Chuck Davis can remember playing sports with his nephew Ernie in Uniontown in the 1940s. Another uncle, Willie, who was five years older than Chuck and Ernie, allowed them to tag along to the sandlots and playgrounds where they played the sport that was in season.

It was in Uniontown, under the pressure of playing with the older children in town, that Ernie Davis first gained an understanding of competition. And soon, Ernie was no longer tagging along. He was being recruited by the older boys to play on their teams.

"We knew Ernie was special," Chuck Davis said recently. "He was always above everyone else."

Davis went on to star at Syracuse University, where he helped the team win a national championship in 1959 and two years later became the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy.

After graduating from Syracuse, Davis was the No. 1 overall draft pick of the Cleveland Browns in '62. Before he could play in a professional game, Davis died of leukemia at the age of 23.

Now, 45 years after his death, a Hollywood drama titled "The Express" depicts Davis' life and the struggles he faced against the backdrop of the civil rights movement. It opens in theaters today.

The opening scenes of the movie are set in Uniontown, where Davis played on the same little league teams with Sandy Stephens and Bill Munsey. Stephens and Munsey played at the University of Minnesota and won the 1962 Rose Bowl before going on to careers in the Canadian Football League and NFL. Stephens finished fourth in the Heisman voting in '61, the same year Davis won the award.

But the two greatest influences on Ernie were his uncles, who grew up in the same house with Ernie and his grandparents. Chuck would become a two-time All-American basketball player at Westminster College.

"Ernie always said to me that if it wasn't for those two he never would have been interested in sports," said John Brown, Davis' good friend and a teammate at Syracuse and with the Cleveland Browns. "He relished those days and always talked about it."

The Davis boys played every sport from football, basketball and baseball to volleyball. Chuck, the same age as Ernie, said athletics played a vital role in their lives.

"[Willie] taught us the nuances of how to play," said Chuck, who now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. "We played everything. Whenever the season changed we changed. When we played, we played with intensity. We would have three sessions -- morning, afternoon and evening. Whatever the sport was, we played it. That's what enhanced our ability."

Ernie left Uniontown at the age of 12 after his mother had remarried and settled in Elmira, N.Y. But Davis would remain loyal to his hometown, spending summers with his extended family and playing on the sandlots with his friends.

The movie focuses on how Davis (played by Rob Brown) overcame the racial hurdles of the time and how he developed relationships with his coach at Syracuse, Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid), his teammates and girlfriend.

John Brown, who remembers feeling joy at seeing another black student on campus the first time he saw Davis at Syracuse, recalls Davis as someone who overcame adversity -- from the problems of racism to his battle with stuttering -- to achieve greatness.

Davis broke most of Jim Brown's rushing records at Syracuse and still holds the school record for yards per carry (6.6).

"Over the years his mother and I would receive movie scripts and treatments," said John Brown, who played for the Steelers from 1967-72 and still lives in the North Hills. "But this one was the first one to make it to fruition. Some of the scripts were bad, some were outlandish. This one was different.

"I was glad to see someone do a movie of Ernie Davis. You have to constantly remind yourself that it's not a documentary. It was very well done movie of a super human being."

In the movie, Brown is referred to as JB or Jack Buckley. He believes his name was not used so the producers wouldn't have to pay him, but it also might have been done to avoid confusion with Jim Brown, a critical character in the movie.

John Brown saw a screening of the movie at Syracuse last month and said there were a few other liberties producers took in telling the story. For one, Jim Brown plays a more vital role in the movie than in real life. The movie places Jim Brown at several Syracuse games, but according to John Brown, the Hall of Fame running back never attended a college game in which Davis played.

Producers also cast West Virginia University and its fans in a bad light, he said, portraying them as racists with a penchant for hurling foreign objects at opposing players. Producers of the movie changed the site of the 1959 game from Syracuse to Morgantown to stress the racial tensions of the time. They also overplayed the severity of the brawl between Syracuse and Texas in the Cotton Bowl.

But other than a few Hollywood tweaks, John Brown believes the movie is an accurate portrayal Davis' life.

John Brown knew Davis as well as anyone the final few years of his life. They were both drafted by the Cleveland Browns and shared a three-bedroom home during Davis' time in Cleveland.

During his first training camp in 1962, Davis became ill and was not allowed to practice. In October, he learned that he had leukemia. He died May 18, 1963.

"It was difficult," Brown said. "The one thing he prepared to do his whole life for was to play professional football. He had reached the pinnacle of college football. To see him not be able to complete his dream was heart-wrenching."

Brown and Chuck Davis said Ernie battled leukemia with the intensity and grace with which he played the game.

"People always ask me what it was like to live with someone who was dying," Brown said. "Ernie never displayed a man who was dying. He displayed a man who was living."

Chuck Davis spent most of his free time with his nephew after the diagnosis. Chuck said Ernie spent many of his remaining days in the comfort of family and friends in Uniontown before his death.

"He'd come back home every chance he got when he was sick," Chuck Davis said. "He was always more relaxed at home. When they said he had leukemia, I told him the outlook wasn't good. Ernie knew he was going to die. But he never once complained. He said, 'I've done a lot of things in my life.' "

Ernie Davis wrote a poignant article in the Saturday Evening Post shortly before he died about the game of football and its role in his life.

"The big thing to me in football has always been the competitiveness," Davis wrote. "Sometimes when the game is close and the play is roughest you forget the crowd and the noise, and it is just you against somebody else to see who is the better man."