CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — Virginia Sports Hall of Famer and 49ers nice Ed Beard lately died at age 83.

The Virginia Sports Hall of Fame announced his death on Monday.

Beard, born on December 9, 1939, was a star soccer participant at Oscar Smith High School in South Norfolk within the late Fifties, and a state champion heavyweight wrestler regardless of his college’s lack of a wrestling program.

He went on to play two years on the University of Tennessee earlier than enlisting within the U.S. Army, the place he was named the Most Outstanding Player on the Army soccer group.

Beard was finally drafted within the 1964 NFL Draft by San Francisco and performed all eight seasons within the league at linebacker and particular groups with the 49ers from 1965 to 1972, beginning in 53 video games.

Known by teammates as “Biggie,” as a result of he performed larger than his dimension at about 6-foot-1, 225 kilos, gained the 1971 Len Eshmont Award, given to the 49er annually who represents the “inspirational and courageous play” of former participant Len Eshmont, and in addition served a decade as an NFL assistant coach.

Beard went on work as a contractor and with the Chesapeake Sheriff’s Department, and was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. Oscar Smith’s highschool soccer area, Beard-DeLong-Easley Field, can be named in his honor.

He was also in the news back in the early 2010s after he stopped to assist an individual who was being overwhelmed by a bunch of youngsters in Chesapeake. Beard suffered a concussion and cuts and bruises in the course of the encounter, however stated he’d proceed working to assist with native youth.

Beard was additionally a lover of music and an incredible singer, with a 1996 Virginian-Pilot article referring to him as “Singin’ Ed Beard.” “I went ahead and asked Ed Beard if he sang for senior citizens’ groups because they were too old to chase him,” a Pilot columnist Tony Stein joked at the time.