ELMIRA, N.Y. – “She was a fine lady. She was very quiet, very unassuming, just always very well-groomed. Very pleasant," said Louise Harrigan.
Louise Harrigan spent a lot of time with Marie Fleming when Fleming's son Ernie Davis played football for Harrigan's husband at Elmira Free Academy. Davis went on to star at Syracuse University and become the first black Heisman Trophy Winner and first pick in the 1962 NFL draft. Friends say he was as special a person as an athlete, thanks to Fleming.
"A lot of his wonderful characteristics came from Mrs. Fleming," said Jack Moore, a classmate of Ernie Davis.
"She was very prominent in forming his ideas and what he thought about life and how he would deal with life," Harrigan said.
And also death. Friends say Davis and his mother were brave as Davis battled leukemia and died before the start of his professional football career.
Marie Fleming, mother of legendary football star Ernie Davis, has died. Fleming died Tuesday at St. Joseph's Hospital in Elmira. Our Kat De Maria talked with friends who remember Fleming as a strong advocate of her son and the Elmira community.
"She was a very strong person. And handled things beautifully.,” Harrigan said. “You could see she grieved over his illness and his death. But she handled it very well."
Friends say she also dealt well with Davis' fame. They say she avoided the spotlight but privately did a lot for the Elmira community.
"She had a public life because of Ernie, but I think she also did all these other things that I speak of because that's who she was," Moore said.
Like working with the Economic Opportunity Program and her church, among other things.
"She's been here for so long and she's been involved with so many things so she was always an integral part," said Anita Lewis of the Economic Opportunity Program.
…One friends say everyone will miss.
"To this community, it's going to be very sad," Lewis said.
"She's just a marvelous person and a loss to the community," Moore said.
But friends say Fleming herself may now have her peace.
"I'm sure she's very happy now she's reunited with her son," Harrigan said.
Arrangements for Marie Fleming are being made through the Kent Funeral Home in Elmira but are incomplete at this time.