By: JON SPENCER (MansfieldNewsJournal.com) —
WILLARD — Frank Chapman has been around long enough to call Willard legend Jim Langhurst “kid.” But it meant more to be able to call him an honorable man and friend.
Chapman’s friend was laid to rest Tuesday, leaving a gaping hole in the heart of his Huron County hometown and Ohio State football historians scrambling to find Langhurst’s successor as the Buckeyes’ oldest living captain.

It was a distinction — his captaincy, not his longevity — that meant the world to him.

“I have an obsession when it comes to that,” Langhurst once told me during the two or three times we would talk during each OSU football season. “If any publication writes up a boy or girl, and he or she is a captain of their team, it should be so announced.

“It’s the greatest honor a guy or girl can have.”

Langhurst would have turned 90 in February. Chapman, who remembers Langhurst’s exploits before he became an Ohio State MVP, celebrates his 91st birthday on Jan. 9.

“I was a year ahead of Jim in school,” Chapman said. “He went to Willard, I went to New Haven (which later consolidated with Willard). He was one of the greatest athletes around. He held a lot of records, just about everything you could think of.”

Langhurst’s grandson, the one who bears his first and last name, stood toe-to-toe and point-for-point with all-time Ohio scoring leader Jon Diebler in a basketball shootout three seasons back. They had matching 55s as Willard prevailed 101-98 in a district tournament game for the ages.

For Chapman, that must have set off all sorts of flashbacks — pardon me, Flash-backs — of the spectacle grandpa Jim made of himself 70 years earlier as a Crimson Flash.

Langhurst was the first athlete in Willard history to win 12 varsity letters (football, basketball, track) and the first to win a state track title, thanks to his 1937 performance in the 200-yard low hurdles.

He was senior captain in all three of his sports, led the basketball team in scoring three years in a row and scored a state-best 130 points as a junior fullback on the football team.

“I didn’t get many chances to see him play,” Chapman lamented, “because there wasn’t much transportation in those days. You had an old car and you saved it to see your girlfriend.”

Langhurst couldn’t argue with that logic. He and his favorite girl, Janis, were married for nearly 67 years.

In that time, Langhurst could probably count on one hand the captain’s breakfasts he missed during homecoming weekend at Ohio State.

That tradition, along with awarding gold pants to players after wins over Michigan, was started by Langhurst’s coach, Francis “They put their pants on one leg at a time, just like us” Schmidt. Langhurst never received one of those fashionable trinkets and Schmidt, who started out 4-0 in the rivalry, ultimately lost his job to Paul Brown because of three straight losses to the Wolverines.

While Langhurst left OSU gold pants-less, he earned the everlasting admiration of 1940 Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon of Michigan.

Harmon locked up the award by rushing for 139 yards and two touchdowns and completed 11 of 12 passes for two more scores in a 40-0 rout of OSU in 1940. When Langhurst caught up with him years later at a banquet in Columbus, he joked it was nice to meet Harmon face-to-face after only seeing his backside during the game.

“Jim,” Harmon said, “I won the Heisman, but I’d give it up for what you’ve got — a Big Ten championship and being elected captain.”

Langhurst cherished that exchange and the chance in 2001 to represent past OSU captains during a midfield ceremony to rededicate Ohio Stadium. Langhurst and two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin were the only former Buckeyes asked to participate.

“No one was a more passionate Buckeye or more proud of the Ohio State tradition than Jim,” coach Jim Tressel said Sunday after the team’s awards banquet. “His commitment to the program during his playing days and ever since has given him a special connection with the Buckeyes teams throughout history.

“One thing that truly impresses our players today is how much love and care former players still put into the program. Jim Langhurst exemplifies that type of effort.”

Langhurst was a three-time honorable mention All-American for the Buckeyes. He was voted team MVP in 1938, the same year he led the Big Ten in scoring. In 1939, the Buckeyes won a Big Ten championship, in part because of his effort as the all-conference fullback.

But nothing meant more to Langhurst than being named the Buckeyes’ only captain in 1940, a singular honor that has gone the way of 300-yard passing games at Ohio State. Most years, OSU names four.

“I always thought there should be one or two captains — one on offense and one on defense,” Langhurst said. “In 1982, they had six captains. Evidently, that team needed a lot of help.”

Langhurst had a playful wit about him, no doubt encouraged by his years of college football officiating with the late Joe Romano, a Hall of Fame athlete and official from Mansfield and serial jokester.

Langhurst was head linesman in the 1970 Rose Bowl, the 1973 Sugar Bowl and the 1975 Orange Bowl. He loved to tell the story about the Notre Dame lineman who lost his false eye during the Sugar Bowl. Timeout was called to retrieve the fumbled orb.

Asked by Langhurst what he would have done had something happened to his good eye, the player replied, “I would have become an official.”

Chapman, a retired banker, and Langhurst, who ran his own insurance agency, forged their friendship through business ties in Willard. Chapman’s bank sponsored a basketball banquet each year and it was his job to come up with a guest speaker. Once he asked Langhurst to get him OSU coaching icon Woody Hayes.

“I told him, ‘You’re in trouble if you don’t, because then you’ll have to get up and people will have to listen to Jim Langhurst,’ ” Chapman said. “He came in the bank a couple of days later and said, ‘I got Woody, but it took a lot of talking.’

“Nobody could talk like Jim could.”

Or run, jump, hurdle or, with the possible exception of his grandson, shoot like him either.