1. Ralph Isaac "Hike" Heikkinen was an American college football player who was a guard for the Michigan Wolverines from 1936 to 1938.
70 Facts About Ralph Heikkinen
1. 2.
Ralph Heikkinen was a unanimous All-American in 1938, the first player from the Gogebic Range area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula to win the honor.
3.
Ralph Heikkinen's exploits were widely reported in the Upper Peninsula press, where he became a local hero.
4.
Ralph Heikkinen played professional football in the National Football League with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939.
5.
Ralph Heikkinen later joined the legal staff at General Motors, retiring in 1978 after 20 years of service in GM's legal department.
6.
Ralph Heikkinen helped initiate and implement a corporation-wide alcohol treatment and education program at General Motors.
7.
Ralph Heikkinen grew up in Ramsay, Michigan, a heavily Finnish American community in the Gogebic Range area.
8.
Ralph Heikkinen's father, Jacob Ralph Heikkinen, was a "noted organist" who played at St Paul's Finnish Lutheran Church.
9.
Ralph Heikkinen attended AD Johnston High School, in Bessemer, Michigan, from 1933 to 1935.
10.
Ralph Heikkinen was a superior student who graduated with high honors student, and finished third in his high school class academically.
11.
Ralph Heikkinen was an officer in the school's ROTC program, and received honors for his participation in the high school's military, athletics and student affairs programs.
12.
In July 1935, Ralph Heikkinen won an academic scholarship to the University of Michigan.
13.
Ralph Heikkinen is a very good student; he ranked third in scholastic standings in a class of 128.
14.
The president of the Gogebic Range U-M Alumni Club later recalled that Ralph Heikkinen won his scholarship by passing a competitive examination.
15.
When Ralph Heikkinen graduated from high school, he weighed only 155 pounds and was thought too light to play Big Ten football.
16.
Ralph Heikkinen was described as "the stock atom," and the "pint-sized" lineman.
17.
Ralph Heikkinen did not excel on the freshman team, but was invited by Coach Harry Kipke to spring practice in 1936 to try out for the varsity team.
18.
However, Ralph Heikkinen did not win a starting spot on the 1936 team and was not even ranked among the top sophomore guards on the team.
19.
The first person on the Michigan staff to believe in Ralph Heikkinen was Heartley Anderson.
20.
In 1937, Anderson became Michigan's line coach, and came to the conclusion during spring practice that Ralph Heikkinen was Michigan's best football player.
21.
Ralph Heikkinen was the one bright spot in the Wolverines' 1937 season.
22.
Ralph Heikkinen pulls out most of our plays and bowls over the opposition.
23.
Ralph Heikkinen blocked kicks for points after touchdown in one-point wins over Illinois and Chicago.
24.
Ralph Heikkinen was voted by his teammates as the team's Most Valuable Player, an honor never before bestowed on a junior.
25.
Ralph Heikkinen was a reserve guard last season and really just started to show up in spring practice this year.
26.
Ralph Heikkinen played many if not more minutes than any other member of the squad.
27.
However, just over a year later, in February 1939, Ralph Heikkinen led the opposition when Kipke ran for the university's Board of Regents and campaigned actively for Kipke's opponent.
28.
Ralph Heikkinen majored in political science and did political organization work for the Young Republicans during the summer of 1938 in Gogebic and Ontonagon Counties.
29.
In 1938, with Ralph Heikkinen returning at guard, a new coach in Fritz Crisler, and sophomores Forest Evashevski and Tom Harmon joining the varsity squad, the Wolverines began to turn things around.
30.
Harmon and Evashevski made immediate contributions, but Ralph Heikkinen was voted the team's Most Valuable Player.
31.
Under the new coaching staff of Crisler and Munn, Ralph Heikkinen became one of the best college football players in the country.
32.
Ralph Heikkinen noted that Michigan linemen were taught not to depend on sheer strength.
33.
On first down with a yard to go, Ralph Heikkinen stopped Northwestern a foot short of the goal line.
34.
Ralph Heikkinen called time out and encouraged the players when the ball was on the one-foot line, and the Michigan team kept the Wildcats from the end zone in an impressive goal-line stand.
35.
Ralph Heikkinen was probably the best offensive guard Michigan ever had, and fitted perfectly into the new Michigan running attack.
36.
Fast and powerful, Ralph Heikkinen frequently blocked out two defense players.
37.
Ralph Heikkinen came out of a small town in northern Michigan, Hike, did, a sandy haired, extremely reserved Finnish boy with an irrepressible urge to play football.
38.
Ralph Heikkinen was chosen as a unanimous first-team All-American by more than 25 sports magazines, newspapers and wire services, including the Associated Press, the United Press, Grantland Rice for Collier's Weekly, the Newspaper Enterprise Association Service, the New York Sun, and Chesterfield Cigarettes as selected by Eddie Dooley.
39.
Ralph Heikkinen has a trick on defense of jamming the opposition line and making a hole for a teammate to go through and get the ball carrier.
40.
Motion pictures of the Ohio State-Michigan game show Ralph Heikkinen jamming opposing linesmen back from one to three yards on almost every play.
41.
Ralph Heikkinen is so good that professional teams have approached him, but he wants to study law.
42.
Ralph Heikkinen stood only five feet eight and weighed 182 pounds but he was the fastest guard in the Big Ten.
43.
Ralph Heikkinen was chosen to play in the East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco on January 1,1939.
44.
Ralph Heikkinen is completely unassuming, unusually quiet, and above all a real gentleman.
45.
Ralph Heikkinen was the first player from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to win All-Big Ten honors in 1938, and he topped that in 1939 as the region's first All-American.
46.
Ralph Heikkinen's exploits were followed closely both during the summer and during the football season in the Gogebic Range's newspapers, The Ironwood Daily Globe and The Bessemer Herald.
47.
Ralph Heikkinen has twice been named on the all-conference eleven and twice selected as Michigan's most valuable player, the latter award never before having gone to a Michigan man two years in a row.
48.
Ralph Heikkinen takes his place with a long line of All-American Wolverines.
49.
The Upper Peninsula press continued to report on Ralph Heikkinen's every move, as he returned home shortly before Christmas, before heading west to play in the East-West Shrine Game.
50.
In 1954, Ralph Heikkinen was one of the twenty initial inductees into the Gogebic Range Sports Hall of Fame.
51.
Ralph Heikkinen signed on as an assistant coach at Michigan in the spring 1939 initially expressing ambivalence about playing professional football.
52.
Ralph Heikkinen had previously refused offers to play pro football, but the persistence of coach Potsy Clark, and Crisler's assurance that a coaching job would be open for him in 1940, persuaded Ralph Heikkinen to try professional football.
53.
Ralph Heikkinen noted on signing, though, that he would definitely return to law school in 1940.
54.
Ralph Heikkinen was cut by the Dodgers after playing only three games.
55.
Ralph Heikkinen reported late and didn't give himself a fair chance to show me what he could do.
56.
The Upper Peninsula press disputed accounts that Ralph Heikkinen had not cut it in the NFL.
57.
Ralph Heikkinen's friends said that Ralph Heikkinen asked for his own release in order to accept the opportunity to study law and coach football at the University of Virginia.
58.
However, the Dodgers moguls co-operated with Ralph Heikkinen and released him from his contract when he informed them of the Virginia offer.
59.
In October 1939, Ralph Heikkinen was hired as the line coach at the University of Virginia, where he studied law.
60.
Ralph Heikkinen worked as Virginia's line coach from 1940 to 1944 and graduated first in his class from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1944.
61.
On March 3,1941, Ralph Heikkinen married Margaret Jackson, in Davenport, Iowa.
62.
Ralph Heikkinen was line coach under head coach Frank Murray at Virginia and joined Murray again at Marquette.
63.
In between the stints at Virginia and Marquette, Ralph Heikkinen was a New York attorney.
64.
Ralph Heikkinen only stayed one year at Marquette, returning to the practice of law in New York in 1948.
65.
Ralph Heikkinen later joined the legal staff at General Motors, retiring in 1978 after 20 years of service in GM's legal department.
66.
Ralph Heikkinen helped initiate and implement a corporation-wide alcohol treatment and education program at GM.
67.
In 1987, Ralph Heikkinen was inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor.
68.
Ralph Heikkinen died of heart failure in Pontiac, Michigan at age 72.
69.
Ralph Heikkinen was survived by his wife, Margaret Helen Heikkinen, and six children, Ralph Heikkinen Jr.
70.
Ralph Heikkinen's funeral was held at St Paul Methodist Church in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.