[Ads-l] antedating "immaculate reception"

[Ben Zimmer]

As for the phrase's appearance in print, here's the earliest I could find,
from a few days after the game:

---
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/115045093/immaculate-reception/
The Morning-Herald (Uniontown, Pa.), Dec. 26, 1972, p. 33, col. 8
For the Steelers, the play was so monumental that, in the words of
sportcaster Myron Cope, "Dec. 23 will henceforth be celebrated in
Pittsburgh as The Feast Of The Immaculate Reception."
---

(That phrasing accords with Levosky and Ord's telling of the story.)

On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 9:52 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Nice story, if a bit bittersweet. Generous of the (erstwhile) couple never
> to claim credit--I wonder if either Levosky or Ord will be around for the
> 50th anniversary this week.  I didn't realize the extent to which the
> Immaculate Reception changed the entire history of Pittsburgh, but I can
> believe it.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 9:36 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 7:45 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > OK, not as historically significant as "scientist" or "physicist", but
> > > topical, since the death of Franco Harris earlier this week.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/sports/football/franco-harris-dead-steelers.html
> > >
> > > Not just the obituaries, but all l the stories about Harris over the
> last
> > > five decades have led off with his role in this all-time play (which I
> > > remember seeing live and whose golden anniversary is this Saturday),
> but
> > of
> > > course what has made the play especially unforgettable is the coinage,
> > due
> > > I presume to a sportswriter (maybe the same or next day?).  But who was
> > > it?  Most sources, like the wiki-entry
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Harris, treat it as though the
> > > immortal monicker was foreordained. The legendary longtime Steelers
> > > announcer Myron Cope made it famous, but as far as I know he didn't
> come
> > up
> > > with the name himself.
> > >
> >
> > The story goes that Cope was the first to use the phrase on air, but it
> was
> > coined by a couple of fans, Michael Ord and Sharon Levosky, who came up
> > with it at a post-game celebration. Levosky called up Cope to tell him
> > about it and he used it on that night's newscast on WTAE-TV.
> >
> > See: "Couple who coined name for Immaculate Reception never sought
> credit,"
> > Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 11, 2012
> >
> >
> https://web.archive.org/web/20160217053740/https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2012/11/11/Couple-who-coined-name-for-Immaculate-Reception-never-sought-credit/stories/201211110191
> >
> >
>

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