Bednarik, 85, established himself as an icon in the Lehigh Valley more than half a century ago for his contributions to the Eagles' 1949 and 1960 NFL championship squads. He lives in Upper Saucon Township with his wife, Emma.
"They're still running tests. They still don't know the cause," said Ken Safarowic, Bednarik's son-in-law. "But his heart is as strong as when he was playing, and he is conscious and he just wants to get out of there.
"I'd like to say he's resting comfortably, but I don't know that Chuck can ever rest comfortably. That's just the way he is."
Safarowic also said Bednarik likely will remain hospitalized for a few more days.
"He's tired, but he wants to get out," said Safarowic, who lives in Dresher, Montgomery County.
Bednarik was taken to the hospital originally on Wednesday because of shortness of breath and dizziness.
Before landing in the Hall of Fame in 1967, Bednarik attended Liberty High School before going off to fly bombing missions over Europe in World War II. It wasn't until after the war that he began his college career at Penn.In his NFL days, Bednarik was best known for being the league's last true two-way player, playing both offense and defense. He was a center and middle linebacker for most of his career, but had stopped playing defense before the start of the 1960 season, which remains the last in which the Eagles captured a league title.
However, he was asked to help out at outside linebacker because of extensive injuries to teammates in 1960. Because of that, he starred in and was the controversial subject of one of the most brutal plays in league history. It was marked by a famous photograph that forever shows him hovering in celebration over New York Giants running back Frank Gifford, knocked unconscious by Bednarik moments earlier to seal an Eagles' victory during the season.
Bednarik has maintained since that day that he wasn't celebrating the hit and hadn't even realized at the time that Gifford had been knocked out.
"We were leading the game," Bednarik said of the hit in a previous interview with The Morning Call, "and Gifford ran a down-and-in route. After he caught the ball, he took two or three steps and I waffled him chest high. His head snapped back and the ball popped loose. It was retrieved by Chuck Weber, and when I saw that, I turned around with a clenched fist and hollered, 'This [expletive] game is over!' "
Nevertheless, Gifford wasn't able to play football again until 1962, Bednarik's last year in the game.
If anything, Bednarik was overqualified for the brutality of yesterday's NFL when he entered the league in 1949.
"I was already a killer," he said of his 30 bombing missions over Europe during World War II.
Bednarik enrolled at Penn immediately after the war and in 1948 became the first lineman to win the Maxwell Award, given to college football's top player. He also finished third in the Heisman Trophy voting that year, leading the Eagles to select him with their top pick in the 1949 NFL Draft.
Ironically, Concrete Charlie, who acquired that nickname because of his second job as a concrete salesman and not because of his legendary durability, missed the first two games of his NFL career with an injury. However, he missed just one more the rest of his fabulous career.
Bednarik and the rest of the surviving members of the 1960 championship team were honored by the Eagles in a special series of ceremonies last fall, culminating with an event on opening day against the Green Bay Packers. That 1960 club is the last Eagles' team to win an NFL title.
Since his retirement, Bednarik has had a love-hate relationship with the Eagles, who have retired his No. 60 jersey.
Bednarik had no time for Leonard Tose, who bought the team in 1961, because Tose snubbed him for the vacant general manager's job.
However, when Dick Vermeil reached out to Bednarik after being named coach in 1976, the relationship was sweet again. After Vermeil left, the relationship soured again until current coach Andy Reid reached out the way Vermeil did when Reid was hired in 1999.
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