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Lincoln - Frank Solich remembers Wayne Meylan as one of the strongest players he's ever seen on the football field.
Adrian Fiala remembers Meylan as the toughest player he'd ever seen.
Former Nebraska Coach Bob Devaney once remembered Meylan as a guy he'd want in his corner.
"If I were ever in any trouble," Devaney said in 1987, "I can't think of anybody I'd rather have had on my side."
World-Herald readers remembered Meylan as one of Nebraska's greatest 50 players of the 20th century. They voted the two-time All-America middle guard, who died in 1987 in the crash of his prized P-51D Mustang fighter, to the No. 42 spot on The World-Herald's All-Century team.
Like Devaney, Meylan was a Michigan native who distinguished himself on and off the football field in Nebraska. As a Husker, the 6-foot, 239-pound Meylan recorded 239 tackles -still the 11th-best total in school history - while earning All-America honors as a junior in 1966 and a senior in 1967. Meylan still holds school records for tackles by a lineman in a season (119) and a career (239).
"Wayne could just manhandle people," said Fiala, a Husker sophomore linebacker when Meylan was a senior. "I never got to see Tom Novak play, but I understand Tom used to hit with his chest all the time. Wayne-O, which is what we called him, would do that from time to time.
"He just knocked people over the apple cart, so to speak."
Solich was a Nebraska fullback in 1965, Meylan's sophomore season.
"He stood out immediately because of his tremendous strength," Solich said. "That's the thing that separated him from the rest of the players. He was not an oversized defensive lineman by any stretch of the imagination. But his strength just allowed him to overpower people."
Meylan grew strong while helping raise beans on the family farm near Bay City, Mich. Mike Corgan, then an Nebraska assistant coach, was looking at films of another player when he noticed that a lineman from T.L. Handy High kept making plays.
That player was Meylan, and Devaney soon visited the Meylan farm to offer him a Nebraska scholarship. Meylan began his Husker career as an offensive guard but switched to middle guard and became a starter as a sophomore on the 1965 team, which went 10-0 but lost to Alabama 39-28 in the Orange Bowl.
Meylan helped lead Nebraska to a 9-2 record in 1966 and a 6-4 mark in 1967.
For all his toughness on the field, Meylan was remembered as a quiet, kind man away from it.
"You never crossed him," Fiala said. "But Wayne was a pretty quiet, and he didn't say a whole lot. He didn't carry that tough-guy persona with him away from the field. He was just a great guy."
After finishing his Nebraska career, Meylan played four seasons at linebacker with the Cleveland Browns and the Minnesota Vikings. He then returned to Omaha, where he considered training to become an FBI agent, but instead went to work for Engineering Systems Inc. A year later, Meylan started his own industrial cleaning business.
Flying was a boyhood dream for Meylan. He spoke of becoming a jet fighter pilot or an airline pilot, neither of which occurred, but he obtained a pilot's license and owned three planes.
"On the practice field," Solich said, "if a plane would fly over, Wayne would be able to tell you what kind it was from the sound of the engine. He knew airplanes."
Meylan died at age 41 when his P-51D Mustang crashed along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Michigan.
Said Fiala: "He loved aviation, and unfortunately, that's how he met his end. But I guess if we all go to our end the way that we want to, as he did, that's the way to do it."
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