Harold Red Grange — The Galloping Ghost

Harold Grange, known to the sporting world as the Galloping Ghost, was born in Forksville and spent his earliest years in this corner of Sullivan County before his family moved to Illinois. He became one of the most electrifying football players the game has ever seen.

At Wheaton High School in Illinois he scored seventy-five touchdowns. At the University of Illinois he was named an All-American three consecutive years, from nineteen twenty-three through nineteen twenty-five. He then turned professional, playing primarily for the Chicago Bears from nineteen twenty-five through nineteen thirty-four, and helped legitimize the fledgling National Football League at a moment when college football still dominated the public's attention. He was a charter member of the College Football Hall of Fame, inducted in nineteen fifty-one. His birthplace here is a quiet footnote to one of America's most celebrated athletic careers.