In the long corridor alongside the indoor practice field at Lions headquarters, the wall is decorated with black and white photographs of heroes from the team’s past.
At the far end, near the exit, a display honors William Clay Ford, the team’s owner from 1963 until his death in 2014. At the bottom of the last panel, just above the floor, is a picture of Ford on his wedding day, arm-in-arm with his bride, Martha Firestone.
On that day in 1947, it was a marital merger of a lord and lady of America’s industrial aristocracy.
During that era, with some exceptions, women of this class were advised to appear in newspapers only three times during their life: birth, marriage and death.