Doyel: ‘Jim Thorpe of Indiana’ worth remembering

The story of his life, of the sports he dominated and all that came later, has rolled over the decades like a snowball, absorbing everything and everyone in its path.

The story of Indianapolis businessman Charles Buschmann, a story of sports and so much more, came to absorb Purdue and Indiana, Kurt Vonnegut and Jim Thorpe, even the Omni Severin Hotel. His story rolled down mountains of time until it absorbed an Indianapolis mayor, a U.S. Senator and seven Indiana governors. And President Eisenhower. And Hitler. And...

Well, there’s a lot here, a lot to unravel, lots of truth and some fiction — in some cases, the truth is stranger — and here’s where we run into some difficulty.

Time, it’s working against us.

Charles Buschmann lived and died before our era’s history book, the Internet. His snowball rolled on, gaining size, but then it went the other direction for such a sad reason: If you don’t exist online, you almost don’t exist. As memories faded and people died, Charles Buschmann nearly disappeared. Time and our reliance on technology did that, turning one of the most important figures in state history — sports, politics, more — into a name, a rumor, someone who may have done something a long time ago.

The snowball? Melting. It’s so small that one of Charles Buschmann’s direct descendants — Nick Buschmann, his great-grandson and a retired Indianapolis attorney — asked me to hurry up and write this story. He knows his family has had a line of sensational athletes, great and powerful men starting even before Charles Buschmann, and he knows some of the story. But he doesn’t know all of it.

(Charles Buschmann) tied the state record in the 100-yard dash at 10.2 seconds, a record broken in 1893 by his brother, Harry, a sprinter (and shot-putter) at Purdue who ran it in 10 flat. Harry also played football at Purdue — halfback in 1893 and ’94, quarterback in ’95 — while he was said to have been a paid member of the coaching staff

In fact, when Nick and I met last week for lunch with another Buschmann — more on him in a minute — and I told them I was researching a man named Charles Buschmann, the all-around athlete known as the Jim Thorpe of Indiana, this is what Nick said: “That might be my great-grandfather.”

Might be? You don’t know?

And he said: “There’s a lot there. And it was a long time ago. I’m hoping your story can tell me more about him, and also about my grandfather.”

Ah, right. Nick’s grandfather. Another Indiana legend. That part about Charles Buschmann being the Jim Thorpe of Indiana, two decades before the real Jim Thorpe competed in the 1912 Olympics? That’s true. It’s possible Charles Buschmann is the greatest all-around athlete in state history.

It’s also possible that his chief competition for that honor is his son and Nick’s grandfather, Severin Buschmann Sr. – a second generation German-American who helped the Allied forces deal with Hitler’s Third Reich.

See? There’s so much here. So much you don’t know, so much Nick Buschmann himself doesn’t know. Let’s get to it, and fast. Time is melting that snowball, and time takes so much.

* * *

Before the NCAA violation at Purdue, before the coin flip that determined the Indiana basketball captain, before truth and fiction got all tangled up, a young man in Bielefeld, Germany, kissed his mother goodbye.

It was 1851 and William Buschmann was heading to America. First stop: Ellis Island. Then west to Cincinnati, and on to Indianapolis.

William married Caroline, opened a store — Buschmann Grocery, the red brick building at 972 Fort Wayne Ave., an area known for decades as “the Buschmann Block” — and in 1867 Caroline gave birth to a physical marvel, Charles Buschmann. Charlie went to college for a year in Ohio before returning to Indianapolis, where he dominated YMCA and AAU competitions — the best there were, in the 1880s — and won state titles in sprints, hurdles, jumps, discus and hammer.

Fast, strong, you name it. For a time Charles Buschmann held a share of the U.S. record in the shot put. He tied the state record in the 100-yard dash at 10.2 seconds, a record broken in 1893 by his brother, Harry, a sprinter (and shot-putter) at Purdue who ran it in 10 flat. Harry also played football at Purdue — halfback in 1893 and ’94, quarterback in ’95 — while he was said to have been a paid member of the coaching staff, which would have been an NCAA violation had the NCAA existed in 1895.

“That’s the family yarn, anyway,” Nick Buschmann says.

Severin Buschmann was the first three-sport letterman in IU history. He played halfback in football, guard in basketball and what they called “left garden” then — what we call left field now — in baseball.

Purdue couldn’t unravel that one. D.M. Balliet was the Purdue football coach from 1893-95, but athletic department officials say their records of assistant coaches don’t extend that far back. Time, like I say. It takes.

Before Charles Buschmann was done — he died in 1964 at age 96, the oldest member of the city’s Rotary Club — he had won state medals in gymnastics, helped found the Indianapolis Athletic Club, carried a bowling average in the 170s into his 70s and was described in a 1947 newspaper story as “the Jim Thorpe of Indiana.”

Along the way he became business partners with Henry Severin, who built the Omni Severin in 1913. Charles Buschmann named his son after his business partner, and that son — Severin Buschmann Sr. — took the family into weird and wonderful directions.

* * *

Severin Buschmann was on the team that turned around IU basketball.

It was 1917, and the Hoosiers had posted five consecutive losing seasons and couldn’t settle on a captain between Severin Buschmann and Penn Nash, leaving it to a coin flip won by Buschmann. The Hoosiers set a school record for wins (13-6) and didn’t see five losing seasons, combined, for nearly 30 years. A basketball school was born.

Severin Buschmann was the first three-sport letterman in IU history. He played halfback in football, guard in basketball and what they called “left garden” then — what we call left field now — in baseball. Remember how his father was called “the Jim Thorpe of Indiana”? Well, Severin played for Thorpe, an assistant coach at IU in 1915. It’s a crazy story, I tell you. And it’s about to get crazier.

Severin Sr. fought in World War I, became an attorney in Indianapolis, stayed active in the military. Which is how Gen. Dwight Eisenhower came to make him a colonel during World War II. Severin Buschmann contributed to the massive manual used by Allied forces during the occupation of post-Hitler Germany.

Back in Indianapolis, Severin Sr. became a state doubles champion in tennis and installed a horizontal bar in his backyard, where he taught his grandchildren — Pete and also Nick, whom you’ve already met — gymnastics.

Every so often a dark Lincoln-Zephyr would pull into the driveway of the Buschmann house at 4750 Meridian — that address ring a bell? — and out would step a heavy hitter like U.S. Senator Homer Capehart or Frank McKinney, chairman of the National Democratic Party.

In the yard, little Severin Jr. was watching. And it really is time you met this man. Speak up, though. He doesn’t hear so well.

* * *

“I’d probably be having a great time,” Severin Jr. was telling me over lunch, “if I could hear a word you were saying.”

He’s like that, Severin Jr. Armed with a delightful wit, eyes that peer into you as he delivers it, and ears that can’t hear when you giggle.

Severin Jr. attended Shortridge when it was one of two schools in America with a daily student newspaper. The editor was brilliant but younger than Severin, a kid named Kurt Vonnegut, and the future great American novelist had his eye on Severin’s sister. Well, Severin had his eye on Vonnegut’s motorcycle. So here was the trade:

“I let Vonnegut talk to my sister,” Severin says, “and he taught me to ride a motorcycle.”

Severin Jr. clerked for judge John W. Kern Jr., who was mayor of Indianapolis in 1935. He became an attorney like his father, and was living across the street when Severin Sr. sold the 10,500-square-foot Tudor at 4750 Meridian — that address ringing a bell yet? — to the state in 1973.

In 2013, Gov. Mike Pence became the seventh Indiana governor to live there. In the lot out back, if the governor looks hard enough, he might find four bricks embedded deep below the surface in the shape of a diamond – first base, second, third, home. The neighborhood kids’ baseball field.

The state bought the place for $242,000. Another small fortune was needed for upgrades, and in 1973 my newspaper wanted to know why.

“My dad looked the reporter from your newspaper in the eye,” Severin Jr. tells me, and here he leans in and speaks slowly, “and said, ‘The Governor prefers indoor plumbing.’”

Severin Jr. smiles and says, “Nah! They just wanted air conditioning!”

Nick speaks softly, just to me.

“I had not heard that one,” he says.

So much you’ve not heard, Nick. And surely so much I’ve not heard either, despite my army of researchers that includes Star librarian Cathy Knapp, the sports information departments at IU and Purdue, and longtime Rotary Club member Bill Ervin. There’s just so much here, so much we can’t get to, like the Buschmann women who helped start the Indianapolis USO and found the nursing honor society Sigma Theta Tau.

But we’ll finish with this story about Severin Jr., who was nearly deaf as a child but never told anyone, not his teachers, not his parents. The jig was up when he was 14 and men were tearing up the sidewalk outside and Severin’s mom walked into his room with her hands on her ears and moaned, “I can’t take it with the jackhammer!”

And Severin said, “What jackhammer?”

Me, I’m writing all of this down furiously as Severin Jr. lowers his Tanqueray and tonic and says something that has the table in laughter he can’t hear:

“You can’t be getting it right,” this 93-year-old man tells me. “You’re writing it all with your left hand.”

Time. It takes away so much. But not everything.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel