By Stefanie Loh
MORGANTOWN — Every football coach leaves his mark on the program. At West Virginia University, Jim Carlen was known as a strict disciplinarian, while Bobby Bowden is, unfortunately, synonymous with images of being hanged in effigy by irate fans in 1974.
But former Mountaineers’ head coach Earl Eugene “Gene” Corum will forever be known as the man who integrated football at WVU.
Corum, who coached the Mountaineers from 1960-’65, died this past Saturday of natural causes at a hospital in Frederick, Md. He was 88.
During his six years as head football coach at WVU, Corum compiled a 29-30-2 record and led the Mountaineers to two Southern Conference Championships, but will be best remembered for recruiting the first black players to WVU.
Dick Leftridge and Roger Alford were the first black Mountaineers, and both men played for Corum from 1963-’65. Leftridge, a 6-foot-2, 228-pound fullback, came to WVU from Hinton and is still 19th on WVU’s all-time career rushing yards list, with 1,701 yards.
He was selected by the Pittsburgh Steelers with the third overall pick in the 1966 NFL Draft.
Alford, a native of Wintersville, Ohio, was a three-year letterman at offensive guard. He went on to become a successful dentist.
The presence of Leftridge and Alford at WVU helped pave the way for a second wave of black players that included current Associate Athletic Director for Student Services Garrett Ford and John Mallory, a member of the WVU Sports Hall of Fame.
“Gene helped change the culture at the university to bring in black athletes,” Mallory said. “That is a monumental legacy. It was a big challenge on his part. He did it.”
Ford and Mallory played football at WVU from 1965-’67 and roomed together. Mallory was a defensive back from Summit, N.J., while Ford came to WVU from Washington, D.C., and left with 2,166 rushing yards, as the Mountaineers’ 12th leading rusher of all time.
Mallory and some of the white players who played at the same time lauded the way Corum integrated the team seamlessly.
“He did it so professionally, and in his gentlemanly manner, that it didn’t draw attention to Roger or Dick or the team,” said Athletic Director Ed Pastilong, who played quarterback from 1963-’65. “As a player, it had gone unnoticed to us. We did not realize the importance of it at the time.
“But that’s something that was quite an accomplishment for coach.”
Jim Sypult, a Fairmont native who lettered under Corum from 1964-’66, also championed the understated way that the coach introduced black players to the team.
“Quite frankly, I’d come from a white culture, and even in Fairmont (at East Fairmont High School) we only had one African-American in the school,” said Sypult, now the head football coach at Methodist University in North Carolina. “When I was at WVU, it never came up. They were just teammates.”
Mallory understands the risks Corum took in getting players such as himself and Ford to WVU, though.
“There were certain risks to that,” Mallory said. “With athletics comes more socialization, friendships born in the fire, things like that. All the things people didn’t like. He made up his mind to recruit black athletes. It took courage to do that.”
Mallory said Corum kept a paternal eye out for his black athletes, but he never played favorites with anyone.
“I wish Roger and Dick were around to tell (stories) about that, but with Garrett and I, I think (Corum) might have shielded us from some things, but we never talked about that. About race or anything,” Mallory said. “The only thing we ever talked about was football.”
Corum was married to his wife, Lucille Virginia, for 62 years.
He is survived by a brother, Edgar Corum; two brothers-in-law, William Steinbrecher and Walter Stein and his wife Carol; two daughters, Wilma Jean Polce and her husband M. Joseph Polce and Mary Katherine Gwynne and her husband J. Robert Gwynne; four grandchildren, four great-grandsons and one great-granddaughter.
A memorial service will be in Morgantown in the near future.
Donations may be made in Corum’s memory to the WVU College of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, P.O. Box 6116, Morgantown, WV 26506-9853.
