BAY ST. LOUIS, MS (WGNO) – “The one question I get all the time: ‘Is it real?’ Yes, it’s real. And it’s heavy!”
Erich Hoffer, Senior Guidance Counselor at St. Stanislaus College, says most people are surprised to hear that the boarding school in Bay St. Louis has a Heisman Trophy on display. The Heisman belonged to St. Stanislaus alumnus, Felix “Doc” Blanchard.
“Doc was a boarder here,” says Hoffer. “He was sent by his father, who is also a graduate of the school, to get some focus on his academics. Turns out he was pretty good at football, too.”
Good enough to win the Heisman in 1945 as a junior, the first underclassman to win the award for best college football player.
Blanchard attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was part of the famous “Mr. Inside, Mr. Outside” duo of Army running backs, which included fellow Heisman-winner Glenn Davis. Blanchard was “Mr. Inside.”
“He was 6’1″. They say he was 208 pounds at his biggest, but, he could run like the wind,” says Hoffer. “The kind of ‘pound it between the tackles’ type of guy–three yards and a cloud of dust.”
Blanchard donated the Heisman Trophy to the school in 1989. He passed away in 2009.