Thursday, February 2, 2008
TriCity Record

Martin Conrad
Hartford’s Pro Football Player
(Hartford Michigan)

By Roy M. Davis
Paw Paw River Journal
 

      I’ll bet you never knew that Hartford had at least one professional football player!  Well, we did; and his name was Martin H. Conrad.  His father owned a hardware store in this city….way back in the day.  And the whole story came about because of the Pro Football Researchers Association (PFRA).  A man named Rich Bozzone does volunteer research on pro football players for that organization, and he got in touch with Emma Sefcik.  She is the curator of Hartford’s premier historical web site.     
      Rich was trying to pin down an obscure player from the 1920s in the Ohio-Kentucky area……our very own Martin Conrad.  His birthplace was listed as Hartford, Michigan.  Thus the contact.  Now we have several keepers of the flame of history in our area.  The aforementioned Emma Sefcik is one.  Another is retired Paw Paw River purveyor of fishing equipment Larry Blyly.  And, of course, I sometimes get queries about the past, because I have been writing this local column forever.
     Larry got in touch with our mutual friend, Bill Minshall, official gamekeeper and snow storm observer out in the Webster’s Hills area.  His Minshall family, the Chilcutts, and the Conrads were all close friends.  And the story unfolded thus:

     A man named J. Henry Conrad came to Hartford and opened a hardware store.  Located on the southwest corner of Hartford’s main intersection, the store was a fixture for many years.  When I was but a wee lad, I can remember going in there with my Dad.  In later years Henry Conrad was a huge man, and it was difficult for him to get around.  He held court by the cash register in an aged overstuffed chair with springs leaking out here and there.  A customer would come in and say something like, “Henry, I’d like a pound of 10 penny nails.”
     Conrad might shift his bulk a little and say, “They’re right over there in a barrel.  Get a sack under the counter and weigh them…..then just leave the money there by the cash register.”  And after completion of the transaction the customer might sit down and discuss local politics or the weather.
      After Henry Conrad’s death in 1933, the business became Chamberlain’s Hardware.  In its last reincarnation, it was a meat market and frozen food locker plant.  After the building was torn down, Kellogg’s Hardware next door used the corner as a parking lot, and now Mark Kellogg has expanded his business clear to the corner.
       I have heard that a famous fictional character was modeled after Henry Conrad.  Clarence Buddington Kelland wrote several novels about a small town merchant named Scattergood Baines.  A series of movies about him came out in the 1930s starring Guy Kibbe.  You can look that up on a web site!
      In 1895, Henry and his wife had a son named Martin.  He attended school at Hartford High and soon distinguished himself on the playing field. He then attended Kalamazoo College, where his football ability caught the eye of professional scouts.  Not only was he an exceptional scholar, making his way through law school and becoming an attorney, he played pro football for teams in Toledo, OH, Louisville, KY, and Cleveland, OH, from 1922 to at least 1925.  Finally settling in Cleveland, he practiced law there until his death in 1942.
      Now this next part of the story shifts back to Bill Minshall’s family archives.  Larry Blyly did some more digging and found that the Minshalls, Chilcutts, and Conrads were close family friends.  Fred and Thelma Chilcutt even named their oldest boy, Martin, after Hartford’s native son and pro footballer.  Fred, a 1927 HHS graduate and known as a very talented basketball player, was recruited for the sports program down in Ohio at a college by that same Martin who was by now most likely their Athletic Director.  However, Fred didn’t stay long…..came back to the Hartford area.

      And there is another interesting sidebar to this whole story.  Fred Chilcutt was one of those young men just larger than life.  I remember him well from my childhood.  He was a good friend of Ronald “Tink” Leach, our local civilian pilot and later owner of Hartford’s airport.  Tink always had an airplane (his Dad was Clare Leach, Hartford’s premier General Motors dealer).
      One day when I was a small boy, I heard an airplane passing over my Dad’s greenhouses. 
I ran out and, sure enough, it was Tink Leach’s biplane.  He was headed east, and as he passed the edge of town, a figure tumbled out of the plane....parachute blossoming and landed in Garland’s grape vineyard.  It was Fred Chilcutt trying his hand at sky diving.  I’ll never know why he did it....or how he felt afterwards.  But he gathered up the silk canopy and came walking into town carrying it.
      Perhaps Fred was one of those guys who must try life to the limits.  He did many adventuresome things, including a stint as a merchant seaman, before his untimely death at a relatively early age.  All of those people have woven golden threads into the tapestry of our lives along the Paw Paw River, including one HHS football player who made it to the pros!  And the fabric is of a richer hue for their having been part of it.

Photo courtesy of Bill Minshall.