“Bernie Parrish’s Lifelong Grief for Don Fleming: Remembering a Tragic Chapter in Cleveland Browns History”

When long-ago Browns safety Don Fleming died on June 4, 1963, so, too, did a piece of his good friend, and Cleveland teammate, cornerback Bernie Parrish.

That was apparent nearly 50 years after Fleming’s death when he was electrocuted in Florida while working an offseason construction. In a 2010 interview with me about the passing of three Browns players in a 4-1/2-month period that year, including also running back Ernie Davis and two-way back Tom Bloom, Parrish belied his tough-guy image by weeping throughout our conversation.

“All these years later, I still miss Don. I miss him a lot,” said Parrish, whose physical coverage tactics against Baltimore Colts wide receiver Raymond Berry was key in the Browns’ stunning 27-0 victory in the 1964 NFL Championship Game.

Parrish and Fleming were teammates at Florida. Parrish was a ninth-round pick in the 1958 NFL Draft and played with the Browns from 1959-66. Fleming was drafted in the 28th round a year later in 1959 by the Chicago Cardinals. But Fleming refused to report to the woebegone Cardinals and sat out the 1959 season. He asked the Cardinals to trade his rights, and that’s when Parrish got involved.

“I talked Don up to Paul Brown,” he said. “I told him what kind of player he was and how good he was and how he could help us. I asked him to work a trade with the Cardinals to get Don.”

The Browns head coach listened and brokered a deal to acquire Fleming. The two former Gators were reunited. Fleming played three seasons for Cleveland, being a starter right from his rookie year of 1960, and developed into one of the top young safeties in the NFL. He was slated to be a big piece of the back end of the defense for new head coach Blanton Collier in 1963 before the accident occurred.

On a hot, steamy early June day, when President John Kennedy was, sadly, in the last 5-1/2 months of his life, and just days before what would have been his 26th birthday, Donald Denver Fleming was laid to rest in his native Shadyside, a tiny East Central Ohio town located on the banks of the Ohio River. Thousands showed up to watch the funeral procession for their hometown hero, lining the Ohio Valley hillsides in sweltering conditions. The local folks wept, being joined by Parrish and every other member of the large Browns contingent who made the nearly 200-mile trek to attend, from owner Art Modell on down.

And as it turned out, Bernie Parrish really never stopped weeping until he died in 2019 at the age of 82.

In an interesting side note, Don’s younger brother, David “Ty”
Fleming, has Northeast Ohio ties. He played basketball at Kent State, began his coaching career at Trumbull County’s Newton Falls High School in football and basketball in the early 1970s, and then served as head boys basketball coach at Woodridge High School in what is now Cuyahoga Falls for one season in the late 1980s. He served two stints as head football coach at his alma mater of Shadyside High, playing home games at what was renamed Fleming Field in memory of Don, and is in the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

Steve King