Johnny Bright: Feats/Feet of Strength

Originally written for the shuttered Frost Illustrated Newspaper

Arguably the Greatest of All Time, the G.O.A.T. of Indiana sports once punched out a charging dog to save a little boy’s life—on the way to his grandma’s house. Rick Stevenson is the Boy Who Lived who remembers Johnny Bright.

“We had the same common alley when I was a kid. I was around three years old, and Johnny was about 19 or 20 at the time. He lived on Hayden; I lived on Eliza,” recalled Stevenson.

“I was visiting my grandma that lived not too far from Johnny. There were these mean dogs in the alley that got loose, and one of the dogs came up to me to attack. Now, Johnny was in his backyard, sparring with his brother, who was a boxer.

“When the dog came up, Johnny came over and ‘smack!’ hit the dog and knocked [it] out. ‘Go ahead down to grandmother’s’ is what he said. That is a true story of Johnny Bright.”

Stories of Bright tend to sound made up. They are reassuringly not fiction.

Johnny Bright (Central, Class of ‘48) and Rick Stevenson (‘64) are both Central High School alumni; almost every kid from that Over-Gay-Street-Bridge area—Lewis Street, Division Street—went to CHS. The rumor went that the man who owned the Gay Street Bridge said in his will that he didn’t want it to be repaired, made usable again, later on. It was not.

The brother in the story could have been Milton, but all five of them boxed. The eldest, Homer Bright, born in 1927, joined the Navy in 1945 and served for 20 years. Johnny Bright came next then, after a new marriage, it was Alfred Bates, who was a real good distance runner. He performed strongman exhibitions, chest-pressing grown folk. Milton (‘55), brother number four, ran track and was all-city in football.

Charles Nathaniel “Nate” Bates (‘55) was the youngest; he played basketball, ran track and cross-country.

“I always thought Sam Sims was the best athlete in Fort Wayne,” Bates recalled telling Johnny, who just laughed. J.B. was around seven years older than Nate. “I didn’t look at him as a big individual, he was just my brother.”

Regular dude Johnny Bright loved fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes.

“He got off into Chinese food,” explained Nate.

Nate could not follow there.

Johnny would take his youngest brother to his Central football practices. Nate kept watching as older brother dominated all of college football, at the movies, when his highlights played during Movietone newsreels.

The Bright/Bates blended family lived on the 1300 block of Hayden Street. There is not a marker on that block or on any Fort Wayne city street allocated to his memory. (Least not yet.) When folks argue the case for Johnny Bright as the Indiana G.O.A.T., he competes against giants: Sam Sims, John Kelso, “Curly” Armstrong, Leslie Johnson, Tiffany Gooden. “That includes Oscar Robertson,” opined Stevenson.

Robertson (court name, The Big O) fronted Crispus Attucks basketball out of Indianapolis in the mid-1950s. The Big O went on to the NBA, ascending to the Hall of Fame. He’s still the only player to average a Triple Double (at least 10 points, rebounds and assists) for a season.

(Nate and Central actually played against Oscar and Crispus; Nate scored 22 points as a junior and 19 as a senior. A crowd of 15,000 attended one Central/Crispus tussle at Butler Fieldhouse. Jet Magazine reported on the game in ‘55.)

Another true story: Johnny Bright could touch a basketball rim with his elbow.

“He had to duck the backboard on dunks that were straightforward,” described Nate.

Johnny was asked to be a Harlem Globetrotter by player-coach Bobby Milton, who also was Fort Wayne-born, Central High-educated.

The Indiana G.O.A.T. threw no-hitters playing fast-pitch softball.

He also excelled at swimming and diving.

Central High pole-vaulter Roger Turner (‘71) tested one of Bright’s records.

“Bright pole-vaulted with a cane pole. The school record was like 12 foot, 3 inches. I pole-vaulted with a fiberglass pole and could never get those three inches. And he landed in sawdust. I had cushion. I don’t know how he did it.”

Years before, Johnny set the city grade school pole-vault record of 9’6” at Harmar.

A three-sport letterman at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny stopped playing basketball and track to focus all of his might on football. Bright led the nation in total offensive yardage as a sophomore and a junior. He was doing the same as a senior on Oct. 20, 1951 when Oklahoma A&M defensive tackle, Wilbanks Smith, leveled Bright with an elbow that fractured the halfback/quarterback’s jaw. It was Smith’s third attempt in the first seven minutes of the game to put Johnny down. Bright stayed in the game, throwing a touchdown to halfback Jim Pilkington a few plays later—with a fractured jaw. Then he came out.

The Oklahoma City A&M contingent waved off the elbow shot. Drake was riding a five-game winning streak. And it was “Mom and Dad Day” so everyone was keyed up, A&M’s coach reminded the press. It was a rough game too; players on both sides were carried off. Wilbanks Smith said he regretted the hit.

“Back then, the clock didn’t stop between plays. Totals are crazy in his time,” said Nate.

More chances for Bright to run, more chances to get got. Bright teammate George Smith overheard talk of how long Johnny would last in a Stillwater barbershop. The photographers, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for immortalizing the hit, were supposed to leave the game early; they only stayed because they too heard something afoul was coming.

Drake lost, 27-14. “The Incident” made the cover of Time Magazine.

Bright was the first black man to do many things; he knew his name headlined whispers and rants of how to derail him.

“You never hit a man that many times unless you do it on purpose,” he told the Des Moines Register. Nate Bates: “It got to a point that he accepted what happened to him was part of the American culture.”

Johnny weighed 205 pounds. He grew half an inch and his coat size increased from 42 to 46 his last year.

“I stop lots of fists,” he told the Register.

At Drake, Bright set 20 school records in basketball, track, and football. The Philadelphia Eagles made him their No. 1 pick in ‘52.

“[Johnny] was worried about the rough, possibly-racist NFL,” recalled Nate Bates.

“Johnny [became] the Jim Brown of the Canadian Football League (CFL) [instead],” said Rick Stevenson.

Except Jim Brown was never a 3-peat world champion.