Early Life
Willis was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Clement and Willana Willis. His father died when he was four years old, and he was raised by his grandfather and mother amid the financial hardships of the Great Depression. He ran dashes and threw the shot put on the track team and played on the football team at Columbus East High School. Wary of being compared to his older brother Claude, who had ben an All-State fullback at the same school a few years earlier, Willis eschewed the backfield to play tackle and end. He had a successful three years on the high school team, winning Honorable Mention All-State honors as a senior. After graduating from high school, Willis took a year off and worked. Willis's high school coach wrote to Paul Brown, the Ohio State University football coach, saying the school should recruit him because he matched the type of player Brown liked: large, but more importantly, quick. He enrolled at Ohio State in 1941.
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