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WILl
DAY
HONOR INC
A MICHIGAN
FOOTBALL
PIONEER
DETROIT - Willis Ward is a man lost to
time.
His gravestone, settled in the shadows of
three pine trees in the northwest corner of
Memorial Park Cemetery, has sunk beneath
the level ground here over the last 30 years.
It's barely visible from any distance, distin-
guished only by a small blue Michigan flag
planted at the corner.
Ward, a standout Michigan football player
from 1932-34, was laid to rest on Dec. 30,
1983, two days after his 71st birthday. His
story was buried with him.
The block 'M' flag was planted by Brian
Kruger, one of the loyal historians responsi-
ble for unearthing Ward's story and preserv-
ing his legacy. Kruger paced up and down
rows and rows of sunken stone markers for
three hours before finding Ward's plot this
spring. He didn't even see the gravestone
until he was standing on top of it.
Kruger bent down, pushed away the
grass cropped over the edge of the stone and
brushed off the dirt to unveil the forgotten
name: Willis Franklin Ward.
The name means something different to
everyone.
For Gerald Ford it meant his closest friend
at Michigan.
For Jesse Owens it meant his fiercest com-
petitor.
For the man himself, it meant being etched
in Michigan lore as the only player banned
from Michigan Stadium for the color of his
skin.
Harry Kipke knew a special athlete when
he saw one. And Willis Ward was special.
As a senior at Northwestern High School
in Detroit in 1930-31, Ward set the national
high-school record for high jump at 6-foot-
4 - for reference, the Big Ten-champion
heights were just clearingsix feet at the time
- and was named to the all-state football
team alongside Gerald Ford.
Ward knew playing football at Michigan
was just a pipe dream, since there were no
African Americans on the roster, so he was
bound for Dartmouth. But Kipke, Michigan's
head football coach, couldn't let that hap-
pen. He stormed into the office of Athletic
Director Fielding H. Yost and demanded that
Ward be allowed to join both the football and
track teams.
"There's some debate over whether it actu-
ally came down to a fistfight in Yost's office,"
said Michigan historian John U. Bacon, who
documented much of the Ward-Ford story in
his 1996 book "A Legacy of Champions."
"It at least threatened to come to blows,"
Bacon said. "By all accounts, the meeting
between the two was very pitched, intense.
Physical violence was at least a possibility."
Yost was Michigan's head coach from
1901-23 and 1925-26. He won six national
titles while compiling a whopping 165-29-10
record. But as Bacon points out, Yost, the son
of a Confederate soldier born just six years
after the Civil War, never played a single
black player.-
Kipke won out, with or without Yost's per-
mission, and brought Ward to Ann Arbor.
The college decision didn't come without
a price; the Ward family couldn't afford to
send two sons to college, so Ward's brother,
Henry II, went to work for the Ford Motor
Company instead of attendingaschool.
The relationship between Ward and Ford
has been well publicized of late, brought to
light by a documentary, "Black and Blue:
The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward and
the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Game,"
released this spring by filmmakers Brian
Kruger and Buddy Moorehouse.
During freshman orientation at the Water-
man Gym along North University Avenue in
fall 1931, the pair finally met. That day, Ford
and Ward struck up a friendship that would
span the rest of their lives.
Working alongside Ford, Ward became
the first African-American employee at the
Michigan Union, Kruger said.
After biding their time on the freshman
squad in 1931 - freshmen were ineligible
to play on varsity at the time - they both
earned a spot on the varsity squad the next
year. During their first round of spring prac-
tices, Ford edged out Ward for the Chicago
Alumni Trophy, given to the most impressive
freshman gridder every spring.
It was Oct. 22, 1932: Michigan vs. Illinois.
Harry Kipke motioned for Willis Ward to
join him on the sidelines. Kipke, Michigan's
fourth-year head coach, had the Wolverines
ahead 20-0 in the second quarter and had
already funneled in four substitutes.
Kipke gestured toward midfield and his
captain right end Ivan "Ivy" Williamson.
"Let's give Ivy a rest during the remain-
der of this quarter," Kipke said. "You take his
end."
Kipke knew the kid could play. Ward, a
sophomore flanker, had given the varsity
team fits asa freshman during weekly scrim-
mages against the yearling squad.
Ward couldn't contain his nerves or his
excitement. He'd toiled for years for this
moment.
"Are you all right, Willis?" Kipke asked.
"J-just let me g-get in there," Ward chat-
tered, "and I'll b-be all right, Co-oach, hon-
estly, I w-will."
Kipke relayed that conversation in full
two years later in a feature he penned for
the November 1934 edition of Esquire, then a
one-year-old men's magazine. Kipke's essay
posited: "The first hundred seconds of any
football game are always the hardest."
"Willis Ward's first hundred seconds were
a classic," Kipke wrote.
After Ward finally shirked the nerves
enough to get out a sentence, Kipke sent him
into punt coverage. On the snap, Ward burst
out ofhis stance and down the field, flying far
ahead of his teammates.
The punt returner started in Ward's direc-1
Lion, immediately realized his mistake and
ducked.
"When he was still ten yards from the
man, Willis sort of took of, like one of these
fast-climbing jet planes," Kipke wrote.
"Ward flattened out parallel with the
ground about six feet high and sort of
brushed the ball carrier's headgear and
sailed on over him into open territory where
vp
DESIGN: KRISTEN CLEGHORN,
MARISSA McCLAIN and ALICIA KOVALCHECK
4 FootballSaturday - October 20, 2012
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