ACC 101: Charlie 'Choo Choo' Justice was a Movement

© Tim Peeler, 2019

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Choo Choo Justice at NC State's Riddick Stadium.
[Hugh Morton photo.]

• Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice was the first Russell Wilson, a talented guy with a big heart who was just too small to make it big in football. He did it anyway.
  
• The spindly 165-pound halfback remains the most popular and accomplished football player the state has ever produced (with apologies to Wilmington’s Roman Gabriel and Sonny Jurgensen) and ranks with David Thompson, Michael Jordan, Richard Petty, Catfish Hunter and maybe Floyd Patterson as the most accomplished athletes born in the Old North State. In 1999, Sports Illustrated ranked him the No. 14 best athlete from North Carolina, which is utter bull----.
• He was the first person elected to the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, as part of the class of 1963.
   
• A native of the Emma community in Asheville, Justice achieved legendary status at Lee Edwards High School, as he led the team to back-to-back state championships, in which the team outscored its opponents 300-6. In 1942, he averaged 265 rushing yards per game. In his high school career, he averaged 18.6 yards a carry.
• Choo Choo never wore a facemask, in high school, in college or in professional football.
• For a couple of years after his playing career was over, Choo Choo joined North Carolina’s Woody Durham on the Tar Heel Network as a play-by-play analyst, but he just didn’t have the natural booming voice needed to make it on the radio. “Charlie’s biggest problem was not that he didn’t know football,’’ Durham said Friday. “But he had a real high-pitched voice, a voice in the minds of a lot of people that didn’t fit the legend.’’ Even his voice was too small.
• During World War II, Justice enlisted in the U.S. Navy and he became a football star at the Bainbridge Naval Training Center in Maryland. That’s where he got the name “Choo Choo,” because of his ability to avoid tacklers. “He looks like a runaway train,” one of the officers said, “we ought to call him Choo Choo.” And they did.
• After the war, Justice was already a star, even though he had yet to play college football. He turned down a professional contract and considered Duke, UNC and South Carolina, but ultimately went to Carolina because it was the only school that agreed to his recruiting demand: His tuition would be paid by the GI Bill and his athletic scholarship would go to his wife Sarah.
• He entered UNC as a 22-year-old freshman and became one of the most highly decorated and, some say, highest paid, walk-ons in college football history. He wore No. 22 throughout his college and professional careers.
• Justice ran, threw and punted his way to UNC greatness in head coach Carl Snavely’s single-wing offense. He owned more than 80 of UNC’s football records after his four-year career ended. His total offense records lasted until 1994.
• He led the nation in punting in 1948 with a 44.1 yard average and helped the Tar Heels reach the highest ranking in school history, No. 3, with a 9-1-1 record. His greatest game came against Georgia, in which he amassed more than 300 yards in total offense.
• He was more than a performer. He was a movement. “It was the perfect time,” he said in a 2000 interview with the Charlotte Observer. “Carolina needed a star. Everyone had been through a war. Confined. There had been gas rations. The war was over, and people wanted to turn it loose a little.”
  
• When Choo Choo announced he was going to North Carolina after the war, NC State pretty much conceded any chance of being successful in college football, even with the surge of GI Bill enrollees. Instead, the school hired Indiana high school coach Everett Case to build a basketball dynasty. He immediately won nine of 10 conference championships (six Southern Conference and the first three Atlantic Coast Conference titles, a record that has never been matched in the South). That forced North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest to find their own big-name basketball coaches to compete.
   
• He was named the Most Valuable Player in the 1950 game between the College All Stars and the Philadelphia Eagles, leading the college kids to a 17-7 win over the professionals.
• He was twice named consensus All-American and was twice voted runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. Army’s Glenn Davis, Stanford’s Andrew Luck and Justice are the only players in Heisman Trophy history to be runners-up in back-to-back years. Davis was runner up in 1944 and ’45 and then won it in 1946. Justice was runner up in 1948 and ’49, while Luck was runner up in 2010 and ’11, but neither ever won the Heisman. Justice helped the Tar Heels go to two Sugar Bowls and the Cotton Bowl.
   
• Author Frank DeFord always denied that his novel, and the movie it inspired, called “Everybody’s All-American” was based on Justice’s life, which was a natural assumption given the main character, Gavin Grey, is an All-American and Heisman Trophy winner who played at UNC but struggles with depression and alcoholism in his post-football life. The movie, which stars Dennis Quaid and Jessica Lange, was going to be shot in Chapel Hill, but UNC’s administration turned down the studio’s request to film on campus. The movie’s setting was changed to LSU, which started rumors that the movie was based on the life of Tigers’ Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon. “Never met either of them,” DeFord said. “Don’t know anything about them.”
• Justice was so popular in North Carolina he could even fill up NC State’s Riddick Stadium. He never played there in his four years of college – even the Wolfpack’s home games during that era were moved to Kenan Stadium because of a lack of seating for the rivalry game. However, when Justice played for the Washington Redskins, NC State’s Wolfpack Club sponsored an NFL exhibition game between the Skins and the Green Bay Packers on Sept. 11, 1954. Carolina fans filled about 16,000 of the stadium’s 22,000 seats to see their football hero play, but Lisle “Liz” Blackbourn’s Packers whipped Joe Kuharich’s Redskins 31-3. Justice broke loose for a 21-yard gain, but Green Bay’s defense pretty much kept him under wraps. The game was sponsored by NC State’s Wolfpack Club, meaning Choo Choo raised money to help Earle Edwards’ program beat Carolina three of the next four years. State hosted four other NFL exhibition games in 1967, ‘68 and ’69 when its news home was called Carter Stadium and in 1989 when it was called Carter-Finley Stadium.
• Charlie and his wife Sarah were already married when they arrived in Chapel Hill. They lived at the Carolina Inn, which at the time was the school-provided housing for married couples at UNC. They had two children, Ronnie and Barbara. In the years after, following his professional football career, following his time in Greensboro as an insurance salesman, even as his iconic presence began to fade, that’s where they stayed when they returned to Chapel Hill.
  
  
• Justice played only 43 NFL games in an injury-hampered career. He was still named one of the top 70 Redskins of all time.
• In 1970, the University of North Carolina dedicated a section of its athletic center in his name, calling it the Charlie Justice Hall of Honor.
• Justice Street in Chapel Hill is named after him.
• The day after his death, the 22-yard-line at Kenan Stadium was painted blue in his memory and became a longtime tradition. It wouldn’t be surprising in the least if Brown, in his second stint with the Tar Heels, revived that tradition.

1952 Bowman football card.

A few nice things people said about Choo Choo when he died on Oct. 17, 2003, at his home in Cherryville, a day before he was supposed to attend a reunion of his “Justice Era” teammates. These appeared with the obituary I wrote of Justice for the Greensboro News & Record.

UNC teammate Bob Koontz

“He was a great athlete. He was a man of tremendous character. He was respected by every single man on our team, from the water boy on up. Throughout his career, he was one of the most unselfish athletes you would ever encounter. He would always deflect praise from himself to someone else. He was a friend of every man this squad. I think he was the greatest football player to ever come out of North Carolina and probably ever will.”

Former teammate Art Weiner

"Pound for pound, he was the best player there ever was. He was fearless.’’

Governor Jim Hunt

“I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice,’’ Hunt said. “He was my hero as a boy, even though I was an N.C. State fan. He was a great friend to me and to North Carolina during my time as the governor. He was North Carolina’s hero, probably the best athletic hero we ever had, certainly until David Thompson and Michael Jordan came along.’’

UNC football coach Mack Brown

“It's a sad day for the University of North Carolina and the state of North Carolina to lose a guy like Charlie Justice. Seldom do you ever come across someone who gave as much of himself as Charlie did, and he gave more than he ever took. He gave people -- me included -- so much. He can't possibly be replaced.”

UNC All-America tailback Don McCauley

“When I first go here as a freshman from New York, being a bit green and not reading the sports pages, I got down here and called back after the first week of practice.
I said to my dad, ‘Who’s this Charlie Justice guy that everyone is talking about?’ With that, my father said ‘Jeez, I hope I’m the first guy you mentioned this to. If not, be prepare to be tarred and feathered and dragged out of the state on a horse.’ That’s how big Charlie was. He was bigger than life to me. As I got to know Charlie over the years, my junior and senior years we had an opportunity to spend some time together and again, he was just an inspiration to me. Probably the greatest lesson I learned from Charlie was to put the team before yourself personally. I always admired how his teammates respected his abilities, but how thankful he was to be on the same field as his teammates. Over the years, he got stronger and stronger and the name got
as big as life. He will be missed.”

Former UNC golfer Harvie Ward, a classmate of Justice’s during the 1940s

“We had the archeology course one year and it was one of those course that didn’t have to spend a lot of time on. If the weather was good, Charlie and I would go down to the YMCA so we could watch the pretty girls go by. If it was a rainy day, we had to go to class because there was nobody out. I remember one day we tried to sneak into class after it started, and the professor noticed us and said “I’d like to introduce you all to Mr. Harvie Ward and Mr. Charlie Justice.’ They all just sat there and stared at us. I bet we hadn’t been to that class three times all year. Charlie was a great man. I never saw a bad side of him.’’

ACC Commissioner and former UNC athletics director John Swofford

“I’m not sure anybody ever made the connection between greatness and humility as well as Charlie Justice. If anybody has ever transcended generations in sports (at UNC) it is Charlie Justice.’’