Flores Blazed Trail to the Pro Football HOF.

CANTON, Ohio – Tom Flores was a pioneer and like most pioneers he started in the wilderness, hacking and chopping his way from a dirt floor shack with no running water as a kid growing up the son of migrant workers in the steaming hot San Joaquin Valley to become the first Hispanic starting quarterback in pro football history, the first Hispanic head coach in the NFL and the first to lead a team to a Super Bowl victory. Last night that journey took him to the highest point of his sport – a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

On the night of January 26, 1981, Flores stood on the floor of the Louisiana Superdome next to an assistant coach named Sam Boghosian, who had grown up in similar circumstances. As the clock wound down on Super Bowl XV, Flores’ Oakland Raiders were only one minute from defeating the Philadelphia Eagles to become the first wild-card playoff team to reach the apex of the sport.

Boghosian turned to Flores that night and said, “Not bad for a couple of grape pickers,’’ Flores recalled Sunday night during his Hall of Fame induction speech. “I said Sam, not bad at all for a couple of grape pickers.”

Flores’ road to Canton has been a long one. When he arrived on the stage at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium he was brought out in a wheelchair, his strength having been sapped at 84 by the corrosive effect of age and a life in professional football. But the same drive that kept him going after having been cut by both the NFL and the Canadian Football League pushed him out of that chair to view his bust.

As he stood, Flores joyfully thrust his arms into the air as the crowd roared. Moments later, he stood at the podium and joked, “The reason I’m second (speaker) on the program is I’m 84 frappin’ years old. I got to go to bed at nine o’clock. Where’s my pillow?”

That line brought the house down, as a man known for all his career as “The Ice Man” for his deadpan demeanor knew it would. Then he explained how he grew up in California’s Central Valley as a farmworker’s son who dreamed of bigger things and eventually achieved them.

Cut twice and working on a master’s degree with the intention of becoming a teacher, Flores got a call in 1960 from a brand new team in a brand new league, the Oakland Raiders and the American Football League. Although over the years he would spend time as a player and coach in places like Buffalo, Kansas City and Seattle after first becoming a starting quarterback in Oakland, Flores was, at heart, always a Raider. When Flores first told his mother in 1960 that he was going to give the Raiders a try she had an unexpected reaction.

“My mother cried when I told her I was going to play professionally instead of coming home and be a teacher as I had studied for in college,’’ Flores recalled. “But in the end she was the proudest of all because I followed my passion…and that’s what brought me to this stage tonight. Passion.

“I was always happy in the world of football and because of this honor I’ll be part of it forever.”