Kern inducted

Congratulations again to Rex Kern for being inducted tonight into the College Football Hall of Fame.

I grew up about a block from the Kern family right between his father's barber shop and uncle's shop down the street.

Here's an excerpt from Buckeye extra

"I recalled that from pee-wee football," Kern said. "One time at practice the coach told me, 'Rex, this time don't give the ball to the halfback.' I faked it and the whole team tackled (the back), and I ran around the corner and there was nobody there. I thought that was pretty cool."

and

And it all started for Kern on the playground of Lancaster's West Elementary.

"He lived right next to the school, and he would go over there and play all the time," said Earl Jones, Kern's football coach at Lancaster High. "He would play with kids two years older than him, and I think that's where he learned to be such a competitor."

Jones said he thought Kern got some fighting spunk from his mother, Jean, a former high school athlete. Kern's father, Trenton, ran a barber shop on West Sixth Avenue and was a disciplinarian who "didn't baby his kids," Jones said.

Rex was legendary in my neighborhood and I can still remember games where we would try faking handoffs and pitchouts just like Kern did over a decade earlier.

If you go to the playground at West Elementary you learn something else about Kern's upbringing. You learned not to be tackled unless you wanted to pull gravel out of your arms & legs.... Part of that hard life.

Growing up on the west side of Lancaster was never easy. The one good thing was your friends were too scared to come into the neighborhood to toilet paper your house at night.

As I've said in the past, for years I tried to "run away" from my hometown because it was "small". But as I've matured, I'm clear the only one who was small was me. Everything that I am today, I owe to people like the Kerns and the workers from the Anchor Hocking plant who coached our little league and pee wee teams.

For me, Kern's induction to the Hall is a vindication of every thing that is good about life on the west side of Lancaster.

Congratulations Rex.