Ian O’Connor profiles the best quarterback in Packer history:

Bart Starr sits quietly in his favorite chair in the corner of his study, his hands clasped tightly on his lap. He is wearing the uniform of an athlete in retirement — faded golf shirt, dark sweat pants, light-gray sneakers. He is 81 years old, and his trim build and erect posture suggest he is ready to spring out of that chair any minute now to start a three-mile jog through his Birmingham neighborhood or to play a quick game of tennis on his backyard court.

On the wall over his left shoulder are two framed Sports Illustrated cover shots of Starr in his Green Bay Packers prime, and on the wall to his right is a photo of the quarterback walking onto the Lambeau Field grass with his wife and two sons on the 1973 day the team retired his number, 15. On Starr’s desk stands a captioned photo of Vince Lombardi quoting one of the coach’s many enduring lines. “Perfection is not attainable,” it reads, “but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

Starr is wearing a Lombardi Classic logo on the left breast of his shirt, so it seems a good time to make small talk with the iconic quarterback about the iconic coach. But a few sentences in, it’s already clear Starr is not connecting with the name or the memories of the man who helped him win five championships in the 1960s, including the first two Super Bowls. His eyes narrow and search for meaning in words that drift aimlessly in the air.

Now it’s time to head into the kitchen for lunch, and it’s the job of the three women in the room to get him there. Leigh Ann Nelson, the personal aide. Denise Williams, the nursing assistant. Cherry Starr, the 81-year-old wife. A guest motions to Cherry that he’s willing to help, but there is no need.

They surround Starr, place their hands under his arms and remind him that the snap count is three, always on three. The women count in unison — one…two…three — and drive this dignified 180-pound man to his feet. This is what the women in Bart Starr’s life do. They pick him up and move him from one monumental challenge to the next.

Their ultimate goal is to return him to Lambeau Field on Thanksgiving night, when Brett Favre’s retired No. 4 will be unveiled. Favre delayed his ceremony a year to give Starr a puncher’s chance to make it, and Bart’s family and support network of friends, neighbors and employees are forever telling him he must meet that objective.

Starr is taking small steps on the road back to Green Bay. He shuffles his feet slowly, carefully, as he leaves the office and makes his way through the hallway and into the kitchen as the women guide his every step, just so he doesn’t fall on the African stone floor like he did the previous week. Truth is, it’s a small miracle that Starr is upright and walking at all, and heading for lunch while absorbing the training camp images on the TV screen wedged between the cabinets above.

He suffered his first stroke on Sept. 2, 2014. Five days later he suffered a second stroke, a heart attack and four seizures that some doctors thought would kill him. Cherry was with him in intensive care, and she held onto her husband and caressed him when his body shook violently, uncontrollably, trying to make it stop. She’d never witnessed a seizure before, and she was terrified. Soon one doctor was telling her that her high school sweetheart, the man she’d loved unconditionally for 64 years, was not going to make it through the night.

Hospital officials asked Cherry if she wanted Bart placed on life support if necessary, and she explained that they both had living wills and that neither wanted to be sustained by a machine. Cherry called their granddaughters and told them they were needed at Bart’s bedside. But she never said her own goodbye to her husband; she couldn’t bring herself to do it. And the very next morning, that goodbye was no longer necessary. Bart Starr had launched his comeback.

It’s an amazing story, going back to his days as the son of a strict Army sergeant father who felt his older son didn’t measure up to his younger son, who died of a tetanus infection at 11. It includes his high school sweetheart, Cherry, and their two sons, one of whom died of a drug overdose. It includes Starr’s playing for Lombardi and the Ice Bowl. It includes Starr’s admiration of Brett Favre despite their vast differences.

It does not include Starr’s time as Packers coach, which is kind. Starr replaced Dan Devine, who replaced Lombardi’s replacement, Phil Bengtson. None of the three were qualified to be general manager and coach. (Lombardi was a better coach than GM, given his spotty draft history and the fact he inherited a lot of his talent, including Starr.) Starr took the Packers job out of a sense of obligation, and except for his last three seasons (including his one and only playoff team, in 1982) and one other, it didn’t go well.

But this tells you what kind of man Starr is: Starr was fired as coach and GM in 1983, replaced by Forrest Gregg. (That didn’t go well either, but that’s another story.) Gregg’s first game as coach (which my father and I attended) was the traditional alumni game. Few people probably expected Starr to come back after how his previous year went. But Starr came back and got a huge ovation from the crowd. Dick Schaap, author of Instant Replay with Jerry Kramer, opened the sequel Distant Replay with the chapter “Bart Does the Right Thing.”

Happily more Packer fans seem to remember Starr for his five NFL championships.