Harvy Blanks (1948-2022) Took the Hard Road to Husky Hall of Fame

The UW back was a protest leader and a breakaway runner.

Harvy Blanks came fully loaded. A smoking gun. Always, verbal shots fired.

He was a running back the likes of which the University of Washington football program had never seen before.

Fast, brash and sassy.

Brought in from Chicago, Blanks moved at a much quicker pace than anyone who had ever carried the ball before for the run-minded Huskies. 

He likewise was an unfiltered personality who wasn't the least bit shy about getting in someone's face and saying exactly what he thought of you, and that included UW coach Jim Owens, who towered over him by eight inches.

His presence in Montlake led to some dazzling moments on the field for Husky football yet total angst away from it as the 1960s pulled to a close. 

On Feb. 6, Blanks died in Denver, eulogized as a successful stage actor but also remembered as a mercurial Husky football player who might have done more to improve race relations in the athletic department than anyone else. Certainly he disrupted football operations like no other player. He was 74.

Harvy Blanks had a turbulent UW football career / UW Athletics

Everything about the 5-foot-8, 185-pound breakaway back was sure to draw attention.

He loudly questioned why African-American players were treated certain ways and held secret meetings for them to air their grievances.

He appeared in a Life Magazine story in 1968 examining the growing unrest of Black athletes across the nation, photographed wearing a UW letter sweater.

Washington mourns the loss of Harvy Blanks.

“Harvy made an impact wherever he went, from the courage he showed back in 1969, to his long, successful theater career. He touched many lives in many ways and his loss will be deeply felt.” - Director of Athletics Jen Cohen

— Washington Football (@UW_Football) February 11, 2022

After an injury filled sophomore season, Blanks rushed for 121 yards against Rice in his first start in 1968 at Husky Stadium. He ripped off a 62-yard touchdown run in the next game against Idaho at home. At Wisconsin, he broke a 66-yard punt return for a score and moments later went 83 yards on a kickoff return without getting to the end zone. He was always a long run waiting to happen.

"I'm sure they expected him to be the star running back in '69," said Jim Eicher, a former UW running back who inherited Blanks' No. 29 the following season. 

With school publicists making plans to promote him for All-American honors in 1969, Blanks suffered a badly fractured ankle in spring practice when he was tackled by linebacker Clyde Werner.

"He could have been as good as anybody out there who ran the ball, including Napolean Kaufman," said Lee Brock, the late UW defensive tackle and a team captain. "He was that good, but his ankle snapped and he tore tendons. I'm sure that was part of Harvy's frustration — he would never be the same again."

The gruesome injury kept Blanks out of the huddle thereafter but not from a midseason revolt.

With the 1969 team losing badly and race relations suffering, Owens was roundly accused of mistreating African-American fullback Landy Harrell for making him run during and after practice until he quit.

Hearing the pushback, the Southern-oriented coach sat in a chair and met with his players, one by one, and demanded they give him a loyalty oath at practice. No more questioning his actions.

Defensive backs Lamar Mills and Gregg Alex, wide receiver Ralph Bayard and an injured Blanks, all Black players, refused. Owens suspended them. Thirteen players, again African-Americans, stayed home and didn't play in the next game at UCLA, a 57-14 loss to the Bruins.

This UW turmoil drew front-page newspaper headlines. Hearings were conducted and lawyers hired. Death threats were made. Owens' daughter Kathy was assaulted.

In front of the entire Husky football team in a meeting, Blanks did the unthinkable. He unapologetically challenged Owens to fight him.

To mediate the festering situation, the UW agreed to hire a Black assistant coach and form a commission to air racial malpractices.

Owens reinstated all but Blanks, who was considered a rampant trouble-maker.

It was felt he had gone too far with his challenge to fight Owens.

Blanks felt he had just cause, though he later admitted that particular action was too extreme.

"I loved the man when I first met him, his bigness, the grandness of the guy, the whole thing about him walking on water to work every morning, that whole myth," Blanks told the Seattle Times decades later. "I've never said this to him, but [with] everybody I know, he had that effect on the team. But he was just a racist and, to me, that's the tragedy of it."

Blanks and Owens eventually made peace, with the former running back permitted to play in the UW's 1974 Alumni-Varsity spring game.

The speedster briefly was a member of a Steve Spurrier-coached Chicago Fire in the short-lived WFL in his hometown, but he was never the elusive runner again.

Interestingly enough, while the four dissident players from 1969 were once branded as Husky outlaws, Bayard became a philanthropist and even a UW assistant athletic director, Mills a public defender, Alex a minister and Blanks the actor. 

This past year, more than a half-century later, they received induction into the Husky Hall of Fame — for their courage to put their football careers on the line and stand up to racial inequity.

Blanks was the ringleader, the loudest voice, the one who got your attention.

"Harvy changed us all," Brock once noted. "He deserves credit for that."

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