Hubert Ginn had come a long way from picking cotton as an 11-year-old in Savannah, and from spending his college summers toting 100-pound bags of sugar at a Port Wentworth refinery.
He also toiled on the football fields at Tompkins High School, at Florida A&M and for eight full seasons as a running back in the NFL, including one magical year with the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only undefeated, untied team in league history.
So 41 years later, on Tuesday, he had come this far, his first trip to the White House, where President Barack Obama saluted the 17-0 Super Bowl VII champions — rectifying a long, long overdue moment.
And when it was Ginn’s moment, when the most powerful man in the world turned to him and shook his hand, what did Ginn do? Well, let him tell it.
“The president asked me, ‘Ginn, that’s a very unusual name. Where does that derive from?’ He caught me off guard there,” Ginn, 66, recounted Friday at his Savannah home. “I didn’t know.”
At a rare loss for words, the affable Savannahian with the easy laugh doesn’t remember exactly what he responded. He does believe that the president, who took time for one-on-one conversations with each of the three dozen or so former Dolphins players as well as coaches and current team owner Stephen Ross, got an eyeful of Ginn’s two Super Bowl rings. The gold ring commemorates the championship played in January 1973, and the other — in silver and black, of course — is for the 1976 Oakland Raiders’ title in Super Bowl XI.
“I know he looked at (the gold ring),” Ginn said. “We all had Super Bowl rings — this one. This is Super Bowl VII. That’s the perfect season and that’s why we were there. This (other) one’s with the Oakland Raiders. I didn’t try to flash that on him.
“I always wear both of my rings. Why not?”
Ginn is understandably proud and thankful for his time in the NFL from 1970-78. A reserve running back behind stars Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Mercury Morris, Ginn played mostly special teams on that 1972 squad — but even getting on the field was an achievement on the talent-rich squad.
“I was blessed. It was a good thing that happened to me. I worked hard for it. God was good to me,” he said of his football career.
“I’ve won lots of championship games with other teams I’ve played with in college and high school, but there’s nothing like that feeling we had when we went 17-0,” Ginn said. “We were just perfect. We were competing against ourselves.”
He practiced with and against Pro Bowl players and future Hall of Fame inductees, all under the firm hand of head coach Don Shula, now in the Hall of Fame. Ginn was happy to see his former coach make it to the White House.
“I’m glad he was there and he got his props because he was one great coach,” said Ginn, whose sentiment goes for the whole team. “I’m just thankful we went when we did because we got there. There are ... maybe four or five of us deceased now. They didn’t get to see that moment of gratitude and appreciation. I’m just glad I’m still alive.”
Ginn turned 26 in January 1973 — though at 185 pounds, only about 5 pounds heavier than he carries now on his 5-foot-10 frame. The Dolphins did not get invited to the White House, as President Richard Nixon might have been distracted by the Watergate scandal, and it was not the custom as now for prominent sports champions to go to Washington.
As the years passed, Ginn felt somewhat slighted as other NFL teams — none unblemished — were honored at the White House. By the way, Ginn was traded to the Baltimore Colts in 1973 and did not get a ring with that champion Miami squad, but went back to the Dolphins before finishing with the Raiders, who did not go to the White House, either.
“The record stands for itself,” Ginn said. “A whole lot of teams have gone there to the White House and hadn’t achieved that record of being (the only) undefeated for that many years. I find it kind of odd that we weren’t invited earlier in the years before. We should have been invited the year that we did it.”
Class reunion
The 1972 Dolphins are still a close, relatively organized group, gathering for champagne toasts in person or over the telephone each time an NFL team gets close to their mark only to fall short. The latest reunion was years in the making through correspondence with the White House, and team owner Ross paid the players’ expenses including airfare, hotel, dinner and breakfast.
Ginn invited Felicia Jones-Headen, one of his caregivers through Companions, Nurses and Nannies Inc. of Hilton Head Island, S.C. She had been a big supporter of the White House visit and drove by herself to Washington — travel costs being steep as the ceremony was announced on a week’s notice. Being a gentleman, Ginn drove her back.
“I didn’t want to have her drive back by herself,” Ginn said. “I wanted to make sure she got back safe.”
They would like to make a second White House trip, with the 1976 Raiders, who never got their due. Asked when that will happen, Ginn said, “I can’t tell you. Hopefully.” He looked at his watch.
“We need to go there,” he continued. “I can see Obama standing there, ‘Weren’t you here just a minute ago?’ ”
He laughed heartily at the thought.
Nathan Dominitz is a sports reporter for the Savannah Morning News. Contact him at 912-652-0350 or nathan.dominitz@savannahnow.com.