By STEVE KING
Deaths of younger people — way before their time, as it were — are especially hard to take.
It’s even more so the case when the people are high-profile, such as sports figures, entertainers, politicians and media personalities.
There is so much potential that is never realized.
The recent passing of former Ohio State star quarterback Dwayne Haskins, a month short of his 25th birthday, was one of those occasions. It is reminiscent of what the Browns went through in the first half of 1963, having three players die in just 4 1/2 months. It is — by far — the most tragic offseason — the most tragic time, period — in team history, and among the most tragic in the history of sports.
Tom Bloom, a back from Purdue who was the latter of the Browns’ two sixth-round picks in the 1963 NFL Draft, was killed in a car accident on an icy stretch of I-70 near Dayton on Jan. 18, 1963 when he was returning to school with two friends from his home in Weirton, W. Va. He was 21 and had never even made it to Cleveland to meet his new teammates and coaches.
Then running back Ernie Davis, the No. 1 overall draft choice in 1962, died of leukemia on May 17, 1963. He was 23. A star at Syracuse, where he broke all of Jim Brown’s rushing records en route to becoming the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy, he was drafted by the Washington Football Team in 1962 and then came to the Browns in a blockbuster trade in exchange for Bobby Mitchell. Mitchell had been Brown’s runningmate in the backfield for four seasons but was switched to wide receiver by Washington and fashioned a Pro Football Hall of Fame career. Conversely, Davis never played a down for the Browns.
Two weeks later, safety Don Fleming, a Shadyside, Ohio native, was electrocuted when the boom he was operating on an offseason construction job in Florida struck a power line. He was a week short of his 26th birthday.
Fleming, who played collegiately at Florida, was a 1959 draft pick of the then Chicago Cardinals but refused to play for the struggling franchise. His friend and former teammate with the Gators, Browns cornerback Bernie Parrish, convinced Browns head coach Paul Brown to make a trade with the Cardinals to bring him to Cleveland. Fleming became an immediate starter for the Browns in 1960 and, by the end of his third and final season, was one of the rising young defensive backs in the league.
Fleming’s No. 46 and Davis’s No. 45 are two of the five retired jersey numbers of the Browns. Bloom might have also had his number retired, but he wasn’t with the Browns long enough to be issued one.
How good would those players have been for the Browns?
Sadly, we’ll never know.
