MANSFIELD — It’s been nearly a century since Mansfield legend Pete Henry signed his first pro football contract with the Canton Bulldogs. When it happened, on Sept. 17, 1920, it was headline news in both Canton newspapers.
“Giant Tackle Casts Football Fortunes Here; Henry Comes Into Kennel of Bulldogs,” the Canton Daily News blared.
At the bottom of that story was a footnote about Jim Thorpe founding the American Professional Football Association. Two years later the league was renamed the NFL. Ironically, today the NFL is the most successful professional sports league in North America.
Yet even the most hardcore pro football fans would struggle to recognize Pete Henry’s name.
That thought would be blaspheme to those who saw the Mansfield Senior star in action. A two-way tackle, Henry was a 235-pound wrecking ball who dominated both lines of scrimmage. He’s also earned a chapter in a new book on Ohio’s greatest players, Ohio’s Autumn Legends, available at Amazon.com and Main Street Books.
“(Pete Henry was) the greatest lineman of all time and one of the most remarkable performers ever seen on a gridiron,” proclaimed Walter Camp, who fashioned the first and most prestigious All-America teams.
Camp’s opinion was the consensus of the day, and was shared by the nation’s foremost sportswriter, Grantland Rice.
“The greatest of all tackles, according to old-timers who still remember, was ‘Fats’ Henry,” Rice wrote. “He was a human rubber ball.”
The only child of Ulysses and Bertha Frank Henry, Pete was born in Mansfield on Oct. 31, 1898. He carried a heavy build throughout life, but maintained surprising speed. He was clearly the school’s best all-around athlete, but had little help on the football field. The Tygers managed just six wins in his sophomore and junior years. Then, as a senior in 1914, he led Mansfield to an 8-1 record.
Today Pete would’ve been a national recruit. Even then he should’ve at least drawn the attention of Ohio State. But he wanted to carry the ball, as he frequently did in high school.
So, he walked on at Washington & Jefferson College near Pittsburgh. But Henry never got the chance to carry the ball. Coach Bob Folwell spied the huge specimen and immediately put him on the line. He also made the Mansfielder into a three-time All-American.
By the time he turned pro, in 1920, Henry ignited a free agent frenzy. He signed with the Bulldogs for two reasons. He wanted to play with Jim Thorpe, and it was close to home in Mansfield.
Pete was an all-league tackle as a rookie, All-Pro his first five years in the game, and one historian made the case he could’ve been NFL MVP in 1923 if the award existed at the time. He was the Paul Bunyan of the NFL.
In 1922, Buffalo, quarterback and player-coach Tommy Hughitt determined to run right at Henry.
“Everyone rack him up at once. We’ll show him whose boss!” Hughitt said, according to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Buffalo lineman Lou Little, who later coached at Columbia, picked up the violent scene from there.
“This proved to be a bad mistake. Henry met the (first) play head-on. Using those huge hands of his and his tremendous, active body as only he could, Henry telescoped (end Heinie) Miller, myself, and (guard Swede Youngstrom), hurling the three of us into Lud Wray, our center, Little said.
“Then he plowed through and hit Hughitt, the ball carrier, like one of those baby tanks. Needless to say, the plays went around the other side of the line for the rest of the game.”
Henry’s domination on both lines of scrimmage and his tremendous kicking led the Bulldogs to the 1922 and 1923 NFL championships. In 1923 he finished second in the NFL scoring chase with 59 points. Pete scored in a variety of ways with nine field goals and an NFL-best 26 PATs.
Canton boasted a 25-game unbeaten streak during this stretch, outscoring foes 430-36. While history identifies Thorpe with the Bulldogs, he wasn’t part of either NFL championship, nor the league-best 25-game unbeaten streak, which is still a record.
An injury-marred 1927 season saw Henry divide time between the New York Giants and Pottsville Maroons. He finished his career as Pottsville’s player-coach in 1928 at the age of 31.
Later he was athletics director at Washington & Jefferson and eventually died of diabetes at home on Feb. 7, 1952.
In 1951, Henry was part of the 53-man inaugural class of the College Football Hall of Fame.
In 1963, 11 years after his death, he was one of 17 men in the first class inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
That makes Henry one of only eight men, and the only Ohioan, to be a charter member of both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, joining Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Don Hutson, Bronko Nagurski, Sammy Baugh, Ernie Nevers and Dutch Clark.
Like so many linemen who followed him, Pete’s brilliance was lost in time.
In 1953, a group of Pete’s Mansfield Senior classmates approached the school to name its new gym for Henry. The board of education obliged and when a new school was built in 2004, its gym retained his name.
When Henry died, Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph sports editor Harry Keck wrote, “For all his poundage, he was speedy and amazingly mobile. He was immensely popular with teammates and opponents alike, and I can still see his chuckling, dimpled smiles. Playing football never was tough for him, rather it was child’s play.”
