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Lucarelli, Dino

Dino Lucarelli

Induction Year : 2008

Sport: Football

It has been almost 50 years now since he began making friends and influencing people on behalf of Cleveland sports organizations. Ask anyone in position to know and they’ll tell you nobody’s done it better. The Garfield Heights High grad forsook promising careers as a bartender and with The Illuminating Company to take jobs as a publicist for the Cleveland Division of Recreation’s amateur sports programs and semi-pro Cleveland Bulldogs football team. He moved into the pro world in 1962 as the public relations and promotions director for the Cleveland Barons. He moved to the Indians in 1967, to the Stadium Corporation in 1975, and to the Browns in 1981 remaining with them until they moved to Baltimore in 1996. He elected to remain in Cleveland and went to work for the NFL and the Cleveland Browns Trust, where he became an integral cog in the efforts to bring a Browns team back to his beloved city. That done he rejoined the Browns and eventually settled into the role of Director of Alumni Relations, a job vital to reinforcing the bond between ex-players and the new regime. During much of his career he has been involved in an untold number of fund raising functions which have netted sums in seven-figure amounts for charities. His induction into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame brings to four the Hall of Fame plaques on his wall, not to mention the Garfield Heights High School Distinguished Alumni Award. The Northern Ohio Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame’s Humanitarian Award is named for him as is the Cleveland Chapter of the Professional Football Writers’ Association “Good Guy” Award and in 2002 the Dino Lucarelli Media Center was unveiled in the new Cleveland Browns Stadium.