Photo Provided PICTURED IS the cover of ‘Dreaming of Heroes’ a book by Michael Grady about his grandfather, Cyril Letzelter, who is a Martins Ferry HS graduate.

MARTINS FERRY — It’s amazing what can be learned just by doing some research.

Mike Grady learned so much about his late grandfather, Cyril Letzelter, that it led to the Springfield, Ill. resident to author his first book.

The book ‘Dreaming of Heroes,’ which became available in early November, is about Letzelter’s life as he grew up in Woodsfield, eventually moved to Martins Ferry where he shined on the Purple Riders football team and eventually went on to an outstanding collegiate career at Carnegie Tech and then for Army.

“This whole project came about through a variety of genealogy work I did in finding out things about my family history that many families never talk about,” Grady said. “I was able to find out a lot of information that had never been shared.”

Grady never met his grandfather, who died from a heart attack just six months after his parents were married.

“My dad always referred to him as the colonel,” Grady said. “I knew he was an outstanding football player and there was talk of him scoring touchdowns against Notre Dame, but not a whole lot more.”

So, as a history major with a thirst for knowledge, Grady went to work.

“My son, who had just turned 15, and I took a summer and did a lot of genealogy research,” Grady said.

The Gradys made stops in Martins Ferry and Wheeling and then Pittsburgh to visit what is now Carnegie Melon University.

The aforementioned touchdown that Letzelter scored against Notre Dame came in the famed Carnegie Tech upset of the Fighting Irish in 1926. That game is still mentioned among college football’s biggest upsets in history.

“My grandfather actually had the game ball from that win over Notre Dame, and after he died, my dad sent it to Carnegie, so my son and I went there wanting to see that ball,” Grady explained. “And we found it displayed in their (athletic) hall of fame area.”

Once Letzelter was finished at Carnegie-Tech, he was recruited to play at Army. Obviously, before restrictions on how many years you could play existed, Letzelter, who became a career military man, decided to keep playing.

“As long as (players) met the age requirement, Army was able to recruit players who had played before,” Grady explained. “He got the appointment to enter and was in the Army until the day he died.”

After wrapping up his research in the tri-state area, Grady wasn’t done. He then drove to Vermont to visit with one of his aunts, who had scarpbooks of her father’s athletic career.

“We got to my aunt’s and she had this unbelievable treasure trove of clippings,” Grady said. “It basically went back to his earliest days playing at Martins Ferry and covered everything through his career at Army.”

Grady was given those materials and brought them back to Illinois where he continued to be fascinated with what he was reading.

“I just poured over these details,” Grady admitted. “I learned that there were far more twists and turns involved in his career than I had ever realized.”

Grady admitted that when this project began some seven years ago, he had no visions of writing a book. However, once he was showing members of his family what he had discovered, several urged him to consider putting it into words.

“I was originally just doing this for family purposes,” Grady said. “The people who were reading the things I had found kept saying, ‘you need to do something more with this.'”

The book is being well-received by those who have read it. Without the backing of one of the bigger publishing companies, the book has been slowly climbing the Amazon chart.

“The people who have read it have enjoyed it,” Grady said. “It’s up on Amazong and I’ve started paying for some more targeted advertising to promote it. When it first hit Amazon, it was like at 2 million and it’s jumped to 60,000, so that’s a positive.”

When the first shipment of books arrived at Grady’s house, he immediately took a copy to his mother, Molly.

“My mom got the very first copy,” Grady said. “She lives about 90 minutes from me, so I took it to her and handed her the book.”

The book is available on Amazon both in paperback and Kindle form.