Ohio State Sen. Ben Espy, who has died at the age of 81, will be remembered in service for breaking barriers

Born in Nashville, Tennessee on July 12, 1943, Espy graduated in 1961 from Sandusky High School, where he played football and ran track. He was recruited to Woody Hayes’ Ohio State Buckeyes football team, where he was a running back. He graduated from The Ohio State University in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and in 1968 received a law degree from Howard University.

Espy began his legal career as a corporate lawyer for Allegheny Airlines and then joined the United States Air Force, where he served as an assistant staff judge. He returned to Ohio in 1972, where he started his first job in the Ohio Attorney General’s office, then started his own law practice and eventually entered politics.

He and his wife, Kathy Duffy Espy, who died in 2022, had four daughters and 11 grandchildren. Espy-Bell said her father worked hard in the community during the day, but in the evenings he always found time to read his daughters bedtime stories or go to his grandchildren’s soccer games.

In 1984, Espy was involved in a freak accident in which he was struck by a falling cornice that broke off an aging building in downtown Columbus as he passed by. He lost the lower part of his right leg.

Espy-Bell said her father didn’t let it slow him down.

“Two things helped him do that,” she said. “One of them was my mother’s strength, which allowed our family to survive and raise four little girls. The second was my father’s strength, thanks to his resilience, which allowed him to come back even stronger and even better.”