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Message: [QUOTE="Dick_in_MI, post: 4282577, member: 225"] I have mentioned this many times before (probably too many), but when I was a kid Ernie gave me his autograph. I still keep it on my desk and my avatar is a copy of it. There will never be a "burning of the avatar" for me. In fact, I believe that everyone else that signed my slip of paper eventually played in the NFL or CFL: John Nichols, Al Bemiller (Bills), John Brown (father of eventual SU player Ernie Davis Brown and the inspiration for the "best friend" in the Express. He played on a couple of NFL teams), and Art Baker (Bills). Imagine a kid today getting his SU hero plus some other SU players to sign and ending up with a haul like that? My Mom was from Elmira and so Ernie was as close to a sports deity as you could imagine in our house. When I was a cub scout, there was an issue of Boys Life with Ernie as the cover story. In the story, I seem to recall it mentioning that Ernie was a good student. Being a good student myself, that was another reason for bonding to him. Somewhere along the way, the issue disappeared. Perhaps it got thrown out by my folks (along with bags and bags of my baseball cards) when I went off to college at SU. I always grieved for that magazine. Anyway, to get to the point after rambling for a bunch of paragraphs, years ago on the old AOL board I mentioned that magazine and its loss. A poster...who, for all I know, is still out there under a different handle...had a copy that he had acquired somehow. In a gesture of great kindness, he sent it to me, and I still have it. this time, it will never leave my grasp. Finally, whenever I watch the movie I have a hard time juxtaposing the actor (often stoic and unsmiling) with the real Ernie. When my Dad literally ran onto the team bus at the old Hancock Field to help me get my autographs (did I have an awesome Dad or what?), he asked Ernie to sign. Ernie smiled and said "it would be my pleasure, sir." After I got to SU and got to know athletes as just kids like me, I no longer idolized them in any way. True, I have my alltime favorite players (Ernie and Don McPherson...Dave Bing and John Wallace), but there will only be one alltime sports idol for the 9 year old boy still inside me. And that is why this avatar will never be burned. [/QUOTE]

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