Dear Friends;

When I was contacted by Dick Adams to discuss honoring Felix "Doc" Blanchard, I had to ask myself, "Why has this man been forgotten?" No good reason came to mind. Doc Blanchard is, as we all know, a tremendously talented football player who won numerous awards, including college football's top honor: The Heisman Trophy.

Now imagine for a moment that he never touched a football in his life. Doc Blanchard would still be recognized as someone who overcame humble beginnings, survived the Depression, enrolled in a world class educational facility, and served his country with honor and pride. Doc Blanchard's life is a celebration of the Spirit of America.

Elsewhere on this page is a photo of the proposed statue of Doc Blanchard. It is not a single figure, but three -- Blanchard as a young child, growing up in Bishopville; as a young man, leading Army to football glory; and as an adult, flying jet aircraft in defense of his country.

Quite honestly, we have a long way to go before we complete this task. But I think we can do it. By profession I am a Firefighter, and I am very familiar with the concept of pulling together for a common goal -- I see it every time the department answers a call. I'd like to invite you to join our team, not as a firefighter, but in honoring the life of Doc Blanchard. We'll update this webpage every so often, so you can see how we're doing.

If you'd like to join our cause and help build a suitable tribute to Doc Blanchard, please send your donation to: Tribute to Doc Blanchard, C/O The South Carolina Cotton Museum, 121 West Cedar Lane, Bishopville, SC 29010.

Sincerely;

Chief Ronnie Williams
Bishopville Fire Department

The Proposed Doc Blanchard Statue

Bishopville celebrates ‘Mr. Inside’

Heisman winner ‘Doc’ Blanchard honored while visiting hometown

by DENNIS BRUNSON Sumter (S.C.) Daily Item Sports Editor October 17, 2002

After completing his freshman season at the University of North Carolina in 1942, Felix Blanchard decided he wanted to join the school’s Navy V-12 program. He was turned down for two reasons: bad vision and being overweight.

Those were just the requirements, Blanchard said.

Blanchard then enlisted in the United States Army, took basic training in Miami and was assigned to the Air Force’s ground school in Clovis, N.M. He received an appointment to the United States Military Academy on July 2, 1944. The rest is history.

"Doc" Blanchard went on to become a 3-time All-American with Army, won the 1945 Heisman Trophy, was part of three straight national championship teams and was "Mr. Inside" as part of one of the most famous duos in college football history.

Blanchard, who grew up in Bishopville, was honored by his hometown Wednesday -- for the second time.

"They honored me when I came home from West Point. That was in 1944," Blanchard said. "I guess I’m getting the longevity award this time."

It has been a long time -- 57 years -- since Blanchard won the Heisman, edging his teammate, Glenn Davis, otherwise known as "Mr. Outside." And just as college football has changed, so has the significance of the award, according to Blanchard.

"Obviously, it didn’t mean as much then as it does now," said Blanchard, who will turn 78 on Dec. 11. "I believe it has been publicized to the point where it has lost some of its meaningfulness. It also has a big impact on what these players do professionally. It just wasn’t that big of a deal when I won it."

Winning the Heisman was just a small part of the legacy that surrounds Blanchard’s college career. Blanchard also won the Sullivan Award that season. The award was given to the outstanding amateur athlete of the year. Blanchard was the first football player to win the award.

More than that though, Blanchard’s versatility was his calling card. Even though he was a solid 6-0 and 208 pounds, he was said to be as fast as Davis. In a track and field meet in 1945, Blanchard ran the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds.

Blanchard ran for 1,666 yards in his career, scoring 38 touchdowns, 26 on runs, seven on passes, four on interception returns and one on a kickoff return. Along with being a standout fullback, he was an outstanding linebacker, placekicker and punter.

"If you played fullback, you played linebacker," Blanchard said. Of course, the 2-way player is all but gone in football but for an occasional exception. Blanchard thinks that change has made a difference in the game of football.

"If you’re just going to go one way, you should be able to do a lot of special things because the learning and practice time increases," said Blanchard, who now lives in San Antonio. "Because of that, the quality of play has gone up. Physical conditioning and stamina were much more important then than they are now. You’ll see a player go for four or five plays and then come off the field huffing and puffing. When I played, if you lost the ball, you lined up and played defense."

Blanchard didn’t win the Heisman the next year; Davis, his running mate who finished second to Blanchard the year before, did. Davis, who will also turn 78 in December, lives in Philadelphia. Blanchard said they only see each other a couple of times a year.

During the three years he played for Army, the team was 27-0-1. Even though they were young men, the players still had a sense of what they were a part of.

"We were getting people that were successful players at other schools," he said. "So we were getting good players and that was the reason for the quality of the team."

After finishing his time at the U.S. Military Academy, Blanchard entered the Air Force and became a jet pilot. He never played professional football. But it’s not that he didn’t want to.

"I wanted to play one year and make some money," Blanchard said. "I wanted to get time for leave, but the politicians said no. Your service obligation was for as long as the time you were at West Point. I would have liked to have had the money I could make playing professional football. I was married, starting a family. I was a flier in the Air Force and I didn’t have a reason to change. I liked it so much I stayed."

Blanchard flew in Korea and retired as a colonel in 1971.

Blanchard calls the 1944 game between Army and Navy as his greatest memory. "We were ranked No.1, they were ranked No.2."

Blanchard said it has been a few years since he attended an Army-Navy game.

"I’ve become a poor traveler," he said.

But he has left a lot of memories.

Heisman winner returning to Bishopville

‘Doc’ Blanchard to be honored at banquet

By MATT SCHAFER Sumter (S.C.) Item Staff Writer October 15, 2002

BISHOPVILLE -- The man some credit with putting Bishopville on the map will make a rare return to his hometown Wednesday for a banquet in his honor at The Opera House.

Heisman Trophy winner Felix "Doc" Blanchard grew up in Bishopville and rose to national attention while playing running back at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

"We certainly want to honor him, but we want to highlight that this event is also a fund-raiser to build a statue recognizing him," said Bishopville Fire Chief Ronnie Williams, who is helping to organize the event.

For $50 a head, 150 fans and friends will be able to mingle with the football great for an hour before a dinner that will feature speakers from all parts of Blanchard’s life -- childhood friends, West Point classmates and military colleagues.

Also, two proposals for statues will be on display.

"We want something that will recognize all three aspects of his life," Williams said, "as a child in Bishopville, his West Point football career, and then his service in the military." The statue would depict those three aspects.

Although a final design has not been chosen, the Doc Blanchard Tribute committee hopes to raise $100,000 for the statue to be placed in front of the Woodward Public Library on Main Street.

"It’s a lot of money, and money is so tight right now," said committee member Jean Broadway.

Blanchard’s family moved to Bishopville when he was 8 years old because it was closer to his mother’s family and Bishopville needed a doctor, said Mary Elizabeth Blanchard, his sister. Their father, Felix Blanchard Sr., for whom Blanchard received his nickname, was a physician.

Looking back on her childhood, Mary Elizabeth remembers long days filled with carefree sport. "We just had a very, very happy time there," said Mary Elizabeth, who now lives in Sumter.

"In those days children were just free to go outside and play, and you didn’t have to worry about people grabbing them."

She and Blanchard had a stripped-down 1931 Model A that they drove across the eastern side of the state. Blanchard’s football career started at a boarding school in Louisiana, which stores many of his football trophies.

Blanchard attended the University of North Carolina for a year before being drafted. After a year of military service, he qualified for officer training school and attended West Point, where his football skills earned him the nickname "Mr. Inside" for his punishing running assaults into the heart of the defensive line.

Blanchard won the Heisman Trophy, the highest honor a college player can receive, in 1945. He also was named to the All-American team in 1944, ’45 and ’46.

"We do have a number of famous people from Lee County, but a Heisman Trophy winner, that’s special," Broadway said.

During his time at West Point, Blanchard amassed 1,666 yards rushing and scored 38 touchdowns. His teammate and fellow tailback Glenn Davis, "Mr. Outside," won the Heisman in 1946. Together the two tailbacks were coined "The Touchdown Twins," as they led Army to three consecutive national championships. Both men have been inducted into the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame.

Although he had the opportunity to play professional football after he left West Point, Blanchard chose a career in the military. Blanchard served into the early 1970s, when he retired after a tour of duty in Vietnam. He currently lives in San Antonio and visits South Carolina once a year.

On Saturday, Blanchard will be the grand marshal of the Cotton Festival Parade, which starts at 10 a.m. At 11 a.m., the Interstate 20/U.S. 15 interchange will be officially named the Felix "Doc" Blanchard interchange. Also, several signs will be unveiled declaring Bishopville the hometown of Blanchard.

The Doc Blanchard Display at The South Carolina Cotton Museum

Bishopville's Favorite Son

by BOB SPEAR Columbia (S.C) State Sports Editor October 18, 2002

BISHOPVILLE -- At long last, but far too late, a wrong will be righted Saturday. The football legend called "Mr. Inside" will be honored in his old hometown, thanks to a persistant fan who lives in Kentucky and refused to accept that his childhood hero had been forgotten in Bishopville.

Doc Blanchard, the only South Carolina native to win college football's Heisman Trophy, starred on the great Army teams of the mid-1940's, and the Lee County Community rejoiced in accomplishments all those years ago. But time passed and memories dimmed and his achievment had been relegated to dusty scrapbooks -- until Dick Adams came along.

A wedding in Charleston two years ago provided the opportunity for Adams to visit Bishopville and he discovered, to his dismay, that no one recalled one of the town's most famous citizens.

No street named in his honor.

No signs to trumpet his excellence.

No statue to commemorate his performances.

Mentioning Blanchard to a few town folks drew blank stares.

"He was absolutely appalled that no one knew that Doc Blanchard had grown up there," Nancy Adams, his wife, said.

"We drove home and passed Cabin Creek, W. Va., and saw a sign that said `Cabin Creek, hometown of NBA star Jerry West,'" Dick Adams said. "Louisville has Mohammed Ali Way. Cincinnati honored Pete Rose. I thought Doc Blanchard should be honored in Bishopville."

He will be, beginning Saturday.

He will be grand marshal in the town's annual Cotton Festival parade, then in 11 a.m. cerimonies, the I-20/U.S. 15 interchange will be named in his honor. A fundraising drive has started to erect that missing statue.

If Felix Anthony Blanchard Jr. were caught up in himself and had the braggadocio of some athletes, he would wonder, What took them so long? Instead, he calls the honors a nice gesture and moves on.

EAGER ANTICPATION

Meet Doc Blanchard, and what you see is what you get. At 77, he stands tall and looks rock solid. He talks matter-of-factly, even self-deprecating, about his achievements.

"My life story? That won't take long," he said.

If he is hesitant to talk about himself, others are not.

"I have just seen Superman in the flesh," Notre Dame coach Ed McKeever said in 1944. "He wears number 35 and goes by the name of Blanchard."

Time Magazine reported that "he has a special sort of speed that is all his own... he leans forward and sprouts wings." Reporting on one play in the 1945 Army-Navy game, Tim Cohane wrote in Look magazine, "Doc ran through (the defender) as if he were a paper bag."

Col. Red Blaik, his coach at Army, called Blanchard the best built athlete he had seen, citing Atlas shoulders and colossal legs. "If he had been serious about it," Blaik wrote, "he would have been an Olympic decathalon star."

Tom Alexander, the Mayor of Bishopville, remembers Blanchard's success at West Point "was a big deal" in a small town. All the kids on the high school team wanted number 35 and Alexander got it. "sadly, I learrned that it's what's in the uniform, not the number, that makes the player," he said.

Alexander, 71, recalled Blanchard returning from West Point to be honored at a dinner, and the town buzzed in anticipation.

"We got all dressed up," he said. "Mama scrubbed me good and brushed my hair. I had hair then. Anyway, we found out he was a man of few words. He got up, thanked everybody, and said something like `I always thought football players should be like little girls -- seen and not heard,' and he sat down."

Maybe Blanchard dodged the public speaker's role, but he thrilled the youngsters in Bishopville. Toby Reynolds grew up in a home across the street from the Blanchards - 518 West Church - and remembers Doc taking kids swimming at Denny's Pool.

"They had an old Model A Ford, and they cut the back out and built a platform that would hold 10 or 12 people," Reynolds, 69, said. "He would take us out to the pool in that. Some would fall out now and then, but he would stop and we would get back on.

"At Denny's, he would flip us into the air. We were mostly scrawny and thin and he was so strong, he could really flip us. But he would grab us by the leg to make sure we didn't go too high."

Phillip Mixon, who celebrated his 82nd birthday this month, worked at the school during Blanchard's years and followed his career through news reports. "I haven't seen him since the 1940's," Mixon said. "I can't wait."

Neither could a lot of others in his old hometown this week.

ON HIS WAY TO WEST POINT

Doc Blanchard got his nickname honestly. His dad, Felix Sr., was a physican and thus "Big Doc." The youngster called Anthony tagged along with his dad on his rounds and became "Little Doc."

"And she," he said, pointing to younger sister Mary Elizabeth Blanchard, "is the real Doc Blanchard." Mary Elizabeth Blanchard practiced medicine for 30 years in Sumter prior to her retirement.

He calls her "Sis" and she calls him "Bubba" and they still exchange friendly banter and barbs. Mary Elizabeth fishes for a compliment by showing him the ice cream sandwiches she purchased; he grumbles about he wanted one last night.

She needles him about getting lost on the trip from Charleston. "Henry (Moore, a childhood friend who picked him up at the airport) got lost, too," he said.

Doc comes from his San Antonio, Texas, home at least once a year for a visit and usually stays at Mary Elizabeth's cabin on the shores of Lake Marion. "Did she tell you she threw me out of the boat last year?" he asked.

Mary Elizabeth tells the story differently. "I told him to push the boat away from the dock with a paddle, but he pushed with his foot and soon had one foot on the dock and one in the boat," she said, a smile playing around her mouth.

Of course, he fell in.

Mary Elizabeth laughs at her brother's teaching her to drive the Model A. "The battery was dead, and he had to push it off," she said. "It had a quick clutch, and I kept choking it down, and he had to push again."

Her statement that she beat him at tennis earns another grumble.

Tom Alexander and Toby Reynolds say that Mary Elizabeth could hold her own in childhood games, but the spotlight was always on "Bubba." Born in McColl, Doc Blanchard is related to famed football coach Jim Tatum, who was his mother's cousin. The family moved to Bishopville during the depression.

"Times were tough, but those were simple and happy times," he said. "We would go skinny-dipping, the usual stuff kids do. We weren't very hard to entertain. Sunday afternoons, we would go riding with the windows down; that was our air-conditioning. We had a good time."

He played football in what he calls "my senior year in junior high" in Bishopville before the family sent him to his dad's old school, St. Stanislaus Prep, in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

"They took me to Charlotte and put me on a train," he said. "I was scared to death."

He returned to Bishopville for the holidays, then, after graduation, he headed to the University of North Carolina. But World War II interfered and "Like everybody else, I got drafted," he said.

Blanchard spent time at Camp (now Fort) Jackson, did basic training for the Army Air Corps in Florida and was stationed in Clovis, N.M.

"I got a telegram from my dad asking if I were interested in West Point," Blanchard said. "I got the appointment, got help to pass the entrance exam, and that's about it."

No, that's where his story really starts.

JET FIGHTER PILOT

Doc Blanchard made All-American three years. He teamed with Glenn Davis, "Mr. Outside," to form a devestating running attack, and he also played defense. He likes to remember an Army win over Navy for the national championship in 1944 and the Cadet's drubbing of Notre Dame that same season.

He won all the awards in 1945 and sparkled again in 1946 despite missing a couple of games with a knee injury.

A favorite tale, probably apocryphal and no doubt embellished through the years, focuses on Army's big win over Navy in 1945. Blanchard had his usual sterling game, scoring three touchdowns, and Navy inserted a substitute lineman in an effort to slow Mr. Inside.

The Army tackle offered the newcomer some advice: "Next play, Blanchard's coming through this spot. I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going to get the hell out of his way."

His story did not end with his teams 27-0-1 collage record or his 38 touchdowns or his track and field performance that included the unlikely combination of competing in the shot put (54 feet) and the 100-yard dash (10 seconds flat).

His service commitment prevented him from trying the pros and he made the Air Force his career.

"You got your duty assignment by grade average and by the time I got to pick, the infantry and the Air Corps was all that was left," he said.

Duty brought him back to West Point, where he coached the plebe team, and John Lenti, a retired Army colonel and now director of USC's Small Business Development Center, remembers him well.

"That first day (in 1956) I had the shock of my life," Lenti said. "He looked like a stone wall. I was in awe of him. He had muscles on his legs that bulged like biceps, and he never cracked a smile. Just being on the same field with him put the fear of the Lord in me. He patterned himself after Col. Blaik."

Blanchard became a jet fighter pilot, flew numerous combat missions in Vietnam and once nursed a plane that caught fire over England back to a safe landing.

"I could either jump out or try to land, and I didn't think the parachute would open," he said, deflecting any credit for the latter incident. "I was near the (air) field, anyway."

The Air Force disagreed, noting the plane caught fire over a heavily populated area, and cited Blanchard for bravery.

He retired as a colonel in 1972.

Jody, his wife of more than 40 years, died in 1994, and Doc spends his time keeping up with his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. He fishes some and says he has given up golf twice; "I can be frustrated sitting at home," he said.

Frustrated? That's the emotion Dick Adams had two years ago after learning that Bishopville had no recognition for Blanchard. After he returned home, he called the Lee County Observer newspaper and wrote the mayor. "I was persistent," he said.

Finally, Ronnie Williams, Bishopville's fire chief got involved and "he gets things done," Toby Reynolds said. The week unfolded with Wednesday night's banquet to launch the fund raising drive for the statue, and Saturday's ceremonies complete the festivities.

"I felt I should do something," Adams said. "I felt like I knew him from listening to his games from 50-something years ago on an old dome-shaped radio in Harrisburg, Pa.

But you know what? They had never met until Wednesday.