John Joseph "Jumbo" Yonakor (August 4, 1921 – April 18, 2001) was an American football defensive and offensive end in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and National Football League (NFL) for the Cleveland Browns, New York Yanks, and the Washington Redskins. Yonakor grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and played college football at the University of Notre Dame, where he was named an All-American on a team that won the national championship in 1943. After two years in the military during World War II, Yonakor was selected in the first round of the 1945 NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles. He instead signed with the Browns of the upstart AAFC. Yonakor spent four seasons playing primarily as a defensive end for the Browns as the team won four league championships between 1946 and 1949. The Browns then sold Yonakor to the NFL's New York Yanks, where he played for a year. He then spent a season with the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League. Returning to the NFL in 1952, he played a final season for the Redskins before retiring. Yonakor worked in Cleveland's steel industry for several years after leaving pro football. He settled in Euclid, Ohio in the early 1960s and was an assembly-line worker making diesel engines for White Motor Company. His son Rich was a star athlete in Euclid and went on to play one season for the National Basketball Association's San Antonio Spurs. Yonakor died in 2001. Early life and high school Yonakor grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest son of immigrants from Lithuania. At the age of 10, he came down with a leg infection after cutting himself while ice skating. He was too embarrassed to tell his mother about the injury and hoped it would go away, but it worsened to the point where he could no longer walk. Doctors drained fluid from his body by puncturing his toe, and Yonakor spent a year as an invalid; doctors told him he might never walk again. Starting out by crawling, however, Yonakor gradually regained his strength and his health. He went on to play three seasons of football at Mechanic Arts High School, and spent one year at Marianapolis Preparatory School in Thompson, Connecticut at the prompting of Frank Leahy, then the head football coach at Boston College. Yonakor was set to go to Boston College, but chose the