Joe Kopcha – A Genuine Region Hero by Frank Vargo October, 2019 

What makes a person a hero?   Is it the roar of the crowd on a Sunday afternoon when one makes a great play?  Is it saving the life of a little girl?  Is it saving hundreds of football players from perhaps serious injury? Is it helping to bring thousands of new human beings into the world?  If these things make someone a hero, then Joe Kopcha truly was one. 

Kopcha was born in Whiting, Indiana, on December 23, 1905.  His parents were John Kopcha, Sr. and Mary Bondra Kopcha.  In his early teens, he was six feet tall and weighed about 190 pounds, but he was very fast and agile.  At Whiting High School, he was twice captain of the basketball teams that won northern Indiana basketball championships from 1921 through 1924. 

His father wanted him to work in an office after graduation, so he sent Joe to Englewood Business College in Chicago.  That lasted five days.  Joe decided he wanted to become a boxer.   When a former Notre Dame quarterback, Frank Thomas, saw him working out at the gym, he asked Joe if he had ever played football.  Kopcha said no.  Thomas persuaded Joe to give it a try.  Joe enrolled at Chattanooga University in Tennessee where he immediately was put on the football roster.  In college, he played tackle in football and guard in basketball for all four years.  He was also on the track team and won nine letters in those three sports.  All this, while maintaining a B+ average throughout his college career.  Joe graduated in 1929. 

When he returned to Whiting after graduation, he decided to try out for the Chicago Bears.  He had a good ’29-’30 season as a guard-tackle, but left pro football to enter medical school at the University of Alabama.  In 1932, he missed football so much he asked Coach George Halas if he could rejoin the Bears.  With the same speed and quickness he always had, Halas gladly put him back on the team.  That year the Bears won the championship by defeating Portsmouth (later the Detroit Lions).

After the season, Kopcha transferred to Rush Medical College in Chicago where he could attend classes while still practicing and playing for the Bears.  His height remained at six feet, but he now weighed 221 pounds.  He, however, was still as quick and strong as he ever was.  He was paid $100 per game.  Because he was in medical school, he was asked to help the Bears’ trainer and was secretly paid an extra $20 a game.  In 1933, the Bears won their second straight NFL title in the first official championship game, a 23-21 thriller over the Giants.  The 1934 team went undefeated but lost the title to the Giants in the championship game. 

One day Kopcha was getting ready for practice when he was seen adding extra leather to his shoulder pads and padding over his chest.  A stranger in the corner of the room was watching him intently.  Finally the stranger asked Joe what he was doing.  Joe said, “Adding extra protection so I won’t get hurt.”  The man, who happened to be from the Spaulding Athletic Company, walked away silently.  Next season the salesman came back, this time with redesigned shoulder pads that were lighter and easier to wear. Joe never was paid for his original idea, but in later years he said that knowing his ideas prevented many football injuries was satisfaction enough.  Throughout his pro career, Kopcha never suffered a serious injury.   

In 1935, Kopcha asked Halas to be traded to the Detroit Lions so he could attend his internship at Harder Hospital near Detroit.  Halas agreed to let Joe go so he could pursue his dream.  Halas later said, “It was the worst trade I ever made.”  Detroit won the championship in 1935. 

Kopcha earned All-Pro Guard for four years, was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 1977 and the Bears Hall of Fame.  In 2019 he was named to the list of the top 100 all-time players in Chicago Bears history.   

Dr. Joe Kopcha, M.D., finally achieved his dream of becoming an obstetrician.  He opened his office in Gary and delivered thousands of babies during his career. He served as a staff member of Methodist Hospitals in Gary and Merrillville, St. Mary Medical Centers in Hobart and Gary, and St. Anthony Hospital in Crown Point.  Other doctors and nurses said it was really something to see this 200 pound “Big Boy,” as he was affectionately known, holding the smallest human beings in his large yet gentle hands. 

As far as being a life saver, one day Dr. Joe was driving along listening to the car radio when a man ran out into the street.  He said, “We need help! We need a doctor!”  Dr. Joe ran to the man’s station wagon where lying in the back seat was a little girl who had stopped breathing.  As he started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the cramped back seat, the girl started to show signs of life, but was not yet stable. Paramedics arrived and Dr. Joe said she needed to be transported to the nearest hospital at once.  Dr. Joe went to the intensive care unit the next morning only to learn that the girl was better and was recovering in a room with her mother.  When he entered the room, he found her sitting in a high chair being fed by her mother.    

Joe Kopcha passed away in 1980 at the age of 80. As Stan Grosshandler wrote in his 1986 article in “The Coffin Corner,” Joe was a genuine  “Renaissance Man” in every respect.  If you ask the thousands of people whose lives were touched by that “Big Boy” from Whiting, they would say that he was a genuine “Region Hero.”