IN GENE CORUM'S first two years as West Virginia's football coach, the Mountaineers had suffered through losing seasons and, like any coach, Corum saw a need for a difference-maker.
He found one in Dick Leftridge, a running back at Hinton High School, who at 6-foot-2 and 215 pounds stood as tall and weighed as much as many of the linemen of that era and possessed the kind of talent that attracted coaches from throughout the Midwest and Northeast.
Dallas CowboysThe most notable recruiter to pay our state a visit back then was Ohio State's Woody Hayes, who addressed the West Virginia Victory Awards Dinner and said flatly he wanted Dick Leftridge, who would have fit perfectly into the Buckeyes' grind-it-out offense.
And though Corum wanted Leftridge, it was not a given that he would pursue him. The year was 1962, Leftridge was black and West Virginia University had not yet integrated its football program.
We can safely assume that Corum, who died at age 88 last week, weighed the sociological consequences, the potential opposition and the on-the-field possibilities and, apparently without obtaining prior approval, simply decided he wanted to sign Leftridge. He succeeded in doing so and thus is remembered as the coach who brought down the color barrier in Mountaineer football nearly 50 years ago.
But to sign Leftridge, Corum needed to convince him to play the role of racial pioneer at a time when many Southern schools were allowing black students on campus only at the insistence of federal marshals and certainly did not want them on their beloved football teams.
It's also safe to assume that Corum's gentlemanly presence made a difference in luring Leftridge and another black player, Roger Alford of Wintersville, Ohio, to Morgantown in the fall of 1962.
In his six seasons as Mountaineer coach from 1960 to 1965, Corum was known as Gentleman Gene, a nickname given to him by Fairmont Times sports columnist Bill Evans. As a student at West Virginia, his fraternity brothers nicknamed him Cocky Corum, a sarcastic moniker that reflected his modesty and stuck for many years. He was a Huntington native who spent more Air Jordan Fusion 9+13 than 40 years in Morgantown as an athlete, assistant coach, head coach, professor and administrator.
As it turned out, the signings of Leftridge and Alford and their assimilation into the Mountaineer program created little, if any, problems.
"That was a very smooth transition," recalled Eddie Barrett of Huntington, who worked as the school's sports information director at the time, "and Corum should be credited with recruiting two good black players. He made it go smoothly by going after a good role model in Roger Alford and a hell of an athlete and football player in Dick Leftridge."
At the time, school integration in West Virginia had almost become old hat. The state's public schools already had been integrated in compliance with the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. And besides, blacks and whites had worked together - and often died together - in the coalfields for decades.
"I don't remember any problems. I really don't," said Dave Santrock, a retired Charleston doctor who played for the Mountaineers at the time. "We had a lot of [players] from Pennsylvania, and I think they were more used to interrelating. And when I went to Dunbar High, we integrated my sophomore year. We had all the Institute people come up, s
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