Former city councilman was football star at UT

3/9/2005

Clayton E. Umbles, 69, a University of Toledo football star who became a pharmacist and Toledo city councilman, died of kidney cancer Friday in Harborside Healthcare-Sylvania.

Umbles, of Collingwood Boulevard, served a single two-year term on council, 1967 to 1969. He operated Royal Drugs and the Umbles Drew-Hales Pharmacy. He owned Ribs Limited and the Green Light Night Club and was a concert promoter.

At UT, he was an offensive lineman and was team captain in 1957, the same year he received a Mid-American Conference Award and was named to the All-Ohio team. He received a bachelor of science degree in pharmacy and was vice president of his 1958 graduating class.

Umbles was one of Toledo's 10 Outstanding Young Men in 1964 and 1965 and served on the boards of the Toledo Opera Association, the Indiana Avenue YMCA, the local branch of the NAACP, and the Toledo Blade hockey team.

He was only the second African American elected to City Council.

Umbles was in the news again from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s but not for good deeds.

The Ohio pharmacy board revoked his license in 1977 after he pleaded guilty to two drug charges. He went to prison in 1978 after he was convicted on charges of selling and possessing narcotics and carrying a concealed weapon. He pleaded guilty to attempted drug abuse in 1995, a year after he was arrested with Dilaudid tablets.

"He decided he was tired of making bad decisions," his daughter Terri Dandridge said. "He stopped drinking, then he had his grandkids. He decided for them he had to be a stand-up person."

Umbles was a graduate of McKinley High School in his native Canton.

Surviving are his son, Eric Umbles; daughters, Terri Dandridge and Jennifer Hayes; brothers, Floyd Umbles, Jr., and John Michael Umbles; sister, Gwendolyn Singleterry, and five grandchildren.

The body will be in the Dale-Riggs Funeral Home Chapel after 5 p.m. Thursday, with Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity services at 6:30 p.m. in the mortuary. Funeral services will be held at noon Friday in First Church of God, where wake services will begin at 11 a.m. Friday.

The family suggests tributes to the Clayton E. Umbles Memorial Scholarship Fund in care of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.