In addition to his sons, Wood has a daughter, LaJuane.

So Wood instead went to school to study heating, air-conditioning and other construction-related skills. He got his contractor’s license in Washington and Maryland and opened his own business, Wood Mechanical Systems.

The Woods lived in a cheery house on a bluff in northwest Washington, where the only thing missing from the family’s homey living room was a bust from the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the mantel. Several of Wood’s teammates had been enshrined many years earlier.

Willie did not talk about it or lobby for it. But his wife, Sheila, did. She had lived in Green Bay in the 1960s, attending all the games, and knew how central her husband was to the team’s championships.

In 1988, Sheila Wood died unexpectedly of heart failure. The next year, Willie was inducted into the Hall of Fame. The timing was heartbreaking, but at least he felt connected to the game again. He was side-by-side with his contemporaries.

“The thing is, my dad never wanted to leave football,” Andre said. “He needed a stable way to make a living. But I know he would have stayed in the N.F.L. coaching track had he been asked to. But he wasn’t.”

There were two busts made of his image in 1989. One is in Canton, Ohio, in the Hall of Fame.

The other now rests on a mantel in Willie Wood’s house, where Willie Jr. and his wife now reside.

■■■

Chiefs tight end Fred Arbanas was the intended target of the most famous pass in the first Super Bowl. “I had beat Willie Wood with an inside head fake,” Arbanas said last week. “I turned to the outside and knew Lenny would get the ball there. Lenny is the most dependable person in the world.”