Rams jacket was autographed by dozens of historic football stars, thanks to a fan

By Marianne Love

Since Robert Brewer was a youngster, he has been an avid Los Angeles Rams football fan.

He’s now 86, and the Sherman Oaks retired attorney has a story to tell.

A few decades ago he went to golf tournaments, luncheons, races at Hollywood Park and other events where he knew football players gathered. He got the idea of asking them to put their signatures on a Jeff Hamilton-designed Rams jacket he bought in the mid-1980s. What started as a fluke became his pilgrimage as he nailed down 60-plus signatures from Rams players, many of whom have since passed away.

“I bought the jacket at a store in Ventura in the early 1980s, because I was a Rams fan since I was 16,” Brewer said. “My first game was in 1954 at the (Los Angeles Memorial) Coliseum.”

Jacket designer Hamilton is a Moroccan celebrity fashion designer known for his graphic embroidered leather jackets for the Rams and his contribution to the iconography of sports and popular culture.

“(Years later) when I saw all those guys, players from the ’50s at tournaments, I said, ‘Oh my God, these guys are in their 70s and they aren’t going to be around much longer.’ So I got the jacket out of the car and someone gave me a felt tip pen and I started to gather signatures.”

And so the story of the blue, white, and gold jacket with Rams’ signatures in different colors became his beloved hobby. He spent decades collecting signatures wherever he found Rams footballers.

Now, at his age, he accepts that nobody in his family wants his “signature” jacket. “What am I going to do with it?” he asked recently.

What he really wants is to see the jacket displayed in a Rams glass case with a placard saying he donated it.

So he kept reaching out to the Rams and finally team representatives came to his home on Oct. 3 and listened with interest to his stories and checked out his jacket. They discussed the possibility of displaying the coat in the new Warner Center practice facility and headquarters that opened in August.

Some of the signatures are from the 1951 championship team, all of whom have passed. Other signatures come from historic football figures such as defensive tackle Rosie Grier, 92; quarterback Vince Ferragamo, 70; coach Chuck Knox who died at 86; and place kicker Tony Zendejas, 64.

“Robert is so rich with stories and it was an incredible opportunity … (to video) some of these incredible stories into the (organization’s) archives,” said Kathryn Kai-ling Frederick, the Los Angeles Rams chief marketing officer.

“Hearing those stories first-hand is always really, really emotional for me,” Frederick said. “As marketers it fuels us to know (that) by continuing to make the sport open-armed to kids of all ages, fans of every demographic — that these are core memories that are really baked into people’s identities.”

Frederick said the football organization has seen many fans passionately collecting autographs, but it was great to hear the stories of Brewer amassing the signatures, and how much it means to him now.

“For me, it’s demonstrative of the community of fans we have, that instead of keeping or selling he wants to ensure for generations to come that they can appreciate important memories over time for the Rams organization,” Frederick said. “That’s so special.”

In one of his last to attempts to meet up with Los Angeles Rams players in the early 1980s, he was at a Rams game when he spotted the fearsome Dan “Deacon” Towler, “Rosey” Grier and Lamar Lundy.

“So I took my jacket down there, and a gold pen, and they all signed the sleeve,” he said.