The Express

Thanks for the answers everyone! Is anyone here old enough to remember what the public reaction was when the news came out that he had leukemia?

You can probably ask CTO, she knew Ernie and his girlfriend if I'm not mistaken.

Man who doesn't CTO know?

I'd say Jesus, but at this point I wouldn't count anyone out.

The school is a vocational tech school walking distance down the street from where Donovan's dad worked at ComEd. (Corner of Addison and California) I had an office down the hall from him when I consulted for them. It was my weekly commute. Flew back and forth to Syracuse with Donovan a few times, and with Sam and Wilma for the McMac Ball (McNabb, McPherson, MacPherson fundraiser). Sam looks at me, are you going tonight? I am like sure, as soon as he is out of earshot I call my wife and tell her to grab a tux from the shop (we had been recently married). Took her to the fund raiser 8 months preggo and somehow told Rob Conrad that I would allow my wife to give birth to his fb children. Given her state, I am not sure what he thought of that.

but there is a Syracuse connection to that field.... well kinda....

Check out my thread "DVR Alert: "The Landmark Achievement of Ernie Davis" 9:00 SNY" tacked at the top of this forum for details about the program as well as future showings.

I knew Ernie Davis. I've mentioned this before on SU message boards, but I'll tell again. When I was a sophomore at SU in the fall of 1961, I was assigned Sadler 2nd floor. I arrived with my folks and bid them goodby, got situated in my room in the east wing of the floor, and then went to the 2nd floor lounge to see the floor roster; maybe I knew somebody. Well, I almost fell out of my shoes. Some of the best football players at SU were on my floor. In the next room were Dick Easterly and Bob Stem. Across from me were Pete Brokaw and John Brown. And in room 264, on the other side of the lounge at the start of the west wing, were Ernie Davis and John Mackey.

I hardly could wait for Dad to get home so I could call to tell him. Dad was a 1926 SU grad and he knew Vic Hanson. (And now to parody Steely Dan: Hey 19, that's Victor Hanson. You don't remember the SU King of Sports?).

Ernie was a quiet gentleman, a truly nice, soft-spoken, respectable guy. I understand that he had a stammer as a child, and wonder if that made him a bit reticent. John Mackey, on the other hand, was boisterous. They supposedly were the same height and weight, but Ernie seemed more muscular, and John sleeker. Ernie was the "next" Jim Brown, and Mackey the "next" Ernie.

One day there was a murder near the campus. That afternoon, I came back from class and saw a scowling big guy sitting in our lounge. I thought, wow - who's that fellow - the murderer hiding from ther cops? Then I realized it was Jim Brown who came to visit Ernie. But Ernie was gone and did not come back in time, so I got some of the guys, told them "guess who's in our lounge," and we talked with Jim, a lot about what he was doing in the off season, which was promo work for I think Pepsi Cola.

We did not pal around with the football players. They lived with us, and we talked with them, but they ate in a separate dining hall, and they were their own group. We never asked them to join us for a burger at Carrol's or a flick at the Eckel. Maybe they would have liked us to. But then, they never asked us to join them for a meal in Slocum where they ate filet mignon.

Was Ernie a warrior for the rights of black people? I think the movie hinted at that. But I did not see it. None of the black football players seemed actively involved in civil rights, although we all knew about the Cotton Bowl problem. John Brown even did a program about it at Sadler. Civil rights was more a white student thing back then, and three of the most active white student protestors lived on Sadler 2nd floor, but they did not get Davis, Mackey, and Brown involved in their protests that I can remember. They got me involved once, and you will see my picture in the 1965 Onondagan, page 42; I'm in the middle.

I enjoyed the movie because I lived the experience. Some of the guys on the 2nd floor were depicted in the moivie if I remember, but Ernie's best movie pal at SU was fictional, although I think he was really John Brown. Why they did not use John Brown's name was probably because they wanted Ernie's best friend to be a composite. I hated what the movie did to West Virginia, portraying them as a school of bigots. This was especially bad because it was coach Schwartzwalder's undergraduate college. They rephotoed the west part of the Quad and situated Archbold there, not really the way Archbold was.

I was looking for my character in the movie, but did not find it. It would think it would have been where I asked a bunch of guys to join me for burgers at Carrol's, but did not ask Ernie. I guess it ended up on the cutting room floor.

Now for Ernie's terrible illness. I did not find out about it until summer after the school year was over. It made the news, but I don't remember it being covered continuously after that. TV did not have 24 hour news back then, so maybe that's why. I was shocked at the news.

Did Ernie seem sick during his year on our floor? Nothing we could detect. But in February, my small town two hours east of Syracuse asked me to request from Ernie if he would speak at a sports banquet. I asked him, but he declined saying he was tired and wanted to curtail his public apprearances. Was he not feeling well? I don't know. I believe my city got Jim Brown instead. Also, someone told me many years later that they were eating with Ernie during Christmas break, and he was sweating profusely, which they thought peculiar.

A year later, 1963, it's the SU spring football game. Ernie comes to Sader 2nd floor to visit John Mackey and his new roommate, Billy Hunter, who today an exec of the NBA players union. Ernie looked and acted fine. A couple weeks later, Ernie passes away. I heard the news on a rainy Saturday morning.

Room 264. A star-crossed room in 1961 and 1962. Ernie with leukemia - John with frontal-temporal dementia.

My reaction then, as it is today, about Ernie Davis's death. He was destined to have a life that most of us can't conceive. Why did this have to happen?

They tried to shoe-horn the Ernie Davis story into a "theater of racism" thing to put it in the same category as Remember the Titans, Glory Road, Hurricane, etc. But most people who recall him just remember his agreeeable personailty and his courage in facing his very early death. I guess they felt "theater of cancer" wouldn't sell: that's more of a TV movie thing.

They wanted a regular season racial incident and they'd heard that something happened at North Carolina so they were going to have the '59 team play North Carolina. SU never played UNC until 1995. They decided to use the southernmost regular season team we played in 1959 instead. Actually that would have been UCLA or Navy but West Virginia sounded more backwards so they used that and completely libeled an honored rival. That game was played at SU and the whole thing about not wanting a black player tyo score was made up. SU played at West Virginia the next year and 6 touchdowns were scored by black players. Then they played around with the Cotton Bowl, with Ben wanting to hold his blacks out, (they played the whole game) and the 87 yard pass pass occuring on the game's last play to clinch a close win instead of on the third play of a game we won decisively.

It plays alright as a movie and can be enjoyed if you don't know the true story but the same can be said of Remember the Titans, Glory Road and Hurricane. Hollywood decisons aren't based on what is true but what they think they can market.

I thought it might be appropriate to link the SI article written one week after Ernie's death...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1074835/index.htm

Thank you! That was a terrific post.