This volume in The History of the Green Bay Packers series was 25 years in the making. Not that Lombardi’s Destiny took that long to write in real hours, days, weeks, and months. No, it was because of all the books that have been written about the man who ranks among the greatest coaches of all time in the history of the National Football League. Of course, there are also all those books written about and by the players who gave their sweat, blood, and tears for Lombardi and all those countless millions of Packer fans who cheered them on, come win or loss. And then there are those few who were written about Lombardi’s teams.

     My research started with LOMBARDI by Robert W. Wells, published by Wisconsin House in 1971. After that, it seemed a new book about Vince Lombardi came out every football season until the best of them all, the masterful biography, VINCE, by Dr. Michael O’Brien, was released in 1987. If you haven’t read it, I urge you to get a copy from amazon.com. You won’t be sorry.

     So, you see, it was reading and re-reading all those other books that kept me from writing about Lombardi and his time with the Packers. Friends, fans, and even relatives, especially family members whether by blood or by marriage, kept nagging me to write about those incredible nine years when Lombardi stalked the sidelines at City Stadium, then at Lambeau Field after it was renamed shortly after the death of Earl Louis "Curly" Lambeau, the man who is credited by Packer officialdom for founding the team. All that time it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be writing about Vince any more than I had written about Curly Lambeau in three volumes and the first three men who succeeded Curly in just one book. As I had done in those earlier works, I will be writing about the history of the Green Bay Packers, the team, players, coaches, fans, and the front office from the president down to the volunteers who remove the snow from the stands before the next game after one of our frequently intense Wisconsin snowstorms. What a revelation! An epiphany, if you will!

    Then I recalled something a close friend and member of our extended family said to me after he finished reading the fourth book in this series. His name is Marty Dylla, a giant of a man in heart, soul, and body. He said, "I can’t wait to see how you handle the Lombardi years." I reveal these words of his because they typify the pressure I was getting from so many other people who had read the first four books in this collection as well as all five of my Green Bay Packers Facts & Trivia books.

     Well, I had to accommodate them sooner or later. I chose later, sorry to say.