A salute to a hero: A Heisman Trophy winner at Army, Doc Blanchard was one of college football’s greatest athletes

Mary Elizabeth Blanchard has a story to tell for every photo of her famous brother that she peels out of one scrapbook or another in her Sumter home. There was Doc Blanchard in uniform as a student at the United States Military Academy. There was Doc Blanchard running with the football in one of Army’s games against Navy. There was Doc Blanchard speaking in New York upon being presented the Heisman Trophy.

Then Mary Elizabeth Blanchard plucks a photo of her brother, whom she called “Bubba,” off the nearby bookcase. The small black-and-white photo rests in a broken wood frame.

The photo is stunning. The Blanchard parents, Felix and Mary, are pictured with their two siblings. Young Anthony, as the parents called their only son, already was the largest member of the family. He held a sculpted 200 pounds on his 6-foot-1 frame.

He was 13 that day in September of 1938 when he was put on a train in Charlotte to head off to boarding school in Mississippi, then onto a life of football fame unparalleled in South Carolina annals. Every description of the three-time consensus All-American running back at Army mentions his massive thighs and calves.

Art Baker was living in Union when Doc Blanchard returned to Bishopville during summer breaks from school. Baker recalls seeing Blanchard at the beach every summer.

“He looked like Tarzan,” Baker says.

Because Blanchard lived full-time in South Carolina for only 11 years of his life, it is difficult to find anyone who recalls much about him. But his sister, now a retired doctor, says those who did grow up with him in McColl and Bishopville remember Blanchard as a tremendous athlete.

No doubt, while his physique must have been a gift from God, Blanchard got his athleticism from his father. The elder Blanchard was an outstanding running back at Tulane before going to medical school and establishing a practice in McColl. On the side, Blanchard played semi-pro baseball and once hit a towering home run in a game at Kingstree that McColl residents talked about for decades.

Felix Anthony Blanchard Jr. was born in McColl in 1924. By the time Dr. Blanchard’s son was 3, and already becoming known around McColl as “Little Doc” because he followed his father around on house calls, he was punting a football in the family’s front yard, according to local lore.

Many of the nearby McColl cotton mills closed around 1929, so Dr. Blanchard sought greener pastures in Dexter, Iowa, when young Doc was 5. Two years later, Blanchard heard of a need for a physician in Bishopville and the family returned to South Carolina.

By then, the family owned a Model A Ford that carried the children a couple miles outside town on Highway 15 to Denny’s Pool, where they swam, played horseshoes and ping pong, and danced in the ballroom.

Mary Elizabeth Blanchard says her brother would perform perfect one-and-a-half gainers off the diving board at Denny’s Pool. Anyone in Bishopville who saw young Doc dive or swim swore for years that he could have been an Olympic swimmer. They also swore by his skills on a tennis court.

In addition to wanting his son to play football, Dr. Blanchard insisted that he learn how to dance. Young Doc quickly became the best dancer in town, according to his sister, and not only entertained the girls at Denny’s Pool but also in the hall behind the Lyric Theater downtown.

One summer, one of the Bishopville area watermelon farmers wanted to eliminate the middle man by transporting his wares directly to markets in New York. He invited young Doc Blanchard along for the ride. When they arrived in New York City, a couple of street thugs threatened to steal the watermelons while the farmer turned his head.

“You can have them, if you can get past the man in the back,” Mary Elizabeth Blanchard retells the story. Of course, the young man guarding the watermelons was Doc Blanchard, who even at age 12 was built like Atlas.

Later, at Army, Blanchard became the first football player to win the Sullivan Award as the nation’s best amateur athlete. He could run a 100-yard dash in less than 10 seconds. As a senior, Blanchard decided to join the track team and threw the shot put 54 feet, which was just short of the world record at the time.

Dr. Blanchard surely saw a bright athletics future for his son in Bishopville. When young Doc was 13, his father told him he would some day be a better running back than the great Bronko Nagurski, who was a star at the time for the Chicago Bears.

But because young Doc was such a big kid, his friends in Bishopville usually were the older high school boys. That got the young Blanchard into trouble, and Dad thought it best to send him off to St. Stanislaus prep school in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

Upon graduation from St. Stanislaus, Blanchard played one season of freshman football at North Carolina and was drafted into the Army. After one year, he received an appointment to West Point from South Carolina Congressman John McMillan.

The three Army teams he played on did not lose a game, winning 27 and tying one, a scoreless showdown against Notre Dame in 1946. Blanchard was “Mr. Inside” in the Army tandem of running backs with Glenn Davis as “Mr. Outside.” Blanchard also played linebacker on defense, handled the team’s punting and kicking duties, and returned punts and kickoffs.

Blanchard won the Heisman Trophy in 1945. He finished his Army career with 38 touchdowns and 1,908 yards rushing. He and Davis were pictured on the cover of Time magazine in November of 1945.

Not long after the Heisman Trophy presentation in New York, Blanchard was honored in his hometown of Bishopville. Known throughout his life as a humble man of few words, Blanchard still stunned his friends in Bishopville by addressing them with one line, according to his sister: “Football players are like girls, they should be seen, not heard.”

Blanchard died in 2009 in Texas, where he had lived for years. He has never been forgotten in Bishopville, where the state of South Carolina named the intersection of I-20 and Highway 15 the “Felix A. ‘Doc’ Blanchard Interchange,” and three bronze statues depicting him as a young boy, Army football player and member of the military immortalize him in downtown Bishopville.

The inscription beneath one of the statues reads:

“We point with pride to young Doc Blanchard – one of the greatest names in football – our hometown boy who met success with modesty – a boy who fit perfectly into the pattern laid down by his dad. With memory of your father, with honor to your mother, Doc Blanchard, we salute you.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2014 at 9:00 PM with the headline "A salute to a hero: A Heisman Trophy winner at Army, Doc Blanchard was one of college football’s greatest athletes."