Gridiron legacy
High school football produces plenty of legacies.
The seventh annual Butler Football Hometown Hero inductees have produced legacies of their own — well after their gridiron playing days were over.
Former Golden Tornado gridders Ed Hartman, Bill Rettig, Jim Lokhaiser, Chick Yates, Paul Smiley and Bill Parise will be officially inducted as Butler Football Hometown Heros the weekend of Oct. 15-16.
Hartman was a Butler quarterback and a three-sport standout with the Golden Tornado. He was killed in an automobile accident in 1983, two weeks after graduating from Geneva College.
To this day, Hartman is considered one of the finest individuals to don a Butler uniform in any sport.
"I wish I had a son like him. I wish every athlete was like him," legendary Butler football coach Art Bernardi once said of Hartman, "Eddie had all of the ideals you'd like to see in every kid."
The Geneva College football program annually presents the Ed Hartman Memorial Award to a player who exhibits leadership skills and a passion for the game similar to his.
Hartman's jersey No. 11 is one of only three retired numbers in Geneva football history.
Rettig went on to become a fullback-linebacker at Penn State. He took his passion for football and transformed it to watercolor painting.
A self-taught painter, Rettig has won regional and national awards for his work. He has held solo exhibits in Kansas City, Cleveland, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Charleston (S.C.).
Rettig was commissioned by Penn State University to do a watercolor portrait of Joe and Sue Paterno to commemorate the coach's 300th career win. Paterno was presented this portrait in front of 96,000 fans in a ceremony immediately following the 300th win.
Lokhaiser graduated from Butler in 1953 and began a now 51-year sports broadcasting career with WBUT in 1959.
He was the second-team quarterback at Butler in 1950, when the Tornado went undefeated.
"The varsity beat the crap out of us in practice," Lokhaiser said.
Besides broadcasting, Lokhaiser coached amateur baseball and was commissioner of the Butler County American Legion League for 30 years.
Yates was a two-year letterman in football at Butler who went on to Harvard, where he was a four-year member of the football team.
He went on to graduate from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1984. By 1992, Yates was Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery for the Cheyenne (Va.) Medical Center.
Yates has also been the vice-chair of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons Evidence Based Medicine Committee. His career has centered on adult hip and knee replacements.
"If I had a mission statement, it would be 'I help grandmas and grandpas walk,'" Yates wrote to the Hometown Hero committee.
Smiley was a tight end for Butler and graduated in 1968. He went on to play at the University of Maryland and coached the freshmen team as a fifth-year senior there.
Smiley retired in 2007 after a 28-year career serving as athletic director and football coach at the Kentucky School For The Deaf.
Before coming to Kentucky, Smiley coached football at Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C. — the only college strictly for the deaf in the world."I had no experience working with deaf people before going to Gallaudety," Smiley said. "I wound up doing motivational speaking engagements on behalf of the school and gave a speech at the Kentucky school."I loved that area and the school. I took a job there and never left."Smiley was 45-45 coaching football at the Kentucky school, which ended its grid program in 2002 because of declining enrollment."Back in 1918, football teams never huddled up," Smiley said. "Plays were called at the line of scrimmage. Gallaudet couldn't call plays at the line, of course, so they huddled up to call the play beforehand."That's how the huddle became part of football."Parise has enjoyed a stellar career in sportsmanagement and marketing, having represented numerous professional athletes in football, track and field, along with Olympic gold medalists.He has also been a CEO at YMCA facilities for 35 years. Parise led the Beaver County YMCA from a near bankrupt organization into one that has 11,000 members in a 72,000 square foot state-of-the-art building.Recently, Parise co-authored a book on the life of Steelers linebacker James Harrison.These six inductees will be presented on the field prior to the Mars-Butler football game Oct. 15. The Butler Football Hometown Hero golf outing at Hiland Golf Course and induction dinner at St. Michael's Hall will be Oct. 16.Call Kevin or Joni Vogel at 724-282-2543 for details on those events.
