CLEVELAND (AP) After more than 40 years, the city of Cleveland has granted landmark status to the correct birthplace of John Heisman, the namesake of college football’s most prestigious player award.
The city council and Mayor Frank Jackson have corrected a 42-year-old error that erroneously marked a residence three blocks away from the site granted landmark status as Heisman’s birth site, Cleveland.com reported.
Heisman, a College Football Hall of Fame inductee, is regarded as the father of the forward pass and considered one of the greatest innovators of football.
Over four decades, Heisman coached at Oberlin College, Buchtel College – now the University of Akron – Auburn, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Penn, Washington & Jefferson and Rice.
Karl Brunjes, an official with Cleveland’s Landmarks Commission, said that questions surrounding Heisman’s birthplace started soon after the original marker was erected in 1978.
Brunjes told the city council that the confusion was caused by ordinances that changed how streets were numbered in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The historic marker, which has yet to be made, also will correct Heisman’s birthdate. The original marker listed it as Oct. 3, 1869, but a family Bible listed it as Oct. 23 of that same year, Brunjes said.
Heisman died in 1936 in New York.
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