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To: MassRepublicanFlyersFan
>"If he was traded because of any potential talks with . . . Playboy or anything like this, that's a dirty, nasty, rotten trick — and I think that's really freedom-of-speech infringement," she charged

Standing by Her Man, Always With Elegance

...Let's hear it, too, for Rachel Robinson, who broke the wives' color barrier.

This is an honor well deserved because, depending on the set of wives, any newcomer, let alone the first black wife, can find herself walking into a hornet's nest. The Brooklyn Dodgers' wives, though, apparently did not greet her stingers first.

"I think the wives took it well in stride, as best I can remember," recalled Norma King, wife of Clyde King, then a young Dodgers pitcher. "She was accepted. She was a lovely girl. You couldn't find fault with her. It was like being with any other wife."

Fifty years later, Rachel Robinson continues to be unlike many other baseball wives, black or white, just as her husband was unlike many other players, black or white. In a two-minute speech after the fifth inning Tuesday night, she followed President Clinton by calling for even greater equality among all people.

"This anniversary," she said, standing at home plate, "has given us an opportunity as a nation to celebrate together the triumphs of the past and the social progress that has occurred. It has also given us an opportunity to reassess the challenges of the present. It is my passionate hope that we can take this reawakened feeling of unity and use it as a driving force so that each of us can recommit to equality of opportunity for all Americans."

Rachel and Jackie Robinson were married in February 1946. Norma and Clyde King were married nine months later. The Kings were Southerners, but neither had a problem with the Robinsons' color. Mrs. King, reminiscing over the telephone from North Carolina, reeled off the names of some of the other wives -- Dottie Reese, Betty Erskine, Ann Branca, Beverly Snider.

"I never heard anyone say anything but kind things about Rachel," she said. "She was invited to everything we had. She wouldn't always come -- she had little Jackie -- but she would come when she could. We all had a normal relationship with her."

Norma King recalled an incident early that first season at Ebbets Field that let Rachel Robinson know she belonged.

"Our seats were together, and after the game, we went downstairs together," she related. "There was an area where the wives waited for our husbands. It was inside an iron gate away from the fans. She stopped outside the gate, but I didn't realize she stopped. I went in. I looked and she wasn't behind me. I went back and said, 'Rachel, c'mon.' She said, 'I'm waiting here.' I said, 'No, you belong in here with the other wives.' "

The other wives, Clyde King remembered, came to admire Rachel Robinson.

"The wives thought she was an elegant lady," he said. "They were always anxious to see what she was wearing because she wore designer clothes."

Rachel Robinson has remained an elegant lady; a productive one, too. In 1973, the year after Robinson died, she formed the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which has since awarded 450 college scholarships to minority students who were needy and demonstrated leadership potential. Tuesday night the president saluted her efforts.

In honoring Robinson's memory, the ceremony also honored Rachel Robinson because the first black player in major league baseball did not go through the trauma alone. She wasn't out there on the field with him, but Rachel Robinson was right there alongside him. ...

8 posted on 01/25/2006 7:16:29 AM PST by theFIRMbss
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To: theFIRMbss

Interesting. Wasn't Jackie a Republican?


10 posted on 01/25/2006 8:56:12 AM PST by JZelle
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