© 2024 South Carolina Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

“B” is for Blanchard, Felix Anthony "Doc", Jr.

  “B” is for Blanchard, Felix Anthony, Jr. [1924-2009]. Football player, Heisman Trophy recipient. “Doc” Blanchard was born in McColl but grew up in Bishopville. As the son of a physician, townspeople called him “Little Doc,” a nickname that followed him for a lifetime. He played high school football at Bishopville and then at St. Stanislaus Prep School in Biloxi, Mississippi. In 1943 Blanchard was drafted, but was accepted for officer candidate school and enrolled at West Point. He was an All-American fullback on West Point’s teams from 1944 to 1946 and received the 1945 Maxwell Award as the nation’s top football player. Also, in 1945, he became the first junior to receive the Heisman Trophy and the first football player to receive the Sullivan Award as the country’s most outstanding amateur athlete. Anthony Felix Blanchard, Jr., was inducted into the National Football Foundation’s College Hall of Fame in 1959.

Stay Connected
Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.