Gene Boerner and Bill Dorman seem perfectly suited to help spearhead the effort to get a museum built in Massillon, Ohio to honor Paul Brown, the Pro Football Hall of Fame head coach of the Browns and of Massillon High School

Both men are Massillon residents and past presidents of the Massillon Tiger Football Booster Club, which, in that football-crazy city, is a job that carries more prestige than that of mayor. After all, it was probably the first high school booster club in the country when it was started in 1934.

And, more importantly, it was originated by Brown himself when he was there as coach from 1932-40, compiling an 80-8-2 record and guiding the Tigers to six state championships and four national titles.

So running the booster club is an extension of the legendary coach -- part of his legacy. In Massillon, it doesn't get any better than that.

The next-best thing in Massillon might be to personally assist a Tigers head coach. When Bob Commings left the school in the late 1960s to take the Iowa head coaching job -- a lateral move at best, some in Massillon may joke -- Boerner and his family took in Commings' three children so they could finish the school year in Ohio while Commings and his wife house hunted in Iowa City.

Boerner, who is chairman of the Paul Brown Museum Committee, graduated from Massillon High School in 1952 but never played football there.

"I was 110 pounds," he said. "I ran track."

Good choice.

But he is as closely tied to the school's storied football program as anyone.

"My parents had season tickets to the Tigers," Boerner said, "and I can remember going to watch games with them beginning in the 1940s."

It's a tradition he's carried on -- and then some -- with pride.

"I've not been at only two Massillon football games since 1959," he said

Whoa! Two home games, presumably?

"No, two games, period, home or away," Borner pointed out.

That's even more impressive, but it begs the question: What caused him to miss those two contests?

"One time I was sick and in the hospital," he explained.

That's understandable. A man's got to know his limitations.

The other time?

Before he spoke, his face turned sour. He looked like he was getting sick again, maybe even seasick.

"Somehow my wife talked me into going on a cruise," he said, shaking his head at the memory. "I was on the high seas trying to listen to the broadcast of the game on the Internet. The thing kept fading in and out."

As for Dorman, he was born in the city of the -- gulp -- arch rival McKinley Bulldogs, neighboring Canton.

"Then I saw the light and my family moved to Massillon when I was in kindergarten," he joked.

Unlike Boerner, Dorman did play football for the Tigers -- very well, we might add, as an offensive tackle. In fact, he was so good that he earned a scholarship to Georgia Tech.

It was there that he studied to be a civil engineer, the field in which he is currently employed.

"I just have a passion for Massillon football and the community," Dorman said. "Because my having played football at Massillon led to my getting a scholarship, which in turn led to my career in engineering, getting involved in this museum project is simply a way for me to say thanks."

With his engineering background, Dorman is someone used to taking a set of blueprints and making them become a reality.

Boerner is someone who can manage money -- he was once a bank president -- and also network and promote, as he used to work for the Massillon Chamber of Commerce.

So if you are building a museum in Massillon to honor the great Paul Brown, Boerner and Dorman are two people you want on board with you.

The two men visited Cleveland Browns Stadium last Thursday morning and met with Browns director of alumni relations Dino Lucarelli, director of marketing services George Muller and alumni relations coordinator Tony Dick in the Archives Room to look at the team's collection of items pertaining to Brown.

After leaving Massillon, Brown went to Ohio State and coached the Buckeyes to their first national championship in 1942. Following the end of World War II, Brown was hired as coach of the Cleveland entry that was being organized to play in the new All-America Football Conference beginning in 1946. The team was subsequently named for him, and he remained as its coach for 17 years, through 1962, amassing a 167-53-9 record and guiding the club to seven league championships in the AAFC and NFL.

In 1968, Brown was the first head coach of the expansion Cincinnati Bengals and remained in that position through '75. Then until his death, he served as the club's general manager.

Amidst all that, In 1967, he was elected to the HOF.

This is the third time that contingents from the Browns and the museum committee have convened, and more meetings are planned. The two groups are trying to work out a trade off agreement whereby they are each able to obtain Brown materials they don't have.

The Browns are exploring way in which they can display at Browns Stadium items on Brown and other historical memorabilia about the team. The Massillon committee is trying to gather all the items it can on Brown so they can be put on display when the museum opens.

The target date for that is September 2009 -- if the necessary funding can be obtained by then. Approximately $160,000 of the $700,000 or so needed has been generated thus far.

Boerner estimates his group has between 300 and 400 items on Brown, many of which have come -- and continue to come -- from Mary Brown, the coach's widow. She and her family have been sorting through her husband's belongings ever since he died in August 1991. She began sending boxes of items back to the Massillon group several years ago.

"Every once in a while, we get something from her," Boerner said.

Some Brown artifacts are on display at Massillon Museum. They will stay there until the construction of the Paul Brown Museum is far enough along that they can be moved there.

And the museum promises to be extraordinary. It will be 3,000 square feet and have interactive displays and a large video display with stadium seating. Calling it simply "state of the art" doesn't do it justice.

Updates on the progress of the museum project can be obtained at www.paulebrownmuseum.com.

The museum will be located next to Massillon High School, a new indoor fieldhouse that is scheduled to open in August, and, of course, Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, home of the Tigers.

Admission will be free, but donations will be accepted. Massillon High students will have easy access to the museum and will be encouraged to visit it to learn about the coach and the historic program he built at the school on his way to college and the pros.

The idea for the museum -- or at least someplace to display Brown items -- was born in the early 1980s. Boerner said he and a group from Massillon visited Brown at Bengals training camp in Wilmington, Ohio. Boerner was putting together the Massillon football game program for that season and needed some help from the Hall of Famer.

"He said to us then, and he repeated any number of times afterward, that, 'One of these days, all my stuff is coming back to Massillon,' " Boerner said.

In the meantime, other artifacts were being collected here and them. When it was augmented substantially by items being sent by Mary Brown, the idea for the museum began to really come into focus.

"We said to ourselves, 'We have a collection, so now we need to find a place to display it,' " Dorman said.

And, as Lucarelli told the two Massillon men, if the Browns can assist in making that "place" become a reality, then they're more than happy to do it.