Freddogg Off The Chain

Danny Harmon pictured racing to victory on anchor of Sprint Medley at Bennett Relays

Helen Miller sister and Calvin Harmon brother stand with picture of Danny at 2006 summer rememberance


Danny Harmon would bounce and float into the air while standing next to me like a kernel inside an air driven Hamilton Beach until I paid attention to him. “What should I do,” Danny asked me the first day he arrived late to practice in the spring of 1981 running over from the eighth grade already three grades behind?
“Jog eight laps and call me in the morning, ”I said, then yelled the way you do when the third runner on the 4 by 200 doesn’t cut in-“I’m kidding”- but he would just be gone.
Danny wasn’t an afterthought on a deeply talented team featuring Tony Sheppard, Rodney Smith, Bill Zimmerman and Vincent Glover, he was a backwards glance. I used to joke that I only coached talented people and that some one else would have to deal with the 6-foot vaulters, 14 foot jumpers, 12 second sprinters and six minute milers and other earnest athletes hoping to someday earn a third place point in a lopsided victory against a depleted team. Everyone laughed knowing I couldn’t be serious until one day when Antwan “Swan” Ford took a triple jump route that plotted like a fat lady’s EKG landing at a right angle with only the back half his feet in the pit. We were coming back on the bus and Swan announced to the team; ”Coach Fredman is wrong! ‘He told me, ‘this ain’t no Special Olympics’”. Danny Harmon loved that I would throw a dagger through the chest of any athlete; it is what defined our team and kept us loose.
The first scrimmage in March of Danny’s first competition we were going against Bob Ward’s Newark team that featured a distance stud named Andy Klemas who would be going head to head in the 1500 and 800 against Sheppard the reigning Division 2 cross country champ. Danny Harmon was an afterthought I had dropped into the 3000 meters.
Klemas ran Sheppard off and broke his heart in the 1500 and Tony didn’t like it. I told him “you can’t hang and kick against an experienced strong kid who will just run the pop out of your legs.” I told him to expect wire to wire in the 800 and although it was early and cold Klemas could get down near 2:06.
Klemas and Sheppard stepped onto the track for the 800 along with too many other throw-ins or throwbacks depending on perspective.
“How many laps is this,” Danny asked, making a circular motion with his hand.
“Two,” I said, and he responded, “Can I run this” and I said, “sure”, then he asked “what should I do” and I joked “see Tony and that other guy. Don’t do what they do or you may get your heart broken Ever hear of Grizzly Adams the bear guy? Well if you run with Tony you’ll be running with Grizzly Adams on your back the entire second lap.”
Danny looked around and all up and down, then just shrugged his shoulders like ”I don’t see Grizzly Adams anywhere” later to learn that “the bear” is the trickster of track and always out of hibernation.
Sheppard and Klemas battled at the front with enough space and time between them and the pack to construct a Safeway with groundbreaking ceremony as they headed down the backstretch of lap number two.
Into the turn they stroked and it was anybody’s race. Coach Wes Stack tugged on my sleeve and pointed to the backstretch where short of stature Danny Harmon, a descendant of the Nanticoke Indian tribe and cousin to Chief Roadrunner, was blasting at warp speed.
“Too bad he didn’t leave sooner, ”Stack said. ‘He’ll never catch them but he’s reeling them in, they are falling back, he is making up ground.”
“I get it Coach!”
The long straightaway of the metric track had doomed many a distance strategist when being “humped down” by a sprinter who can still crank an 11 flat at the end of a race.
Danny barely got them but they did get got! Coach Stack flashed his stopwatch into my face but said not a word. It read 2:02 as in two minutes and freaking two seconds. Danny joined the Cape ranks of the unexplainable talent tribe-he was a race and recover guy for the next three years-because to send Danny out on a long road run was to invite mischief and mystery because he was all the way the trickster himself and was best kept on the oval where he could be stop-watched.
Harmon won some shorter races in his first dual meet against rival Lake Forest then in the last event the 4 by 400 with the meet on the line he took the stick 20 meters behind on anchor and ran it home to a meet victory.
Coach Jim Blades came up to me and said, ”I think we have a problem. “My kids are telling me that little guy is still in eighth grade ”and I said,” Correct Coach and too old for ninth grade which by rule puts him in 10th grade for competition so get used to seeing him for the next three years, the good news being after his 10 grade actual year he will be done his senior athletic year.”
Coach Jim Blades saw more of Danny Harmon then anyone had a right to and he always looked like he thought that long and deadly kick in the mile somehow resembled a cruel cat allowing a field mouse to think it had a chance of getting home.
Tony Sheppard was Division 2 Cross Country State Champion in the fall of 1980. Dan Harmon was 3rd in Division 1 in 1981 and Division Two State Champion in the fall of 1982. In the spring of 1982 he anchored our winning 4 by 800 team in the Meet of Champions as Darren Purcell, James Johnson, Hank Stack and Danny Harmon ran a Cape school record of 7:59.6 that has stood for 25 years.
During the 1983 Indoor season Danny Harmon won the 800 in 2:06 then came back and captured his first 3200 ever run indoors throwing down a negative split in the second mile to win in 10:03.
“He wanted to know where the leader was at the mile mark and I told him the guy was right behind him,” said teammate Tim Bamforth. “There were 11 laps to go and every lap I would point and say, “there he is.” Danny caught Mike Spence from Tower Hill who had been fourth in the Division Two State cross-country meet. No one knows what he ran just way under five and fast.
The spring of 1983 was absolutely insane for the depth of Boys talent in Delaware Track and Field.
We took a trip to the Bennett Relays just for a place to play and weren’t set up to win the event. We were battling in the sprint medley when 400-meter runner Kyle White looked like he’d been shot in the leg. “There goes Kyle’s hamstring, ”I said. “There it goes again! How many hamstrings does he have?”
Jimmy Sumstein of Bennett a local star now a distance Coach at Cape took off with a big lead over Harmon.
“How many hamstrings do you have, ”I asked Kyle White. “My jock strap broke and my junk kept falling out, ”White said, uttering a sentence most English teachers never get to hear.
Harmon looked off into the distance and focused on Sumstein who could not have guessed he was still in Harmon’s area code. It was the longest way any 800 man on anchor I coached had even come back to win a race as Harmon’s split was 1:55. He also anchored winning teams in the 4 by 400 and 4 by 800 relays.
That May at the Dover Relays Cape set a state record in the 4 by 1600 with 18:29 as Tim Bamforth 4:36, Hank Stack 4:32, Mark Wagner 4:44 and Danny Harmon 4:30 kicked in the victory. The 4 by 800 team came back with Harmon on anchor to win and set a meet record of 8:06.
The same meet saw Howard High School set state records in the 400m, 41.6 and 800 m relays 1:27. And Dover, with sophomore Bruce Harris 1:53 on the 800 anchor leg of the sprint medley ran a sizzling 3:28.
Dan Harmon versus Bruce Harris of Dover in the 1600 and 800 was always a show. In the Henlopen Conference meet that spring of 1983 Harmon won the 1600 in 4:21 flat with Harris in second at 4:21.6.
Harris came back to set a state record in the 800 meters 1:52 with Harmon behind him at 1:55.9. Harris always broke Danny in the third 200 of the 800 meter race because he knew he didn’t want him anywhere around for the final 180.
Howard’s great team of short and long sprinters was too much for Cape minus ineligible pole-vaulter Bill Zimmerman as the Vikings lost to the Wildcats by 8 points in the 1983 state championship meet.
There was a final Meet of Champions and once again it was Harmon versus Harris in the 1600 and 800. There were other coaches who thought their kids had a chance but I knew it was the Danny versus Bruce final showdown.
Danny Harmon ran a 4:17.3 to once again out kick Harris and his 4:21.Harris ran a 1:53 in the 800 meters outlasting Harmon who was starting to get used to the hurt of 1:55 and I could see he had faster times inside him.
Danny Harmon spent his next two years fooling everyone and kept coming to school and he graduated and was very proud of himself.
Bruce Harris would run a 149:4 his junior year at Franklin Field in the Meet of Champions. Bruce already scholarship secured to Villanova was academically ineligible his senior year when he took a half credit speech class –a great kid but introverted- and was failed for his troubles. Ironically Harris would graduate from Villanova and become a state police spokesperson.
Danny Harmon who was absolutely a dream to coach and never game me a moments trouble had his “unlawful behavior” moments and spent some time through the revolving door of Sussex Correction Institute as an adult. I once asked Trooper Bruce Harris if he was aware of Danny’s troubles and he said he was but offered no criticisms just remembering “Man he could run.”
Danny Harmon was leaning against a car out by the road in front of his mother’s house in Belltown in August of 2002. It was dark just beyond twilight. Danny was 38 years old. A hit and run driver clipped him and Danny was thrown to the road and taken away from all of us forever.
Every August I attend a family remembrance celebration in Danny’s aged mother’s front yard. Under a tent a family D.J. announces my arrival and I also receive applause when I leave. Danny’s family honors me for standing beside his memories. I represent a big part of the best part of his life and he does the same for me. I am and always will be to them “Danny’s Coach.”

Note: Some years after high school Cross Country State Champion Tony Sheppard took his own life in a moment of despair and despondency. He was always regarded by everyone who knew him as a very nice and respectful person.