A new movie celebrates Ernie Davis, a hero we all should remember

Forty-five years after his death, Hollywood is finally making a movie about Ernie Davis.

Not just because the Syracuse University halfback was exceptionally good at football — in 1961, he was the first black athlete ever to win the coveted Heisman Trophy. Indeed, Davis — nicknamed “The Elmira Express” after his adopted hometown of Elmira, N.Y. — is a football legend, a two-time All American and No. 1 draft pick who signed with the Cleveland Browns for the biggest rookie contract then offered in professional football.

Tragically, Davis died in early 1963 from a rare form of leukemia before he ever got to play a down.

Even in a deeply segregated America, Davis’ death was a national event. The Browns retired his
number. President Kennedy sent his mother a telegram of sympathy. He was eulogized in both houses of Congress. Ten thousand people attended his funeral in Elmira.

Davis was an incredible athlete, and he died too young.

But why is Hollywood telling his story now?

In a sporting age where talent trumps all and character is optional, I think the legend of Ernie Davis has endured because of his strength of character, his kindness, his humility, his dignity in spite of wrenching racial episodes, his sense of service to his community, and yes, his calm and courage in
the face of his illness and impending death.

I haven’t seen the movie yet. “The Express: The Ernie Davis Story” opens nationwide
tomorrow. So why am I so sure?

Because I’ve had something better than a Hollywood movie to teach me about the life of Ernie
Davis.

I’ve got my dear friend Judith Harris, a retired teacher who lives in Albuquerque now but grew up in
Elmira and graduated from the Elmira Free Academy two years after Davis did.

Judith Harris – she was Judith Rouse then – knew Davis well and saw firsthand how it felt to have
him as a shining example for her family and other blacks in Elmira.

When she talks about Davis, as she loves to do, her face lights up and it feels like the long-dead hero is alive and standing right in front of us.

Her older brothers, Marvin and Delmar, played football with Davis in high school and were among his circle of friends. And after Davis left to play at Syracuse, he would often come to her house to visit her brothers while home on breaks from school.

“He was always such a gentleman when he came to our house,” Harris says. “He would come in and be so respectful to my parents and us.”

In those days, Harris remembers, Davis drove an ancient Edsel that was always breaking down. (The
City of Elmira later held an “Elmira Salutes Ernie Davis Day” and presented him with a brand new Thunderbird.)

Elmira was a small town, so it was hard not to follow Davis’s dazzling exploits in football, basketball and baseball.

But Harris saw the football star doing the everyday things his later fans didn’t see. Her family attended services with his at Monumental Baptist Church, and she remembers him patiently helping kids at the Elmira Neighborhood House (it was renamed the Ernie Davis Community Center after his death).

The smart, squeaky-clean Davis was a symbol for black families like hers, who were willing to fight
entrenched racism in their grim factory town to give their children a chance to succeed.

“When I was growing up, there were no black doctors or lawyers. There was one black teacher,”
says Harris.

Back then, Elmira schools had a ‘local” track and a “college prep’ track, explained Harris. The local track was for everything but college, and all of the black kids were automatically put there, said Harris.

“My father worked in the foundry, and every year he would have to take a day off of work and
go to school to say, `No, my children are not going to be put on the local track, they will be put in college prep.’”

When Davis won a scholarship to Syracuse, it was a milestone for the other black people in Elmira,
said Harris. ”This was when blacks first started going away to college, and Syracuse was a big deal.”

And even though Harris looked up to Davis as a role model, she was also aware that he was a very
good-looking young man.

“Girl, he was fine. F-I-N-E,” she says, spelling it out, in case I missed it. “He always looked
like he just got out of the shower; always smelled good.”

When the word came in the summer of 1962 that Davis was sick, no one believed it could be that serious. Davis still practiced with the Browns and regularly visited his friends at Syracuse and in Elmira. Except for a slight swelling in his neck, he always appeared healthy. Friends and family say he must have known he didn’t have long to live, but didn’t want anyone to worry.

His death on May 18, 1963, shocked everyone.

Harris didn’t get to go to his funeral. She had gone away to college in Potsdam, N. Y. and was
student teaching in White Plains, N.Y.

She couldn’t get a ride back to Elmira, and she says she spent the whole day crying.

But her mother and brothers and sisters went — the whole town was there — and they kept copies
of the stories that were written and the tributes that were paid.

Sadly, Harris said, much of her family’s memorabilia was destroyed in a citywide flood in 1972.

Harris says she doesn’t get back to Elmira much, but she does try to keep up with the news. Ernie
Davis’s mother, who worked so hard to raise a good son and continued to burnish his image after his death, died in May, she said.

As a teacher, Harris said she always told her students about Davis and is so glad his story is being
shared with a new generation.

“His death was heartbreaking, but it was also such a joy for all us just for having had him in our
lives.”

The Express: The Ernie Davis Story,” is based on the book, “Ernie Davis: The Elmira Express” by Robert C. Gallagher. The movie opens today in Albuquerque.