Who Is Chic Harley? The Book

REVIEWS

Reviewed by Peppertree Press

Charles William Harley was known to college football fans as one of the greatest players of all time. To Todd C. Wessell, he was "Uncle Chic." The portrait Wessell draws of his famous uncle makes the book, The One And Only, a personal narrative that draws the reader in.

I have to admit, I am not big fan of football; I don't even understand the game, but I found the story of Chic Harley compelling.

There is much family history included, going all the way back to colonial times. The first Harleys in America were "hardworking, tough- minded people who pushed themselves relentlessly just for the chance to see the next day." Chic definitely inherited this strong ethic for achievement.

Wessell carefully documents Chic's football career, from high school to college and into the fledgling professional football venue. The author provides detailed descriptions of the games, the points, and the maneuvers that made Chic Harley a legend. One can imagine that in today's world, Chic would be overwhelmed with offers of endorsements for products and services of all kinds, but these were very different times for football. Wessell explains that "many regarded football as a sport for roughnecks who feasted on brutal competition." When Chic first walked onto the field as a sophomore at East High School in Columbus, Ohio, rules were new and the stage was being set for football to become the all-encompassing sport it is today.

Wessell also carefully describes Chic's attitude toward his own success. While Chic was proud of his achievement on the football field, he was a modest young man, always concerned with doing the right thing and not letting anyone down. Fame and riches were not important to Chic; he remained close to his family.

After three years of high school football, and one year of college, Chic's life was interrupted by WWI. The eager volunteer was accepted into the U.S. Army flight school, which turned out to be a disappointing experience for him. But after an honorable discharge, Chic came back to play for Ohio State University, where he scored 201 points in 23 games, a record that remained unbroken for 36 years.

Newspapers throughout the state of Ohio, and eventually national publications, heralded Chic Harley as America's greatest athlete.

Dinners and parades were held in his honor; people by the hundreds waited in rain-drenched streets to get a glimpse of Chic. One Ohio newspaper captioned that "Ohio has produced a whole basketful of presidents - but only one Harley!" It seemed that everything was working toward a great future for Chic Harley. The world of football was wide open to him. Colleges were vying to hire him as a coach. He was surrounded by caring family members and he hoped to marry Louise Havens, the love of his life since high school. But a darkness was building inside that would take away from Chic just about everything he valued. Schizophrenia, then known as "dementia praecox," was diagnosed and the prognosis was not good. The family was told by psychiatrist Earl E. Gaver to expect Chic to suffer from impaired reasoning and judgment, apathy and asocial behavior. Dr. Garver predicted that Chic "probably would never recover sufficiently to become a useful individual."

Football, when he had the opportunity to play, provided great relief.

"On the gridiron.he was free of life's problems - real or imagined - for upwards of sixty minutes." Family members helped as much as they could. Chic's brother, Bill Harley, had become one of the world's first football agents as he coaxed Chic and several other high profile former college stars to join the "Staleys," a newly formed professional football team that later became the Chicago Bears. Chic was seriously injured in one of the pro games. Bill later accused the owners of encouraging that injury and cheating him and Chic out of a rightful share in the Bears team, but the courts ruled against the Harleys.

With his career over, his romance ended, and unable to care for himself, Chic was institutionalized. It was a difficult adjustment for everyone. Wessell describes the times Chic would "elope" from the confines of the institution, only to be returned time after time. For decades, Chic traveled back and forth between institutions and the homes of family members, most often Ruth, his sister. Eventually, after decades of misery and depression, a treatment was discovered that allowed Chic some relief. Unlike the drugs available to patients today, however, the results were not consistent.

"The One And Only" is a fascinating story. It takes the reader to incredible heights of success, then plunges into the heartbreaking despair of mental illness. The book is very well researched through official documents and those much more rewarding personal remembrances. It is not always flattering to some of Chic's family members, but it is a painfully honest account. There are several pages of lovely sepia photos that tell stories in themselves, including a clipping of the Ohio State marching band breaking formation to spell out CHIC across the football field.

Chic Harley comes through as a sometimes driven, sometimes insecure, but always compassionate, person. As his nephew describes, "[Chic's] story is one that embraces the human emotions." He inspired a fierce loyalty from all who knew him, including the Ohio State Athletic Department, which maintained the Chic Harley Trust Fund. The proceeds of this fund helped the family with Chic's care throughout his life and remains today as a scholarship fund for Ohio State athletes. Chic is revered by a nation for his achievements in athletics, but adored by his family as a great human being. Wessell has done us all a great service by introducing us to his uncle.

Reviewed by Steve Davis
Author, Columbus, OH

"On Thanksgiving Day, 1973, Charles William Harley, then seventy-nine years old, played his last football game...”

So begins Chapter 1 of The One and Only, the full-length biography of Chic Harley. Sixteen years in the making, and written by his great nephew Todd Wessell, the book traces the both famous and tragic life of the legendary Ohio State football star, beginning with the immigration of his ancestors to this country and ending the day he was laid to rest just northwest of the Ohio Stadium he helped build.

For Buckeye fans the beginning of the book obviously reveals the grandeur of Chic Harley and his football career, with the writer amply capturing the 1941 vision James Thurber first penned about Chic Harley in the New York newspaper PM:

"If you never saw him run with a football, we can't describe it to you. It wasn't like Red Grange or Tom Harmon or anybody else. It was kind of a cross between music and cannon fire, and it brought your heart up under your ears."

By Chapter 7 the reader appreciates what Thurber wrote and why he wrote it.

Wessell writes of more than football though. An engrossing and easy read, the book is also a work of history, a love story. It is about an American Era, a time of change and coming of age of a national sport, the growth of a small college to a major University, and the role Chic Harley played in making all that happen. It is also about his life long battle with Schizophrenia, in an era when the disease was stigmatized and incurable, and how that changed everything in the life of this great American athlete. Most importantly, it is about the family, friends, and fans who in the face of that, loved and stood by Chic all his life and continue their tireless work to keep his memory alive today. In the book forward, Todd describes the story as “...one that embraces the human emotions of love, kindness, compassion, tragedy, deception, and admiration”.

Other books and works have been written about Chic Harley and/or parts of his life. This one unfolds his story from the perspective of the family that perhaps knew him best. The author’s father Richard Wessell, Sr. initiated the idea of the book in the 1960’s. In 1975, one year after Chic died, he gathered a small group of his teammates and turned on the tape recorder while they reminisced.

In 1993 his son Todd picked up the project. Todd drew on the work of his father but explains that the foundation for the book is a family scrapbook maintained by Mattie Harley, Chic’s mother. Sometime around 1912, as any mother would do, Mattie began cutting out newspaper clippings of Chic’s sporting performances. “Eventually hundreds of articles, photos, and letters detailing the athletic life of Chic Harley from the period of 1912 to the 1930’s filled the album.” Over the years the scrapbook was passed down within the family from Chic’s mother to daughter to nephew to great nephew.

A big part of the book involves the nearly four decades Chic spent at the VA Hospital in Danville, Illinois. With the assistance of U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde, the family obtained access to approximately one thousands pages of correspondence, hospital reports and medical records. The writer skillfully weaves this information into Chic’s story, revealing an absorbing look at the impacts and stigma of a life of Schizophrenia, (and the treatments or lack of that prevailed at that time) on an individual destined to fame, fortune, and happiness.

One might think that a biography written by a family member might gloss over unflattering parts about Chic’s life, story, mental illness, or the athlete himself. I detected little of that and found on more than one occasion warts and all were laid bare for the reader to see and judge.

Well written and readable, the book flows easily in a natural manner through the various stages of Chic’s life. Minor challenges the author has in the beginning, with past versus present tense, melt away as the reader is pulled into the story.

A major premise of the book is that the accomplishments of Chic Harley... his contributions to our new national pastime (the sport of football), to the tradition of Ohio State football, to the building of Ohio Stadium, to the growth and preeminence of the University...have all been under appreciated or forgotten. The author does seem to accept that too much time has passed, and there is now too big a cast of characters, to name the Stadium after Harley, even though in Chic’s day that was “What his contemporaries considered a foregone conclusion”. Rather he proposes now going the route that Illinois has with Red Grange...“that a statue honoring ‘The One and Only’ should rise for all to see just outside the grand “Horseshoe”.

Wessell builds his case not with just a retelling of Chic’s major games, plays, and accomplishments, but draws extensively on quotes and news reports from those who played with, coached, reported on, or actually watched Chic. From friend Russ Finneran, Sr. describing one of Chic’s greatest plays in vivid detail (“When I see a play like that again, I am ready to leave this world.”)... to Michigan Coach Fielding Yost’s legendary visit to the Ohio State locker room after OSU’s first win over the school up north (“And, you, Mr. Harley, I believe are one of the finest little machines I have ever seen.”)...the narrative is rich with testimonials to the greatness of the athlete and his athletic skills.

Much of the allure of Chic Harley however, resides with Chic the person and this comes through front and center in the book. Wessell writes that during Chic’s 1953 induction into the charter class of the National Football Hall of Fame, President Bevis spoke to a filled Stadium, “It takes a lot of people a long time to build a university... This building is done in many ways and many directions - the physical plant, the faculty, the courses and curricula, the extracurricular activities.... This occasion is a witness to that... It is no exaggeration to say that in his way, Chic Harley was one of the builders of the university and as such will always be remembered.”

Moments later, Chic’s Ohio State coach John Wilce added “Characteristic of his personality was real modesty as to his own ability and achievement. While he was the true individual star of his great teams, to him it was the team that counted, rather than himself.”

Many a contemporary of Chic’s echo that sentiment through their words in Todd’s book. (When more than 75,000 people turned out in the rain to see Chic’s 1948 return to Columbus from Danville after his insulin shock treatments, Chic sought out a reporter and asked him to print “I am not deserving of that”. “Those words of Chic-‘I am not deserving of that”- will never be forgotten”, penned sports columnist Bob Hooey. “They were typical Chic Harley, the most modest of the modest.”

Does Todd Wessell make his case?

In 1950, the Associated Press polled the nation’s top college football coaches and sportswriters naming the top halfbacks of the first half of the 20th century. The decision was clear. Jim Thorpe and Chic Harley were considered the best. Red Grange was named second team.

Outside the Buckeye locker room in Ohio Stadium, a plaque is mounted. Inscribed are Chic’s words, “We are the heart and soul for this stadium, the fellows who know what it is to go in there and fight with all that’s in us for Ohio State and her glory.” Before every game, every Buckeye touches that plaque.
Union Cemetery, just north of Ohio Stadium, is the final resting place of Chic Harley. Atop his grave is a large Block O granite monument. Paid for by former teammates, the inscription reads “ALL AMERICAN HALFBACK, 1916, 1917, 1919. FIRST OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PLAYER INDUCTED INTO THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME. HIS PLAYING INSPIRED THE DRIVE TO BUILD OHIO STADIUM, COMMONLY REFEREED TO AS ‘THE HOUSE THAT HARLEY BUILT’”. Below that inscription is a verse from James Thurber’s poem When Chic Harley Got Away:

“And there’s nothing quite so thrilling from the first year to today
Like the glory of the going when Chic Harley got away”

The One and Only is a chance for both football fans and non fans of all walks to learn and relive the story of that glory.