Ed Blaine, former Green Bay Packers guard and cardiovascular researcher, died March 22 in St. Louis. He was 86.
Blaine was drafted by the Packers in the second round (28th overall pick) of the 1962 NFL Draft after playing at the University of Missouri. He was with the Packers for one year before he was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles, where he played four years and was named an All-Pro in 1964. He started 56 of 56 games with the Eagles.
Blaine played guard and linebacker on Missouri’s undefeated 1960 team and was on the Packers’ NFL championship team in 1962. He was an All-American at Missouri and was inducted into the University of Missouri Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2011.
That would have been a respectable career in itself, but Blaine was just getting started.
According to his obituary, Blaine, who had a doctorate in physiology, “worked in industry and academia studying kidney function and its connection to cardiovascular disease. He held six patents for his work and was a key player in understanding the hormonal systems that regulate blood pressure using salt and water, work that matured for him while at Merck, Sharp, and Dohme in the 1980s.
“He later managed a partnership between Washington University in St. Louis and G.D. Searle Co. in the late 1980s, before he found his way back to the University of Missouri in the early 1990s as the director of the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. He ended his career where it took off – in the laboratories and classrooms at the University of Missouri, where he taught in the medical school in the years before his retirement.”
He also did research at the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne, Australia, for several years.
If that wasn’t enough, Blaine was an Eagle Scout and received the National Eagle Scout Association’s Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.
Contact Richard Ryman at rryman@usatodayco.com. Follow him on Twitter at @RichRymanPG, on Instagram at @rrymanPG.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Former Packers guard, cardiovascular researcher Ed Blaine dead at 86
Reporting by Richard Ryman, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
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