The team went on to win five championships in seven years, and there has not been an unsold ticket for a Packers home game since Lombardi’s first year as coach and general manager.

But while Lombardi’s coaching achievements are widely recognized as the stuff of legend, a local man’s new book provides a glimpse of Lombardi — the man and general manager — through the eyes of 30 people who he inspired.

"What he has not been given a lot of recognition for is the tremendous job he did of resurrecting that franchise," said Royce Boyles, co-author of "The Lombardi Legacy: Thirty People Who Were Touched by Greatness."

Each chapter of the book offers a different perspective on the Hall of Fame football coach through stories told by unlikely figures, such as a sideline photographer, Lombardi’s secretary, players’ wives and coaches’ wives.

Boyles, 61, was an announcer with Green Bay television and radio station WBAY in the early 1970s and now lives in Rock Springs.

As he began interviewing 29 people for the book (one chapter is devoted to the late Gerald "Dad" Braisher, designer of the Packers’ trademark ‘G’), Boyles said he began asking his interview subjects if they had heard some of the Lombardi stories he was stumbling upon.

"When the people who were there are surprised by the stories, it’s a pretty good indication that you’re not writing a rehash of a rehash," Boyles said.

In the area of X’s and O’s, Boyles said, Lombardi’s mental capacity is unchallenged, but those who knew him say the man could discuss anything and everything. As a high school teacher, he taught chemistry, physics and Latin.

Lombardi’s secretary of 11 years, 69-year-old Lori Keck, said Lombardi’s perfectionism was contagious.

She recalls transcribing a letter from Lombardi’s dictations and coming across a word she was unfamiliar with. She looked it up in two dictionaries.

"When I gave him the letter, he said, ‘That word is spelled wrong,’ " Keck said. "I said, ‘No it’s not, I looked it up in two dictionaries.’ He pointed that famous finger at that word and he said, ‘Yes it is.’ I looked at the word and noticed I had transposed two letters while I was typing it. Of course, he was right."

Keck is one of six women who provide a female perspective of Lombardi in the book, which will become available in early December. She currently works as an assistant to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig in his Milwaukee office.

As co-host of the "Dan Devine Show," Boyles met Packers linebacker Dave Robinson, the book’s co-author who was drafted by Lombardi in 1963. The two became friends, but eventually lost touch.

Thirty years later, they bumped into each other at a High School coaches show in Madison. They decided to keep in touch, and soon came up with the idea for the book, which has been in the works for two years.

The 68-year-old Robinson, a black man, said Lombardi took care of his players in every aspect. There were few black people in Green Bay at the time, and some restaurants did not serve them.

"When word got to Vince that (a restaurant owner) was not going to have blacks in his bar or restaurant, Vince let (the restaurant owner) know in no uncertain terms that if that’s what he wanted, that’s fine, but Vince Lombardi had the power to put his club off limits to all the ballplayers, black and white," Robinson said. "No one would be allowed to go in it."

Boyles and Robinson will be signing books at the Packers Hall of Fame Dec. 4, and plan to have a local book signing the week of Dec. 7. The 40th anniversary of Vince Lombardi’s death will be in September.

Boyles said he hopes the book will serve as a tribute to the man who had a tremendous impact on many people.

"Lombardi people are the kind of people that made good mothers, fathers, grandparents and neighbors," Boyles said. "And that’s a reflection of Lombardi."