Announcement
From The GAZETTE, by Rick Noland, Assistant Sports Editor.
Ron Brant only knows one way to confront challenges.
It's how he ran the football at Buckeye High, where he still holds 13 school records. It's how he dealt with his father's tragic death in a farm accident when Brant was 11 years old. It's how he moved on after losing his job, and it's how he'll address the crowd when he's inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during June 19 ceremonies at Buckeye. Straight on.
"He's tough, but you couldn't find a better gentleman," longtime friend and former teacher and coach Ermando Simmons said. "He's one in a million."
Locally, Brant is best known for his exploits on the gridiron, but he overcame an even bigger challenge in his personal life. When Brant was 11, he and his older brother, Larry, were riding on a tractor with their father, Frank. They were going up an incline when the tractor suddenly started tipping. Ron and Larry jumped to safety, but Frank was crushed and died instantly at the age of 42.
"It was a devastating period in my life," Ron Brant said of the March 1973 incident. It was Frank, a carpenter by trade, who had introduced Ron to sports. No longer would he be in the stands for youth games with the Valley City Packers, but his son could still feel his presence.
"I felt he was there pushing me," Ron Brant said. "He was watching me. It was a hidden motivation with me." Ron Brant needed that motivation even more when his mother, Kathy, remarried and moved to New York between his freshman and sophomore years of high school.
At that point, Ron Brant's older sister, Barb, who was 19 and newly married, became the legal guardian of Ron and Larry, neither of whom wanted to leave the Buckeye district. The youngest boy in the family, Terry, moved to New York with his mother and stepfather.
"Those were crazy times," said Barb, whose married name is Cereshko. "Trying to get them through school and starting a life of my own was tough, but we got through it."
They got through it, Ron Brant said, because a lot of folks helped out. For Ron Brant, two of the most important people besides Barb — "I can't say enough about her," he said — were an aunt named Rita Spero, who died of brain cancer in the mid-1990s, and Simmons, his sixth-grade teacher. Spero, Frank Brant's sister, provided many a warm meal and served as a substitute mom on many occasions.
"She just took care of me," Ron Brant said.
Simmons, now 76 and living in Palm Bay, Fla., still speaks with Ron Brant at least once a week and spends part of each summer living with Brant's family in Uniontown. Ron Brant, wife Becky and their three children, who range in age from 8 to 13, think so highly of Simmons they call him Grandpa. "You name it and he did it for me," Ron Brant said. "He was my dad. He took me under his wing, that's for sure."
Simmons, like Ron Brant one of those tough men who gets straight to the point, doesn't view what he did — and still does — as anything special. He was just helping out a kid who needed an adult male in his life. "He went through high school just about on his own," Simmons said. "He was over the house every day. He was a great kid. I never heard him curse, even to this day. If he said one, he said it behind my back."
Near as anyone can tell, Ron Brant's never done anything behind anyone's back. Whether losing his job at Consolidated Freight when that company went out of business or approaching the line of scrimmage with a football in his hands, Ron Brant has always dealt with things straight on.
"He was just a hard-nosed player," said Ken Woodruff, who was in his first year as Buckeye's football coach when Ron Brant was a sophomore and now serves as the school's athletic director. "He was a top-notch individual as well as a top-notch athlete. He was a great kid — the type of kid you built a program around. That's what we did. "He's the best I've seen at Buckeye. We've had some who were faster, but Ron Brant, pound for pound, was the hardest and best runner we've ever had."
During his Buckeye career, Ron Brant was a three-time all-county choice and Gazette MVP in 1979. He finished his prep career with 5,657 yards total offense and 59 touchdowns. As a senior, the 5-foot-10, 185-pounder rushed for 1,698 yards and scored 30 TDs as Buckeye went 10-1 and won an Inland Conference championship.
"We had to practice against him," said former teammate Darryl Chidsey, a defensive back. "If he broke through the line and I was facing him, it was not fun. He'd run you over before he ran around you." Added former quarterback Ken Engel: "Other teams knew he was a good back, but you could hear taunting when we were coming out of the locker room and going through warmups. You could hear trash talk. Then he would run all over them. He wasn't real flashy; he was just good. You'd sit there and say, ‘He got how many yards?' "
Ron Brant's talent earned him a full ride to the University of Akron, where he lowered his time in the 40-yard dash from 4.8 seconds to 4.59 and grew to 5-11, 205. He started at tailback as a sophomore and at fullback as a junior and senior, but his style never changed.
"I'd try to run people over," Ron Brant said. "If the referee was in the way, I'd run him over, too. I tried to elude a few people, but if I could get a good burst up, I'd try to take advantage of it and bull people over. "I'm a different person off the football field, but you get me on the field, you'd better get out of my way. If you're not the aggressor on the football field, you're going to get thumped."
That's Ron Brant coming at you, straight on.
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