Over the course of twenty-plus years of writing for publication, which includes a couple of biographical books and features and columns in both magazine and newspaper genres, I’ve done my share of interviewing folks, easily in the hundreds. While many have been local people — the type that country singer Miranda Lambert sang about in her 2007 release, “Famous in a Small Town” — others would be recognizable to a much larger swath of the country, especially to sports fans.
Those I’ve interviewed, of course, received something from me, since I was the conduit through which their stories could be told. But I’ve also received something from them beyond the gratification I’ve always gotten from seeing something I’ve written in print and being compensated for it. From the insights they’ve provided through their experiences, there are surely lessons to which I’ve been privy.
Of course, the most extensive interviewing I’ve done were with the principal figures of the biographies, local entrepreneur Harold Breidenbach and former University of Findlay football coach, Dick Strahm. While there were many others I interviewed when doing those books, theirs were the most dominant voices — voices I heard either in person or on hours of audio tapes I had them make and sometimes, it seemed while working on the books, even in my dreams.
As for those lessons, in both Harold’s and Dick’s cases, their stories were lessons in the power of tenacity, not only in their achieving career successes but also in overcoming such huge obstacles along the way to achieve them.
With Harold, there were countless obstacles he surmounted. As a child he was made a ward of the Hardin County Courts Juvenile Division and he trekked through three different what were then called children’s homes in Delaware, Galion and Maumee before his emancipation at the age of eighteen. That emancipation was the gateway to start his climb along with his new bride Dianna, whom he met in the Maumee home, to some pretty lofty places. They had success in their family, in the business world and also in the charitable work that earned him a Jefferson Award.
In Dick’s case, it was his overcoming three potentially fatal health consequences — stroke, heart attack and cancer — while on his way to coaching four NAIA national championship teams and earning induction into the College Football Hall of Fame.
For others to whom I’ve spoken, I remember gaining so very much perspective from so many: men such as former professional baseball scout Jim Martz; former Major League players Galen Cisco and Bill Sharp; former collegiate and pro football and basketball players like Jim Lynch, William White, Jim Otis, Chuck Ealey, Steve Grogan, Gary Gearhart and John McCullough; and accomplished former football coaches such as Gary Moeller, Hayden Fry, Dean Pees and, I’ll toss in the still-active multiple state-championship-winning Tim Goodwin.
From Jim Martz, I learned about the role that pride played in his success, so vital in his willingness to drive the thousands of miles year after year while scouting young players. That pride was evident in traits such as his attention to detail, his organizational skills and his punctuality.
In Galen Cisco’s case, it was his dual-sport history and the work ethic it took for him during his Ohio State years to be successful in both that became so apparent to me. Not only did he line up for Coach Woody Hayes in the backfield aside Heisman Trophy winner Howard “Hopalong” Cassady but he also pitched well enough for the Buckeyes to take his talents onto the Major Leagues for seven years, including playing for Casey Stengel and his Amazin’ Mets. And that was just an opening act for what would come later, a long and successful career as a Major League pitching coach, a career that included his coaching a two-time World Series-winning pitching staff in Toronto in 1992 and 1993.
From my interview with Chuck Ealey, who quarterbacked Portsmouth Notre Dame High School to an 18-0 record as a starter before quarterbacking the Toledo Rockets to an unblemished 35-0 record as a starter and then, as a rookie in the Canadian Football League, quarterbacking the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to a Grey Cup championship (the league’s equivalent of the NFL’s Super Bowl), I learned something amazing. The man to whom I spoke for almost an hour on the phone who had every right to be bitter over being passed over in the NFL draft during a time in the early 1970s when black quarterbacks weren’t deemed capable of playing the position professionally, remarkably, bore no hard feelings against those who excluded him.
Of course, as for Lima’s own William White, who took his football talents from the midget football fields of Faurot Park all the way to the Super Bowl, I learned how much grace and dignity one man can show after being told of an incurably fatal medical condition following what he must have thought was the most imperiling period of his life.
Despite the powerful lessons I learned in speaking to of all these individuals, there is one interview I conducted through a series of emails with one man which impacted me on a very deep level, and I’ll tell you who that person was and why it impacted me so profoundly next week.
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
