Before we go further into the screen life of David Blase and Breaking Away, it’s important to introduce you to Mrs. Blase, David’s beautiful wife Yolande. She has been at his side for the last 44 years. She speaks four languages five actually if you count Hoosier, and her English pronunciation is much better than mine. Born in Holland, she met David in Germany on a cycling excursion. Because her father liked Yanks, David was able to talk to and get to know her. He was able to convince her to marry him, and more than that, to uproot and start a brand new married life with him in the United States….and Indiana. If that’s not love…. and courage, I don’t know what is. They have two beautiful children and four wonderful grandchildren. While she is eleven years younger than he, she has been the perfect partner, friend, and companion for him.
Back to the story. In the early 1970s, David heard through mutual friends that his old frat brother and cycling teammate Steve Tesich had written a screenplay about him. The script was called “The Eagle of Naptown” and was about a bicycle racer in Indianapolis. In trying to sell it for production, Tesich was told by David Picker, head of United Artists, that it needed something and turned the project down. Tesich discarded that script and created another about four Bloomington boys who work the quarries, a script he called “The Cutters.” Director Peter Yates advised Tesich to combine the two scripts and the Breaking Away story was born, although it was first titled “Bambino.” David went down to Bloomington for the Little 500 every year anyway, so Tesich convinced him to be a part of the film crew as an adviser, stunt cyclist and actor. Blase worked with actor Dennis Christopher on his riding technique. Christopher portrayed the character based on Mr. Blase, The name Dave Stohler is a combination of Dave’s first name along with Stohler which was the last name of the manager of the 1962 Phi Kappa Psi cycling team. It’s David Blase who is really being pushed off the road by the Italian cyclist in the scene when Dave Stohler attempts to ride with them. Mr. Blase did the fall and slide. “It was a way of showing the end of my Italian fixation. Actually, I just gradually grew out of it and I didn’t need to pretend to be someone else anymore. Being me was good!” Dave revealed.
Mr. Blase took the role of the race announcer and was filmed in Bloomington as the race was filming. He traveled to New York City and a sound studio to do the voice over for announcing the fictional race. They wanted to make sure everything was crystal clear on the soundtrack. Interestingly, the amount of students who applied to be extras in the movie fell far short of expectations. They thought that as many as 20,000 students might come to have a part in the film, but about 3,000 showed up, so some tight shooting of the crowd scenes had to be done.
For Indiana residents, Breaking Away was the first great movie about what it is to be a Hoosier, but as a part of American cinema, it has become a screen legend. It’s #8 on the American Film Institute’s list of the Most Inspirational Films of All Time. On other lists, the American Film Institute and Sports Illustrated magazine both list Breaking Away as the #8-ranked Sports Film of all time. Nominated for five Academy awards, Steve Tesich won for Best Original Screenplay. In the 33rd BAFTA Awards, Dennis Christopher won the Best Newcomer to a Leading Film Role Award and the film won the Golden Globe as the Best Musical or Comedy of 1979. Steve Tesich won the Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen award given by the Writers Guild of America. It has become a classic American film. In 1981 a TV show called “Breaking Away” with Shaun Cassidy as Dave Stohler debuted on ABC, but was canceled after seven episodes due to low ratings. The TV show didn’t have Steve Tesich writing for it. ABC Sports and ESPN started broadcasting the Little 500 in 1980 and continued for nearly twenty years. Mr. Blase was teamed with sports announcer Ken Squire as a color commentator. The film Breaking Away is a part of movie history, and Dave Blase is at the heart of it.
Mr. Blase has stayed an active part of the Little 500 after all this time, and will always be remembered for it.
As a teacher David Blase was one of a kind. He tried to show his students that life wasn’t just about biology, but also art, literature, math, nature, and the world. David is a talented artist and in trying to show how to draw a fish to scale, he created a beautiful rendering of a perch that is truly a work of art. The artistic streak runs in the family, because his mother took up painting after retirement and became a talented artist. Several of her works decorate the Blase’s home. Art was one of many ways David used to reach his students. He would divide his classes, having some stand on the tables, some lie on the floor, and others walk around. He would have the students then describe the room as they saw it from their point of view: the floor, eye level, and up in the air. All descriptions were valid but each depended on the point of view of the observer.
Mr. Blase would take a feather and explain the miracle of flight, saying that without their feathers birds were rather fragile creatures, but because nature had given them their feathers they could survive and thrive. He would get on the floor of his class room and crawl to demonstrate the frailty of the human body. Once while trying to show how a bird pecks his food, Mr. Blase managed to bloody his nose. As the blood flowed, he jumped on a window ledge put his head out the wind and proclaimed “Next I shall demonstrate flight!’
Many of us remember the snakes. Mr. Blase kept his first snake, a boa constrictor, in a leather bag he kept in his bedroom. When fed, the constrictor was fairly laid back and not a threat. At one point Mr. Blase acquired three snakes including a black mamba which is quite deadly. “He would follow me around the classroom with his eyes” admitted Mr. Blase “which didn’t give me a good feeling!”
Mr. Blase left the snakes at Arlington over the holiday break one winter. As luck would have it, the furnace broke down and there was no heat in the building. The three snakes froze to death. “When I came back after Christmas break there was a terrible stench emitting from my classroom from the dead snakes,” Mr. Blase said. “I tried bleaching down the room and several other remedies but it took nearly a month for the odor to fade!”
As a mentor to his students, Mr. Blase will probably never really know how many student’s lives he was a positive influence on. He tells the story of a young man who was a student in his class and brought a bad case of attitude with him. Finally Mr. Blase confronted the student and asked him, “Do I look like a garbage man to you?’ The student answered “No.” Mr. Blase then asked “Why are you giving me garbage then?”
The student had no answer for Mr. Blase, but came after school and talked with him. Mr. Blase found out that the young man had a difficult home life with little support from his family. After a while the young man came and talked with Mr. Blase every afternoon after school. The young man’s grades in class improved dramatically and by the end of the semester, his grades in all his classes had improved. With a bit of inspiration and understanding, Mr. Blase had reached the young man. ”I didn’t want to give bad grades, I didn’t want to fail people. That wasn’t what I was there for.”
The fact that so many of his students have so many fond memories of him speaks volumes of Mr. Blase’s teaching career. He retired after 42 fruitful years at Arlington and Howe High Schools. If you are assuming that is the end of the story you are very wrong. At age 75, David K. Blase is still a work in progress. He rides every day. He works out and has added weightlifting to his routine. He looks and moves like he could ride another 139 laps in a Little 5. He gardens. He has a beautiful back yard. He is an eclectic conservationist who speaks with authority and listens with interest. He is an energetic and optimistic senior who can out run the juniors.
I will end with this. 49 years ago in the fall of 1966 I was assigned to be in the Biology I class of Mr. David Blase. I had no idea at the time that so many years later he would become a valued friend. The world can be a wondrous and miraculous place.
