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Stivers helped saved newest hall-of-famer from difficult life

Bob Logan runs the ball for Stivers in the mid 1950's.

Jean (left) and Bob Logan, while standing in front of Stivers High School, reminisce about the old neighborhood. They both graduated from Stivers in 1956 and later married.

Ron Alvey Jean (left) and Bob Logan, while standing in front of Stivers High School, reminisce about the old neighborhood. They both graduated from Stivers in 1956 and later married.

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Updated 1:21 PM Sunday, October 11, 2009

MEDWAY — Before Stivers High School decided to enshrine him as one of its most storied athletes ever — more than just an all-city football player, he’s become a hard-nosed legend of Tiger reclamation — the school helped save him.

That’s why, as Bob Logan has looked forward to his induction into the Stivers High Athletic Hall of Fame today, Oct. 11, he’s also found himself looking back to a time when teenage trouble — and the incredulous penalty it drew — was giving any hope of glorious accomplishment by him a solid stiff-arm to the snoot.

Growing up poor in the 1940s and early ’50s, he lived in the hardscrabble Fifth Street neighborhood near Stivers on Datyon’s East End.

He can tell you about pulling a little red wagon up and down the railroad tracks picking up coal that fell from the passing trains and bringing it home.

He put cardboard in his shoes to cover the holes in his soles, and he remembers toting a kettle into the Rendezvous, an old Italian place at La Belle and Fifth, and getting 50 cents worth of spaghetti so his family could eat.

He said his dad was a rough man — “his discipline was bad news” — and died when Bob was 12. To support her son and daughter, Logan’s mom worked long hours as a waitress in the bars and eateries along East Fifth.

For a while, Logan spent all his free time at the Bomberger Center and the Boys and Girls Club. But when he turned 15, he began hanging out with a bunch of guys, most of whom cared little for sports, school or anything else constructive.

“We were standing around one day wondering what we were gonna do, and one kid says, ‘I got a brother in Newark, New Jersey. Let’s go see him,’ ” Logan said.

Without a cent in his pocket and just the clothes on his back — “I’d never been nowhere in my life” — Logan joined three other guys and hitchhiked to New Jersey.

“We spent a couple of days there, went over to Coney Island then thumbed back,” he said. “It was an adventure and it went pretty well — so then one of the guys said, ‘Let’s go to California.’

“I said, ‘Let’s go. We hitching?’ ”

The kid told him no, he’d get a car.

The four piled into a ’42 Chevy — Logan anchored in the back because he didn’t know how to drive — and they headed west. But near Martinsville, Ind., they ran out of gas.

“We went over to an abandoned farmhouse, smoked some cigarettes, and then we left the car along the road and walked into town,” he said.

Soon the local cops had them corralled.

That car the kid had produced — it was stolen.

Turning point

“Times were different then,” the 73-year-old Logan said as he sat at the kitchen table of his home outside Medway the other day. “There was no phone call, no lawyers, no trial, no nothing. Nobody back home even knew where we were. The judge just sentenced us to six months in the county jail.”

After four weeks of confinement, a jailer let one of the kids go to a nearby store to buy a soda pop. Instead, he boy called his mom back in Dayton.

“Next thing you know here comes the lawyers, and after six weeks of us being locked up, all charges were suspended,” Logan said. “We were feeling pretty good until the G-people showed up and said, ‘You boys took a car across state lines.’ They handcuffed us and took us to the federal prison in Danville, Illinois.”

After another six weeks, they finally appeared before a judge who told the kids he was sending them to a correctional institution in Washington, D.C., until they were 21 years old.

“I almost flipped my gasket and passed out,” Logan said. “Then the judge said he was suspending the sentence and giving me two years probation.”

Once back at Bomberger, Logan wondered what he was going to do. The three other kids never did go back to school, and a couple would get into serious trouble later.

“I looked across the street at Stivers and decided to walk over,” he said. “Mr. (Floyd) Carpenter — he was the principal — happened to be there that day and I told him I wanted to go to school. He made me a freshman and, well, that moment changed me forever.

“Stivers High — and the sports I played there — pretty much saved my little rear end. It gave me new direction.”

That direction often led Logan straight to the end zone. Though just 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, he became a tough-as-nails, two-way football star for the Tigers, winning all-city honors as a junior defensive back and senior running back.

His games fueled newspaper headlines. He had touchdown runs of 75 and 70 yards — an 85-yard score was called back — against Wilbur Wright.

He led the Tigers to a stunning upset of Chaminade, which had won 49 straight games and, as Logan remembers it, “hadn’t lost to a City team in like 12 years.”

And then there was the game against Roosevelt. Logan was a little sophomore defender and ended up running face first — there were no face masks back then — into the helmet of a Teddy lineman.

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In their words

“Stivers High — and the sports I played there — pretty much saved my little rear end. It gave me new direction.”

— Bob Logan, Stivers High Athletic  Hall of Fame inductee

“That first Christmas he got more presents from her (my mom) than I did. She bought him a winter coat and a scarf because he didn’t have one, and he wore them everywhere.”

— Jean Logan, Bob’s wife on his first holiday with her family

The induction

The Stivers High Athletic Hall of Fame will hold its fourth annual induction ceremony and dinner today, Oct. 11, at the Presidential Banquet Center.

University of Dayton coaching legend Don Donoher and Bill Hosket Jr., the former Ohio State star, NBA champion and Olympic gold medalist, will serve as the masters of ceremony. The inductees include:

Joe Kitchen, Ray “Sheik” Otto, Larry Shadowens, Wilson “Jit” Lightner, Larry Ferguson, Kenneth Stiles, “Herbie” Schafer Jr., Marty Armbruster, Beno Keiter, Dale Fairchiild, Vern “Teddy Bear” Woods, Jerry Bohannon, Bob Logan, Sahara Ballard, Dick Landis, Bill Wikle and Rusty Young.

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Cool story.

Hal
1:59 AM, 10/13/2009

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PROOF READER ALERT: "Stivers helped saved newest"

PROOFREADER
6:05 PM, 10/12/2009

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I think Stivers missed one outstanding individual who coached at the school - Horace English. Ray Otto is also in the Miamisburg High School Athletic Hall of Fame

Nebraska Buckeye
12:13 PM, 10/12/2009

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Congratulations, to Larry Shadowens to his induction to Stivers Hall of Fame. He was my high school basketball coach when I attended Wilbur Wright H.S. Coach enjoy your day and may God bless you....Take care

Marcus McDowell
8:41 AM, 10/11/2009

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