Special Ernie Davis Section - December 8, 2001 
Memories
Hard-working, humble, trustworthy
Ernie Davis will always be remembered as a great athlete, winner of the prestigious Heisman Trophy as best college player of the year. But I remember Ernie as a humanitarian.
Even at a tender age, he displayed the attributes that made him truly outstanding. He was hard-working, humble and trustworthy. He always completed his school assignments, even though he was often physically tired from long, hard workouts on the football field.
On the playing field, he was always ready to help the younger, less-experienced and less-gifted teammates. He often went out of his way to show them the correct way of doing the little things that could make a difference in their play.
Ernie believed that to succeed in life you must pay the price; you must remember that success comes from hard work, dedication and determination all traits that he exemplified.
Ernie was the epitome of my three beliefs for success: pride, respect and attitude. Pride in yourself and your accomplishments. Respect for others in your life. And attitude thinking positively makes one positive person.
I remember and admire Ernies athletic ability, I respect him for his personality traits, and I love him as a true American youth and friend.
Marty Harrigan, Elmira
(Davis football coach at EFA)
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| HARRIGAN
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Southside boosters honored Ernie
It has been more than 45 years since my brief encounter with Ernie, but I can still remember it so well.
Ernie was so quiet and gracious that it was hard to believe he was going to receI've the Athlete of the Year award from the Southside Booster Club. Our group was very young at the time but was still able to put on a memorable event for Ernie and his mother. The event was held in the Masonic Temple building on Lake Street.
Ernie spent the evening with a broad smile on his face and was greeting friends from both the Academy and Southside High. Nothing seemed to bother him, even though he was only a junior at Academy at the time. He accepted the gift and was very gracious.
I was very surprised at the gusto because we had always been arch enemies with Academy and wouldnt even gI've them the right time of day. There were adults from both schools, as well as city officials, and everyone was pleased with our choice as recipient of the award.
Ernie gave a special thank-you, followed by our applause, and many of us got a personal thank-you because we were Booster Club officers at the time.
I moved to Syracuse in 1965 and went to work at Syracuse University in the food service department and talked with people, including football coach Ben Schwartzwalder, about Ernie, and they all had the same high regard for him as our booster club.
Burton OHare, Columbia Cross Roads, Pa.
Excellent example for children
It was a very cold and snowy night in the winter of 1959. My children and I were looking out the front window of our house on Oak Street in Elmira. We were watching people coming and going from the Scotch Brand Gas Station at Pigeon Point, which was directly across the street from us. The people were shielding their faces from the cold as they stopped to look at the display of Christmas trees that were being sold at the gas station.
The two young gentlemen who were selling the Christmas trees were rubbing their hands together and stomping their feet, trying to keep their circulation going. We were enjoying hot chocolate and cookies, and we brought some to the two young men across the street and then invited them to come inside to warm up their chilled bodies.
To our surprise, the men came over to thank us when they were done selling the trees for the evening. My children were thrilled. The men introduced themselves and explained that they were students and football players at Syracuse University, and were home for the holidays.
I distinctly remember Ernie Davis introducing himself, but the name of his friend escapes me. My children at the time were students at Diven School, and it was a joy for them to meet these two young gentlemen who had chosen to further their education and follow their athletic dreams.
It was a pleasure to have Ernie Davis and his friend in our home, enjoying hot chocolate and cookies with my family. I knew then what a fine young gentleman he was, and I can only wish he was able to pursue every dream he ever had.
He was, and is, an excellent example for our children to follow. He was a great human being.
Sophie DiCinti, Horseheads
Greatest athlete of my time
I have incredibly great memories of having the honor of playing with Ernie in 1958. What a superb talent and a great friend.
Also got to see a lot of him at Syracuse as he roomed near me. Used to get his autograph for friends, and John Mackey would always ask me why I didn't want his also. We laughed a lot about that.
I used to love to visit Ernies home across from EFA and, of course, my Dad, Mike George, director of athletics, would always have nothing but praise about Ernie.
Thank you for publishing memories of the greatest athlete of my time.
Mike George, Charlotte, N.C.
An upbeat, nice guy to the end
Having been enrolled in Army ROTC, I had an obligation to attend summer camp at the conclusion of my junior year of college. The camp to which I was assigned was Fort Devens, Mass. Upon arrival, I waited in the inevitable long lines for processing, clothing, physical exam, etc.
In the midst of all this, I glanced over at another line and was stunned to see Ernie Davis, an EFA classmate. I asked the person in front of me to hold my place and walked over to talk with Ernie. When I returned, there were many sets of wide eyes looking at me, and the questions started flowing.
Is that Ernie Davis? How do you know him? Is he really as nice a guy as people say he is?
Well, having been thrust into an environment with a couple of thousand other people, almost none of whom I knew, this was instant credibility.
Later, the fellow who bunked next to me said that he had played on the Cornell freshman team that competed against Ernie and the Syracuse freshmen. He was a defensI've lineman who happened to be in the way of Ernie on the very first play from scrimmage. Ernie took a handoff and came straight at him. His next memory was of waking up in the locker room, having been steamrolled by the Elmira Express.
Sadly, my next encounter with Ernie came after graduation, when he knew he was sick. I was at graduate school at Penn State, and he had come to State
College to see the Penn State-Syracuse game. He was sitting on the sidelines, and I managed to catch his attention. He knew the battle he was fighting, but he remained the upbeat, truly nice guy that he always was.
Don Peterson, Horseheads
A compassionate human being
I remember Ernie Davis as a kind and friendly person. He never let fame go to his head. My foster mother was a friend of his mother. We used to go over to his house a lot. I remember his wall-to-wall trophies and his nice smile.
When he would come home to visit, he would come to the Neighborhood House and play basketball and talk to us. I, as well as the world, was saddened by his death.
I tell people here in Alabama the great athlete and person he was. Ernie was a great role model and a compassionate human being.
Norma Crafton-Thomas, Montgomery, Ala.
Proud, honored to have known him
I first met Ernie Davis in September 1956, in my third-year English class. I had failed freshman English and was doubling up both third- and fourth-year English in my senior year at EFA.
I had just got back my grade, a 95, for a 5,000-word essay on English authors in my fourth-year English. The third-year teacher decided to have us write an essay on American authors. I asked if I could use my fourth-year essay for this instead of having to do another essay. The teacher said yes, but only if I would help Ernie with his.
I sat directly across the aisle from Ernie. We spent several weeks after school, going to the Steele Memorial Library and at his home, gathering information for the American author he had picked for his essay.
It has been so many years since I graduated from EFA that I cant remember who he picked to do his essay on. I do know that you could not ask for a kinder, gentler, more unprepossessing person than Ernie was as a fellow student. He never got angry, was always friendly, a very well-mannered, very clean-cut kid.
I felt honored to be able to help Ernie with his essay. For at the time, he was a football legend while still going to EFA.
Ernie received a higher mark for his essay a 97 or 98. And to this day, I still feel proud and honored to have known him personally just for the short time we were fellow students at EFA.
Darwin Manwaring, Elmira
Treatment of Ernie was embarrassing
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| FORSYTH
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We had just moved to the Dallas area when Syracuse came to the Cotton Bowl to play Texas. It was Jan. 1, 1960, and Syracuse won 23-14. I knew nothing about football, but my husband's boss took us, since we had moved from Syracuse.
Both teams wore Orange, and I had a hard time keeping them straight, and the boss sometimes had me cheering for the wrong team.
I remember being proud that Ernie was from my hometown and a Heisman Trophy winner. I also felt embarrassed that hotels would not let blacks stay at their place. The Melrose did, and I called to tell Ernie how everyone didn't feel that way and that I was proud that I could say he was from my hometown. His roommate had to relay the message.
It was the first and only Cotton Bowl game I ever attended. I did learn about football and followed No. 44 till he died.
Glenna Lewis Forsyth, Waco, Texas
Ernie was my good Samaritan
One summer day in 1955 or 1956, I joined a game being played on the old Neighborhood House basketball court. Soon I was challenged to a fight by a big, muscular player. Being new to the area, very small of stature, and a pampered epileptic, I prepared for a humiliating experience.
As the bully moved in for the kill, a good Samaritan, equally big and muscular, moved between us and saved me. I later found out that both were budding sports stars at Elmira Free Academy. The good Samaritan was Ernie Davis. Thereafter, Ernie had my undying respect.
When Ernie and I would run into each other in later years, we would share some of the challenges we were facing in our world away from Elmira his at Syracuse, mine in the Army. When Ernies Syracuse team played in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the opposing team members spit on him and often used the N word. He said their attitude only inspired him to play harder.
Then came the devastating news in 1963 that Ernie had died of leukemia. There was no warning, no clue for his distant friends. The hero, the inspiration, was gone without a goodbye.
A year later, while visiting Elmira after my discharge from the Army, I walked into our old haunt, Green Pastures, and there sat Frankie Cox, the bully from the basketball court, now resplendent in his Army officer Special Forces uniform. We hugged like long-lost brothers.
We lamented Ernies passing and reflected on the inspiration he had provided us both. Frankie was soon to be off to Vietnam with a battalion of Vietnamese Rangers he had trained in the States. We parted, promising to stay in touch.
Ever since that surprise meeting, however, the only contact I have had with Frankie is when I visit the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington to touch his engraved name on the wall. To this day, I cant think of Ernie without thinking of Frankie. Yet it is not their tragic fate that binds them; the bind is in how they lived.
Mendel Hill, Claremount, Calif.
It was awesome to watch him play
I am a 1958 graduate of Southside High School, where I was a cheerleader. It was awesome to watch Ernie Davis play, even if we always got beat. He was a gentleman and a good sportsman.
I read his biography this summer, and it brought back so many memories of Ernie from the eighth grade on. What an honor for Elmira.
Laura Fanning Begeal, Oxford, N.Y.
A true role model for teen-agers
A great experience happened in the Small Fry football season of 1953 a chance for me to meet and work with a very nice gentleman, Ernie Davis. Ernie showed me unusual talent, dedication, loyalty and leadership. A really true role model for teen-agers. Also, very coachable.
I shall never forget that football season, watching Ernie move through weekday practice and Sunday games. A team leader respected by all of his teammates. It was also great to watch him conquer the challenges of going from Small Fry to high school and college. And I saw no reason why he would not play pro football.
It was a very blue day when we got the word of his passing. For the whole city of Elmira.
If I may, I would like to take this opportunity to say thanks for wonderful memories to the whole team that year. I wanted to say that after the last game, but nothing would come out. One great bunch of men.
Also, I had the pleasure of coaching with a great friend of mine, Gary L. May, now also deceased. May God bless Ernie and Gary, two greats that I could only respect.
Mick McDonell, Elmira
Playing with Ernie, friends a dream
Excerpt from Son Rise, a book published in May. It describes getting to know Ernie Davis on the basketball courts at the old Neighborhood House and elsewhere in Elmira during the summer of 1955.
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| TILLMAN
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The Elmira Reformatory used to invite the guys from Neighborhood House to come up and play the reformatory guys. They had a nice court and one rule: The home team wins, because the inmates got rowdy if they lost. They had some good players up there, but not comparable to Davis and crew.
It was a dream playing with guys who were magicians with the basketball. They made fast break a real term at warp speed. Rebounding was done with grace instead of muscles only, and I learned the fine points of basketball...
We would lead for most of the game, then in the fourth quarter we would have the reformatory collapse and the home team would win by a few points and everyone was happy.
I wish it were possible to write that Ernie and I became great friends, but it didn't happen. After that summer, we met just a couple of times more...
Two years later, Ernie graduated and signed a letter of intent to play football for Syracuse University after a visit and some friendly persuasion from the great Jimmy Brown.
It was hard for me to believe that Ernie would take a football scholarship, simply because I never saw Ernie play high school football. But with his immense talent in basketball, it amazed me that he didn't go to play college basketball. He was, of course, a superb football player, a running back with great speed, size and moves once he got the ball.
The last time I saw Ernie, I told him that I was surprised he went football because he was such a great hoop player, and he said, Gus, I was surprised as well.
Gus Tillman, Rock Stream
We need people like him today
Although I never met Mr. Davis, I remember his funeral (I was 9 years old at the time) and have been blown away reading about his accomplishments in high school and college.
But what I really remember reading about Ernie Davis was what a wonderful human being he was. Nothing but pure class.
I have officiated baseball on the college and high school levels, along with high school football. And I can tell you this: No athlete or coach has ever displayed the sportsmanship, the class and dignity that Ernie displayed.
As an official, I just wish I could have worked a game in which Ernie Davis played.
We need people like him today. Its too bad the young athletes don't know about him. (I talk about him and nobody has ever heard of him). The kids today have the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball to look up to, and unfortunately they have learned all the bad habits associated with these groups.
Ernie had respect for everyone, even when he had good reason not to. He could have shaken his fists at the rotten prejudices he had to deal with, but he chose not to. He rose above it all because he was a real man.
His life has gI'ven me a challenge every day: Be all you can be, be positive and gI've to others. Put yourself second.
Mike Forte, Orlando, Fla.
40 years later, another connection
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| LOWMAN
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I recall two major events involving Ernie Davis. The first was in 1954, my senior year at Southside High School. In that era we had a fairly good team, including Jim DuBois, Ron Dixon, King Fitzpatrick, Art Smith, Bud McLaughlin, Joe Keefe, Gerald May, Joe Palmeri, Ed Michaels and others.
The big Erie Bell game (EFA vs. Southside) was then played at the former Parker Field off Madison Avenue.
I played pulling guard. This hotshot running back, a freshman for EFA, ran through the line like a gazelle. He ran over me like a bulldozer. I learned later it was Ernie.
I followed his high school and Syracuse successes while in the military. In the early 1960s, I was a reporter for the Star-Gazette. When Ernie died in 1963, the late Cove Hoover, then editor, assigned me to take photographs of Davis funeral at the First Baptist Church from the steeple of Trinity Episcopal Church at West Church and North Main streets. Those aerial shots, when published, appeared to have been taken from a helicopter. Some of my pictures ran nationwide on The Associated Press. I still have the original black-and-white prints.
Today, 40 years later, I find myself again connected to the great Heisman Trophy winner. For several years, I've been on the Economic Opportunity Board of Directors. That board is responsible for the construction and operation of the new multi-million-dollar Ernie Davis Center on Fifth Street.
Jim Lowman, Elmira
Film of TD run lost in processing
I remember Ernie Davis when he was playing football for EFA. I followed the team those years and recall being at Ithaca High School one afternoon. Ihad my little Brownie 34mm movie camera with me, filming the game.
Ernie took the ball on his own goal line (or maybe behind it) and ran the l00 yards for a touchdown, with me filming it.
In those days, the film went to Kodak in Rochester for developing. Would you believe that was the only film Kodak ever lost for me? They sent me a new blank film and an apology note.
Later, I realized the importance of that film when Ernie became an All-American and a Heisman Trophy winner.
Dick Dalton, Elmira
Church was packed for his funeral
I remember attending Ernies funeral. It was the biggest I have ever attended. I remember being packed in, wall-to-wall with people in the church. The pro football players seemed huge.
When I got the chance to express my condolences to his Mom a few weeks later, I felt as though I had met a wonderful lady who had lost a wonderful son.
I have never seen more fluid movements on the playing field than when he ran.
Joe Connolly, Saipan, North Marinas Islands
I will remember him forever
I first met Ernie Davis when I was basketball coach at EFA. He reported for varsity tryouts with a cast on his wrist (which he broke in the first game of the junior varsity football season). I told him he could not play, but the next day he was back with a note from his doctor that said the cast would be removed soon and it was OK for him to play.
What I saw in the scrimmage that followed I could hardly believe. He swept both boards and scored at will.
In his junior year, he started as an end in football, but we quickly changed him into a running back. No one could stop him.
Without a doubt, Ernie made the biggest impression on my life, and I will remember him forever.
Bill Wipfler, Sarasota, Fla.
(Varsity basketball coach in Davis freshman year, varsity baseball coach throughout Davis EFA playing career, and assistant football coach.)
Gentle giant always seemed happy
I had the honor of graduating with Ernie Davis from EFA in 1958 and have fond memories of this gentle giant. I still tell people that he was actually a shy person off the athletic field and always a gentleman. In the classroom, he was a serious student and didn't expect or get preferential treatment.
Ernie also had a great sense of humor. I remember when I moved back to Elmira from Scarsdale and started going to EFA with Ernie. I looked and dressed like the Fonze with long hair, etc. Ernie picked up on it right away and nicknamed me Bushman. This is the way he signed my senior yearbook and is why it is one of my prized possessions.
I also tell people about my greatest sports moment, which involved Ernie. I stayed late in my gym class to shoot hoops and Ernie came onto the court early for his basketball practice, which he was known to do a lot. I challenged Ernie to a quick game of out and got really lucky and beat him with some unreal long set shots. Needless to say, I wasnt looking for a rematch, so I ran off the court a winner to take a shower.
Some people might not know what a great basketball player Ernie was, and he had the best jump shot I ever saw from the corner. I still remember the grin on his face as I ran off the court.
I also played baseball briefly with Ernie until coach Bill Wipfler wisely cut me. I played in right field, and Ernie played first base. The track team practiced on the track just behind right field at old Parker Field. Ernie would run 100-yard dashes with his baseball uniform and spikes on, and I still can see that smile on his face as he beat all comers.
Actually, when I think about Ernie, he always had a happy look, no matter what he was doing. That is the way I will remember him.
David Reynolds, Syracuse
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