Scott Colby, the Toronto Star editor who oversees commentaries — and who in my dealings was always incredibly gracious — recently wrote an insightful story about how a high school coach taught him about leadership, shaped his character, and made him a better person.
Colby was captain of his high school football team when Coach Henderson chewed him out after his team took a warm-up lap while he leisurely jogged around the track chatting with a teammate, a football tucked under his arm.
“Scott, that was unacceptable. From now on, if you don’t finish first every time we run laps, you are off the team. Understood?”
Colby took the lesson to heart, which influenced him later in life as both a parent and a coach himself. “I knew he was right,” Colby recalled. “I was a captain. I’d been a captain before. I knew better. I needed to lead by example.”
The Ulysses Curtis I Didn’t Know
Colby’s story immediately triggered my memories of Ulysses ‘Crazy Legs’ Curtis, a junior high gym teacher when I attended what was then known as Toronto’s Talmud Torah Hebrew Day School.
Talmud Torah’s focus was on academics, with an emphasis on math and science — subjects where I was woefully inadequate. The school didn’t regard what was then called physical education, or “phys ed,” as a bona fide discipline, so it didn’t require an accredited educator to teach the class. That’s how and why Curtis got himself hired.
All I knew about Curtis was that he had once been a running back for the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League, which at the time didn’t strike me as all that impressive. Growing up in Toronto, we watched the Buffalo TV stations whose signals beamed clear across Lake Ontario. I followed American football, which had better players and four downs instead of the CFL’s three. Canadian football too often meant two plays and then a punt.
Boring!
My first gym class with Curtis was more than a half-century ago, but I remember it like yesterday. He ran us through a few drills to test our fitness level and didn’t hide his disgust.
Curtis lined us up against the wall, glared with contempt, and bellowed: “You boys are the poorest excuse for the male species I’ve ever met.”
Then came the lesson that stuck: “When you boys grow up, you’re going to want to sleep with girls. And before any girl will sleep with you, she’ll want to know how many pushups you can do.” Curtis assured us we were all destined to a life of celibacy.
I feared and respected Curtis, who I saw as the epitome of manhood. He was muscular and intimidating, someone you’d instinctively call “Sir” without hesitation. His bulging arms were bigger than most people’s legs. I was just awakening to an interest in girls and wasn’t keen to risk a celibate life — particularly since the priesthood wasn’t a viable option.
The night after that first class I began doing pushups, eventually working up to 125 a day: two sets of 25, 25 one-arm pushups on each arm, and 25 “clap” pushups. I did so many pushups over the years I eventually fractured my scaphoid, one of the small bones in the wrist.
By freshman year of college, I’d become a minor gym legend. The maximum chest weight stack on the Universal Gym machine was 255 pounds. I not only benched the entire stack, I did multiple sets of reps.
“You gotta watch this guy,” I once overheard, “he’s insane.”
That bench press prowess? Courtesy of Ulysses Curtis.
A Canadian Football Legend
Reading Colby’s piece took me down memory lane. I knew Curtis had died, but it wasn’t until this morning that I learned how legendary he was.
Curtis wasn’t just a former Argo; he was long believed to be the team’s first Black player until 2021, when it was revealed he was actually the second, following Ken Whitlock, an American-born halfback and kicker who played four games for the Argonauts in 1948.
Curtis played from 1950 to 1954, helping the team win two Grey Cups, the CFL’s Super Bowl equivalent. Until 2013 at least, he ranked fourth on the Argos’ all-time rushing list with 3,712 yards, amassed in only 529 attempts — a remarkable 7.0 yards per carry. He also held the second-best single-game rushing total in team history with 208 yards. Curtis was named an All-Time Argo by the club in 2005.
“On the field Ulysses was one of the best natural runners I have ever seen,” former teammate Nick Volpe told the Canadian Press. “His nickname Crazy Legs came to be because when he ran his knees would go so high that he would sometimes knock the ball out of his own hands.”
Volpe added that off the field Curtis was “very quiet and very intelligent. My locker was beside his for a couple of years and I always enjoyed listening to his perspectives on life. He will be missed.”
As reported by the Toronto Star and recounted by blogger Andrew Bucholtz, Curtis retired in 1954 due to a knee injury and went on to become a renowned educator in the North York public school system for some 30 years — one of the first Black teachers in what was then an independently chartered borough.
One former student remembered Curtis as “a gentle giant with arms on him like Goliath” — a “tough fellow, but always fair.”
Curtis’s obituaries made no mention of his brief stint at Talmud Torah (he taught only for a year).
Michigan Native
Curtis was born in Albion, Michigan, part of the greater Battle Creek region and less than 20 miles from historic Marshall, where Governor Gretchen Whitmer spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars destroying fertile farmland and century-old trees so Ford could build an electric battery plant.
According to Albion historian Frank Passic, Curtis was born in 1926. His parents, Will and Frances (Hall) Curtis, came to Albion in 1922 from Jeffersonville, Georgia. The elder Curtis worked at the Albion Malleable Iron Company. A World War I veteran, he died of pneumonia in 1930. A local American Legion post was named for him, as he was the first Black World War I veteran to die locally.
Curtis attended Albion public schools and was active in basketball. He graduated in 1944, then served in the Navy from 1944 to 1946. After his tour of duty, he attended Florida A&M University, where his brother Tom was already playing football. Encouraged to walk on as a tryout, Ulysses became an All-American in his second year and was later offered a position with the Argonauts.
Experienced Racism
Curtis reportedly earned about $200 for each regular season game, with more in bonuses; earning money in the off-season was far more difficult. In 1950, a newspaper story headlined “Crowd Caresses Curtis — He Wishes a Boss Would” explained how even a superstar like Curtis couldn’t find a job in Toronto after football season.
He moved back to Albion each off-season to work at Corning Glass. Warren Curtis, his son, said his father thought it was important for the first Black Argonaut to succeed and took pride in being respected in Toronto.
“He set a good standard for people to follow,” Warren said.
Curtis experienced racism in his early days in Toronto. In a 2004 interview, he said it “wasn’t extreme. You weren’t turned out of a restaurant, but you’d find it other ways. If you were interested in renting a property, then showed up and the owner saw you were Black: ‘Sorry, it’s been rented.’”
Buried in Albion
Curtis died October 6, 2013, at age 87, and was buried in Albion. A Canadian Press obituary said he was survived by two siblings, his wife Catherine, their three children, six grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.
Next time I’m in Michigan, I’ll drive to Albion to pay my respects. Perhaps one day I’ll even have the honor of meeting some of Curtis’s descendants — and demonstrate his influence by dropping to the floor for 25 pushups.
I’ve aged, but I’ve kept my pushup prowess. Alas, I’ve yet to meet a woman who demanded a demonstration.