Glory days

On the football field he ran into history; his character and untimely passing engraved his name on the heart of Elmira

Provided by Syracuse University Ernie Davis with the Heisman Trophy he won in 1961 as the nation's outstanding college football player.

Before his death at age 23 made him a legend, his play on the football field made Ernie Davis a star.

Forty years ago this month, Davis, an Elmira Free Academy graduate, was awarded the Heisman Trophy as the top college football player in the country. Davis was the first black, the only New Yorker and the only Syracuse player to earn the honor.

Although Davis wasn't a native Elmiran, he is still revered as Elmira's own. And though leukemia took away his life and a chance at pro football glory, Davis remains a hero to many.

Here's a look at the short life and long legend of Ernie Davis.

A humble beginning

Playing with his older uncles, Davis displayed the first hints of the talents that would make him a star.

"At first (his older uncles) wouldn't let him play with them because he was so small," Davis' mother, Marie Fleming, said in a recent interview. "But when he showed what he could do, everyone wanted to play with him."

Davis joined Fleming in Elmira at age 11 (some sources say he was 12, but Davis wrote years later that he was 11). Although he had spent some time in Elmira on visits, it was a difficult transition for him.

"He had to leave a big family," said Coralee Burch, who knew Davis and has written an unpublished book and a screenplay on his life. "It was a hard move for him. But Ernie, in the very beginning, made an impact.

"The older players at the Neighborhood House (a community center) would taunt him as the new kid on the block," Burch said. "He wouldn't say anything. He'd just take the ball and show them."

"He was just like every other boy," said Fleming. "He played sandlot sports. There wasn't anything unusual about it. Sports was his thing."

Turning heads in Elmira

"When you look at him from the aspect of all the sports he was involved in - football, basketball and baseball - you were very amazed," said Chuck Prettyman, a 1956 EFA graduate and a guard on the Blue Devils football team.

"As a freshman, he had been on the JV football team and broke his wrist. That same fall he went out for the basketball team and made the varsity basketball team as a freshman. "He started as a freshman. You didn't find many people who came along at his age with that kind of talent."

Davis suffered the wrist injury early in his first junior varsity football game. Still wearing a splint, he came off the bench to score 22 points against Union-Endicott in his first varsity basketball game that winter.

From almost the first time he met Davis, Prettyman suspected he was someone to keep an eye on.

"Having played two sports with him - I didn't play baseball - you could just see he was special," Prettyman said. "He made the All-Southern Tier Conference team in (basketball and football), and you knew he could only get better."

As a sophomore end in 1955, Davis helped the Blue Devils football team go undefeated and win the championship of the old Southern Tier Conference, which preceeded the Sullivan Trail Conference. In 1956, EFA coach Marty Harrigan moved Davis to halfback, and the Devils cruised to another league championship. In 1957, a blitz by the Asian flu weakened EFA, but Davis, himself stricken, finished the season to earn all-league honors for the third straight year.

Even if Davis had been just an average athlete, his classmates would have known his name. Davis was popular, friendly and, when necessary, a peacemaker.

"He was a person to be looked up to," Prettyman said. "He got an enormous amount of attention paid to him because of his honesty, his willingness to go the extra mile to help somebody. And as a student at EFA, he helped control a lot of the situations that came up between students that might have ended up as much more serious situations."

Burch was a JV cheerleader at Academy, and she remembers Davis coming early to basketball practice and teaching her how to shoot baskets.

"I think Ernie, by his junior and senior years, was an incredibly popular figure," Burch said. "It wasn't just the sports. I remember the football games and, yeah, it was Ernie (who starred), but it was others, too.

"I think it was just his demeanor, his attitude toward people that began to really have an impact on those who didn't know him as well."

Davis, a four-year starter on the Academy basketball team, set a conference record in career scoring with 1,605 points. He averaged 18.4 points per game. He had a .290 batting average over his two years as a regular on the EFA baseball team.

Burch and others were surprised when Davis picked football over basketball in college.

"We thought (basketball) was his sport," she said. "We were all amazed when he chose football. Not that he didn't show it all in football, but he was so outstanding in basketball."

Stardom in Syracuse

Davis chose Syracuse, and, just as he did at the Neighborhood House years earlier, made an immediate impact. In 1958, he helped the freshman team to its first undefeated season.

As a sophomore, Davis helped the Orangemen varsity go undefeated, win the 1960 Cotton Bowl and secure their only national championship in football.

He rushed for 686 yards as a sophomore, and his performance in the Cotton Bowl put him in the spotlight. He scored 16 of Syracuse's points against Texas, including a Cotton Bowl-record 87-yard pass play.

As Davis was making a name for himself in Syracuse, Prettyman was playing football at Cortland State. Every chance he got, he went to see Davis play.

"You wanted to see him all the time, but that was impossible because we played a lot of our games at the same time," he said.

Every time Prettyman saw his old teammate, Davis was more impressive than the time before.

"He got better all the time," he said. "He got bigger and faster and worked very, very hard at improving himself."

The "good guy" reputation Davis earned at EFA carried over to Syracuse. Burch, whose older sister was a friend of Davis' freshman roommate, EFA graduate Will Fitzgerald, said Davis was known as a snappy dresser and a bit of a prankster.

"He liked to play practical jokes," Burch said. "He was fun-loving. He liked to fool people and then pretend he didn't do it. And nobody would suspect him because he was such a nice guy."

His junior season, Davis was an All-American with 877 yards rushing. Opening the 1961 season, he was a pre-season All-American and an early Heisman Trophy candidate.

He didn't disappoint. He rushed 150 times for 823 yards and 11 touchdowns. He caught 16 passes for 157 yards and two touchdowns. His only pass attempt was good for 74 yards and a touchdown, and he returned an interception for another score. Along the way, he broke Brown's Syracuse records for career rushing yards, total offense, touchdowns and scoring.

The Heisman and the NFL

The vote was announced Nov. 28, 1961, and Davis received the trophy at a dinner Dec. 6 in New York.

Fleming was leaving work when a Star-Gazette reporter stopped her and told her of the Heisman announcement.

"At the time, I didn't really know that much about it," she said recently. "Looking back, I wish I realized what a big deal it was."

Prettyman was in the Army when he learned Davis had won the award.

"I knew he had that kind of talent," Prettyman said. "Seeing him play, having worked out with him during the summer, I knew there was something special about him."

Davis followed up the Heisman by being the No. 1 pick in the 1962 National Football League draft. He was selected by the Washington Redskins but refused to play for them. He was courted with big contract offers from the Buffalo Bills of the old American Football League, but, again followed the lead of Jim Brown and signed with the Cleveland Browns, who had obtained his rights from the Redskins.

Davis signed a $200,000 contract for three years with Cleveland - initially reported as $80,000, but that was only part of the deal. DeFilippo, who helped broker the deal, said Davis turned down a larger offer from the Bills because he wanted to play in the NFL, not the fledgling AFL.

Soon after, though, it became apparent that something was wrong with Davis. He seemed tired and weak during a Browns mini-camp and struggled in a college all-star game. While practicing with an all-star team for a game against the Green Bay Packers, Davis fell ill and was hospitalized in Evanston, Ill.

He would remain hospitalized for more than two months - first in Illinois, then in Ohio, and finally at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Md. The first public reports said Davis had a virus or the mumps.

The truth was much worse. A bit of bone marrow was removed from his sternum and tested. It revealed that Davis suffered from leukemia.

Davis told reporters he didn't feel sick, that he was in no pain. When the blood cancer went in remission, Davis even participated in some exhibition basketball games with other Browns players. He visited friends in Syracuse and Elmira, attended the NFL championship game between the Packers and the New York Giants, and traveled. Elmira residents and businesses raised funds to buy him a car and honored him at a banquet.

Davis repeatedly made public statements that he would return to the Browns, but that never happened. Cleveland coach Paul Brown did not list Davis on the playing roster, despite urging by team owner Art Modell to do so.

In his brief association with the Browns, Davis became friends with Modell and several players.

Burch's father, Dr. Hobart Burch, was a radiologist in Elmira and had been consulted on the Davis case. He knew, and Davis knew, that Davis had leukemia long before that information was made public.

Burch, then a student at Syracuse University, also knew. When she saw Davis drive by on a visit, she waved.

"He pulled over, got out of the car and shook hands and talked with me," she said. "He knew my sister well, but I don't even know if he knew who I was. If he didn't, he didn't let on. He was like that way with everyone. Where he found the time to do that with people, I have no idea."

Davis grew weaker and was hospitalized again. He succumbed to the disease at 2 a.m. on May 18, 1963.

Elmirans took the death personally. The headline in the next day's Star-Gazette summed up that feeling: "Our Ernie Loses Gallant Battle."

Thousands turned out for a public viewing of the body. Hundreds filed past his grave at Woodlawn Cemetery. Nearly 30 Browns players and staff flew in for the services. President Kennedy sent a telegram. Modell, who couldn't attend the funeral, came to town to personally extend his condolences to Davis' mother.

Ernie Davis the legend

Star-Gazette file photo Marie Fleming, Ernie Davis' mother, places flowers at his gravesite in Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery.

When asked for his favorite story of Davis, Prettyman recalled one of those almost-too-good-to-be-true tales that have grown around the man.

"It's a sad one," Prettyman said. "I had read and talked to some people about it.

"It had to do with him having contracted leukemia and being close to his death. He had gone to see (Modell) and, so true to Ernie, who was always willing to give as much as he could and knowing he was near death, he apologized to Art Modell. He apologized for not being able to live up to his contract."

Researching an article on Davis in Syracuse 20 years after his death, Burch was surprised to find the depth of emotion that still surrounds his story.

"People on the street who barely knew him would break into tears when they talked about Ernie," she said.

On Oct. 20, 1979, Davis was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Fleming received a plaque honoring her son at halftime of a Syracuse-Penn State game at Giants Stadium.

Burch said Davis had an important impact on race relations in Elmira. There was something for everyone, regardless of race or class, to admire about Davis, she said.

"It wasn't just because he was a good athlete," she said. "He was just somebody you wanted to be your friend. You admired him because of the kind of human being he was. You looked up to him."

Fleming said she gives one or two interviews a year about Davis, and many more when an anniversary like this one comes around. She's pleased that so many remember her son so fondly.

"There are a lot of others who have done a lot of things and are forgotten," she said.

Burch thinks Davis wouldn't want to be remembered as a Heisman Trophy winner or for his tragic death.

"He would want to be remembered for his sense of humor," she said. "He would want to be remembered for his perseverance. He always tried to do the best he could with what he had.

"And I think he would hope that nobody could say he did them wrong. That was so important to him, so fundamental - that he had never hurt anybody."