* CHUCK BROCK AND FLACK COLLECTED POP BOTTLES IN ZANESVILLE
Published: Sunday, May 19, 1996
Page: 8A
By: By Mark Fisher DAYTON DAILY NEWS
NEWS
And he did it to Little Harley's - er, Dr. Flack's face, just a couple months ago.
Chuck Brock grew up with Harley Flack in Zanesville. As youngsters in the late 1940s, they'd play a board game called "Pollyanna" and collect pop bottles for their deposit money, hoping to make enough for ice cream and soda pop.
"We'd come up short most of the time, and either my mom or his mom would kick in the difference," Brock recalled.
Brock moved to Dayton three decades ago to marry and start a family. But his mother occasionally sent him news clippings from Zanesville that tracked his friend's academic career.
Brock was a repairman and commercial installer for Dayton Door Sales when Flack was hired as president of Wright State University in early 1994. Brock was pleased, but he made no effort to contact Flack.
Two months ago, about 8 or 8:30 at night, Brock got a phone call. A WSU maintenance foreman told him there was an electric garage door opener on campus that wasn't working. And it was essential that it be fixed right away. After all, it was the president's garage door.
"I said, 'Oh, you mean Little Harley's?' I heard him kind of gulp on the other end of the line. He must've wondered what kind of nut he got ahold of."
Brock drove his repair truck to Fairborn and met a security guard at the WSU Library to find his way back to the president's residence, tucked away in the woods behind the campus. He told the guard he was a childhood friend of Flack's and again got a bit of a suspicious reaction. The guard seemed to check him out a little more thoroughly.
When Brock and the guard rang the doorbell, Flack answered.
"Little Harley?" Brock said. Flack peered into Brock's face, not immediately recognizing him. "You're from Zanesville," Flack said. Then he asked which Brock brother it was.
"It's Chuck - the middle one," Brock replied.
The security guard said, "Well, I guess you don't need me anymore."
The two reminisced for half an hour, then Brock fixed the door - "It didn't take me long" - and stepped into Flack's home and spent another hour or so talking about old times. Mignon Flack, wife of the president, "was amazed at all this. She really enjoyed it," Brock said.
The two agreed to get their families together next time Flack's sister, Sally, visits from Cleveland.
Flack said it was surprising and rather refreshing to go from Dr. Harley Flack, university president, to "Little Harley" of Zanesville - for one evening, anyway.