Perkins, Tarver “Cy”

Tarver “Cy” Perkins – (1995)

 

Long before the days of cushioned all-weather running tracks and hi-tech equipment, Tarver (Cy) Perkins was a track and field standout-extraordinaire. He became so good in major college and Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) outdoor and indoor competition, Perkins missed a 1948 World Olympics berth to London by mere inches.

As a youngster in the Clearview school system, Tarver was often called “Cy Junior” in honor of older brother Cliff (Cy) Perkins, who also was an excellent athlete for Clearview High’s Clippers. “The school kids nicknamed my brother ‘Cy’ because there was a well-known veteran major league baseball player—Cy Perkins— during the time we were growing up,” explained Tarver. “But that nickname, which I learned to like, really ended up with me rather than Cliff.”

It was at Clearview that the “younger Cy” developed the discipline and dedication that would later carry him to world class heights in the cinder sport. During summer vacations in Lorain, teenager Cy would run from his family home on Elyria Avenue to Lakeview beach and back. Cy considered the six-mile round-trip jaunt “fun.” But it would prepare him to become the school’s first state champion in any sport.

Tutored by future college football coaching legend Doyt Perry at Clearview, Cy was a four-year track and basketball monogrammer. A popular and indefatigable student-athlete, Cy also found time to be active with the Dramatic, Glee and Varsity “C” clubs, as well as with the high school newspaper staff.

Although scoring consistently in the 440, 880, mile and relay events, Cy’s scholastic highlight was winning the Ohio Class B Division mile run title two years in a row at Ohio State University Stadium in Columbus. In guiding Coach Perry’s cindermen to respective third and sixth place state team finishes in 1939 and 1940, Perkins clocked a 4:34.7 mile as a junior and a state record 4:32.1 as a senior. Cy also finished a close third in the state 880 run. This came after he had led CHS to a record 91 1/2 points in the Lorain County meet. During his junior and senior seasons, he set school, conference, dual meet, county meet or district track meet distance records, including a school mile run standard that stood for more than 25 years.

Recruited by Sandusky native and Oberlin College grad Coach Carl Appell at Northern Illinois State Teachers College, Perkins won the first of his four IIA Conference mile run titles as a freshman in May, 1941. He became virtually a one-man track team at NI State Teachers, later to become known as Northern Illinois University. It was not uncommon for Cy to run the 440, 880, mile, two-mile and mile relay during one afternoon meet.

After leading the Huskies to track honors during the war years of 1942 (unbeaten that season) and 1943 (Cy ran a 1:54 880-yarder, second fastest in the U.S. that year), Cy, like many young men of that era, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in August, 1943. He returned for his greatest college track season at NIU following three years of active duty as a naval pharmacist’s mate. Shedding some 40 pounds for his belated senior season of 1947, the now-lithe 5-11, 145-pound veteran went on to win the IIA Conference’s Most Valuable Performer award that spring.

In a sensational college finale, co-captain and high pointman Cy won three individual events, set two records and anchored the victorious mile relay on a muddy track, running 3 3/4 grueling miles in four events over a three-hour span for Appell’s conference champion Huskies.

That summer (1947) Perkins, now sponsored by the Illinois Athletic Club, won the 800-meter AAU championship with a 1:51.8 at Lincoln, Neb., earning him a berth on a star-studded 1947 U.S. AAU squad that would tour northern Europe in preparation for the upcoming Olympics.

With track All-American Harrison Dillard (of Baldwin-Wallace College), Bill Hulse, George Guida, Curtis Stone, Fortune Gordien, Walter Smith, Bill Vessie and the pole vaulting Rev. Bob (Wheaties) Richards included, the U.S. squad—led by “team surprise” Cy Perkins—took Scandinavia by storm.

Before a huge throng at Oslo, Norway, the victory-bound Lorainite turned in the third fastest 800 meters in the world at the time—a scorching 1:50.1! Perkins, known for his late “kick,” also wowed a mammoth crowd at Vaxvo, Sweden, with a U.S. overseas record romp of 2:24.3 over 1,000 meters.

During the 1948 World Olympics tryouts held at Northwestern University, Perkins lost a heart-breaking photo-finish for the third and final 800-meter Olympic qualifying spot to Bob Chambers of Southern California by a nose. The sizzling 800-meter qualifier, that was featured in Life and Time magazine articles, was won by eventual two-time Olympic champion Mal (Sarge) Whitfield of Ohio State in 1:50.6, with Herb Barten of Michigan finishing second.

Perkins, who ran a 4:01 mile six years BEFORE Roger Bannister (aided by a pacesetter) broke through the world’s four-minute barrier, retired from AAU competition in 1949. Cy was subsequently enshrined in the Northern Illinois University Hall of Fame in 1985.