The pins — presumably sent by people of a certain age cleaning out their attics — remind Commissioner Roger Goodell that he will always be his father’s son (and, he reminds everybody, his mother’s son).

In the late ’60s, Senator Charles E. Goodell, Republican of New York, spoke out against the Vietnam War, bringing on the wrath of the Nixon administration and, as it turned out, the disaffection of conservative voters.

Roger Goodell was 11, watching his father turned out in the 1970 general election. He is proud when people remember his father, who died in 1987 at age 60.

Next Saturday, the University of Massachusetts at Lowell will present Charles Goodell with a posthumous honorary doctorate; Roger Goodell will accept for his father and give the commencement speech.