New York Giants’ all-time great Emlen Lewis Tunnell, a Bryn Mawr son and Radnor High School graduate, became the first African-American to play football for the Giants in 1948.

That should be enough for any one man. But Tunnell’s story goes much deeper, writes Otis Livingston for CBS News.

During World War II, Tunnell was in the U.S. Coast Guard, the only branch of the military that would accept him.

He saved the life of a man who went overboard, jumping into frigid waters after him.

Then, another time, when his ship was torpedoed and on fire, Tunnell ran into the flames, picked up a man named Fred Shavers who was on fire, put out the flames, and saved his life.

In 1975, Tunnell died at age 51 of a heart attack.

Tunnell was posthumously awarded the silver Lifesaving Medal in 2011, and in 2017, and the Coast Guard commissioned a cutter named for him: the USCGC Emlen Tunnell.

In 2018, 43 years after his death, a statue of Tunnell was unveiled at the Sports Legends of Delaware County Museum in his Radnor hometown. Its curator, Phil Damiani, said that Tunnell, out of humility or a desire to put the incident behind him, never spoke of his heroism.

Read more about Emlen Lewis Tunnell at CBS News.

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A Radnor Township tribute to Emlen Tunnell.