But with this team making their own history . . . starting to work on their own legacy, I'm as happy as anybody.''