Doc Blanchard was born on December 11, 1924 in McColl, South Carolina. He was given the nickname “Little Doc” because his father was a doctor. Blanchard played high school football at St. Stanislaus College in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. He played college football at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Army West Point, where he won the Heisman Trophy Award, the Maxwell Award and was the first football player to ever win the James E. Sullivan Award, all in 1945, when he was featured on the cover of Life Magazine.
He is the first and only South Carolina-born football player to have won the Heisman (George Rogers, Class of 2013, 1980 Heisman born in Georgia). Blanchard is so significant that The U.S. Army awards a high school player participating in the U.S. Army All American Bowl its highest honor “The Doc Blanchard Award.”
This award keeps his success, legacy, and life alive. Blanchard played himself in the 1947 movie The Spirit of West Point, served 25 years in the United States Air Force, where he retired with the rank of Colonel, and is a member of the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame (1961) and the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame (1994).
Photo Caption: UM Libraries, Special Collections, News American Photo. 1944 Army Navy Game in Baltimore, Md. Clyde Scott.