I’ve been to Ohio State football games before, but never one quit like the one I attended on Saturday, April 25 in Columbus.
We drove to Columbus via Interstates 65 and 70 for the weekend and, except for a truck fire in Indiana that delayed us for about an hour, the trip went smoothly. The highlight of the trip was attending the annual Scarlet & Gray practice game held inside Ohio State Stadium, which is nicknamed “The House That Harley Built.” It was an amazing sight. Nearly 96,000 people filled the arena for the purpose of watching an April practice session. Boy, they love their football in Ohio.
However, it wasn’t just my love of the game that brought me to Ohio’s capital city this spring. I and a group of six others participated in a number of functions that weekend, all related to a soon-to-be-published book I authored on Ohio State University football great Charles “Chic” Harley.
As many visitors to the website already know, Harley, who lived from 1894 to 1974, was Ohio State’s first consensus football All-American, its first three-time All-American, a four-sport letterman, and for one year, co-owner of the Decatur Staleys, now named the Chicago Bears. He was this reporter’s great-uncle who spent much time visiting his sister, Ruth Wessell, and later Ruth’s only son, Richard Wessell, the late owner of the Journal & Topics Newspapers, in their Des Plaines homes. Around 1920, he and Jim Thorpe were regarded as the best football players in the country.
Over the next few posts, I’ll be going into details about writing the book, and later I’ll tell you a few things about Chic that only a few people know about, many more of which which are detailed in my book The One And Only, due out around June 1.