Dan Johnson ran out of his uncle’s house on the north side of Syracuse to play ball. The sun illuminated a perfect blue sky that weekend day in spring 1963.

The newspaper lying on the porch caught the teenager’s eye before he could make it down the steps.

Syracuse’s Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy as college football’s player of the year, had succumbed to leukemia at 23.

‘I just sat down, and I just remember crying my eyes out,’ Johnson said.

The sadness never left him.

To honor his ‘hero,’ Johnson, now 61 and still one of SU’s biggest fans, has lobbied Syracuse athletic officials for years to accept a statue of Ernie Davis as a donation. He’d find the donor and the sculptor. The university just had to say yes.

Finally, after more than three years of bureaucratic barriers, Johnson found a supporter in SU director of athletics Daryl Gross and a donor to fund a significant portion of the project.

The university will unveil the $200,000 statue Friday night at halftime of Syracuse’s nationally televised 8 p.m. season-opener against Washington. The school has not announced where the statue will permanently stand.

The Daily Orange first reported the statue’s possibility in September 2005 and its reality on Aug. 2.

Davis, a running back known as the ‘Elmira Express,’ directed Syracuse to its only national championship as a sophomore in 1959 and won the Heisman in 1961. The Washington Redskins selected him No. 1 in the 1962 NFL Draft and traded him to the Cleveland Browns to join former SU great Jim Brown in what was supposed to be the greatest backfield in NFL history.

But Davis, respected not only for his playing ability but his generous personality (he was even an acquaintance of President John F. Kennedy), never played a down. He was diagnosed soon after the draft and died the next year.

Universal Studios plans to release ‘The Express,’ a movie about Davis starring Rob Brown with Dennis Quaid as SU coach Ben Schwartzwalder, in October 2008.

Former SU athletic director Jake Crouthamel, who announced his retirement in November 2004, wouldn’t have any part of a Davis statue as he did not want to single out Davis. What about Brown and Jim Boeheim and Floyd Little and Roy Simmons Jr. and Dave Bing and the Gait brothers?

‘None of them won a Heisman, and all of them are lucky to be alive,’ Johnson said almost two years ago in an interview.

Johnson renewed his push when running into Gross at an SU basketball game in February 2005. Gross, who hung up a portrait of Davis in his Manley office soon after taking the job in December 2004, scheduled a brief meeting with Johnson.

The two ended up talking for an hour less than a week later. Gross, used to hearing all sorts of feasible and unfeasible proposals from fans, told Johnson the university would look into accepting a statue if Johnson could provide the funds.

Even though Johnson promised he would, his sudden momentum slowed to a halt.

Johnson was told the university’s ‘statue committee’ would look into the possible gift. Interviews with many sources from across campus two years ago determined there was no formal statue committee and that many university entities (University Art Collection, Office of the Chancellor, Office of Alumni Relations, Annual Giving, Gift Planning, etc.) had some sort of say in such a situation.

Eventually, Johnson’s son, Brian, secured a significant donation in the fall of 2006. Johnson would not disclose the donor or the percentage of his or her contribution.

The university appeared to take Johnson seriously once he started securing the funds.

‘I want to give a special thanks to Dan Johnson of Syracuse, who has been instrumental in helping this dream come to fruition,’ Gross said in a statement upon the official announcement last week.

‘The Syracuse community will be truly impressed as Ernie Davis will be remembered forever.’

Sharon Locke, founder and director of 24-year-old Beyond Creative Boundaries in Rochester, will erect the 6-foot-2 statue that will weigh 500 pounds before bronzing.

Davis will be wearing his No. 44 Syracuse uniform with a football in his right arm and his helmet under his left. The statue may become the first in Johnson’s dream of a statue park featuring numerous SU athletes.

‘I’m especially glad that it’s happening when his mom (Marie Fleming) is still alive,’ Johnson said.

Published on August 29, 2007 at 12:00 pm