Celebrities From Ali To Crystal Pay Tribute To Cosell

Howard Cosell was remembered Thursday as a singular broadcaster and loving family man in a memorial service attended by many of the sports personalities whose careers he helped define.

To sports writer Frank Deford, Cosell was a towering figure of voice and heart who “ennobled the word, championed the word.” But to his grandchildren, “Poppy” was the softhearted grandfather who liked to snack on Mallomars cookies and slip them pocket money when out of sight of his wife Emmy.

Los Angeles Raiders owner Al Davis called Cosell “one of the great people who inspired my imagination.”.. I know of no one in their field who was more of a sports legend hero that Howard.”

Cosell died April 23 of a heart embolism in New York at age 77. He had cancer surgery in 1991.

The service, at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on Manhattan’s West Side, was a testament to the reach of Cosell’s career.

Boxing great Muhammad Ali and old rival Joe Frazier met again, this time on the steps of the church. ABC anchor Peter Jennings sat in one of the wooden pews, not far NBC’s Tom Brokaw and CBS’s Dan Rather. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attended, as did former mayors Edward Koch and David Dinkins.

Comedian Billy Crystal said after the service he never forgot it was Cosell who gave him his first break on network TV, on Cosell’s variety show. And, of course, there were football greats like Franco Harris and Russ Francis from Cosell’s days on “Monday Night Football.”

Descriptions of Cosell ranged from his youth in Brooklyn, where he grew up poor and a Dodgers fan, to his days as one of the business’ most revered - and detested - voices.

Rachel Robinson, the wife of Cosell’s baseball hero, Jackie Robinson, called the sportscaster “grace disguised by bluster.”The Harlem Boys Choir sang “Amazing Grace” during the service, their voices resonating in the vaulted chamber.

Near the end of the service, Jill Cohane, one of Cosell’s two daughters, read lyrics from one of her father’s favorite songs, Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” which concluded, “And may you stay, forever young.”