2020.12.12 Better Late Than Never
THROW BACK THURSDAY - MORE BROOKS!
plus Class News
Here's an article that appeared in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on March 16, 2016. I tried to copy it so I could
just paste it in, but not enough time to figure it out. So just double click on the attachment.
It's easy to enlarge and you open it.
AND HERE ARE SOME OF THE RESPONSES FROM LAST WEEK:
ML, thanks for posting this article on Brooks. He was like superman at times. Sure enjoy the stories you post.
Dave Duggan
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Great article on Brooksie, Marylou. I, too, enjoyed watching him play basketball for the Tigers as well as baseball. He probably would have been the quarterback for Wilson's Tigers (he was QB at Pulaski Heights JH); but Brook's dad wisely would not let him play HS football to protect his potential career in professional baseball. When I was young (pre-school age), my dad and Brook's dad both played baseball at Lamar Porter Field in an adult city league. Somewhere I have a picture of myself in one of those dugouts in a baseball uniform as a three-year-old bat boy, my first of many happy times at Lamar Porter. Brooks, of course, graced that field playing for the Doughboys and American Legion baseball there. Good memories ….
Gary Frederick
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Good article. I played touch football with Brooks at Woodruff. I talk to him about old times every once in a while.
Peter Hartstein
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A fine tribute for Brooks. He game to Tyler, Texas many years ago to speak at a Rose Parade function. I drove down there and we had a brief chat.
He was closer to my brother Jerry but was glad to visit with anyone from Little Rock. He was the same ole Brooks!
Bill Hedges
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I loved the Brooks stories! He lived on Marcus street & were good friends. I was so glad when I had a along visit with him at the last 55 reunion. MLB
Mary Lou Hosack (Billingsley)
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I am not sure of the source or accuracy but as I remember the story, Brooks had several college sports scholarship offers in baseball and basketball. In the 11th grade me decided to quit school and join the minor league. Ms Hensley ,our guidance counselor, tried to dissuade Brooks from taking such drastic action. She told him that if he followed through with his plan that he would never finish school and would live to regret it. Several years later Brooks visited Ms Hensley and reported that he remembered her warning and in his case it was not warranted and all was well.
Jim Jones
Metro Referral Agent
Metro Referral Associates
Virginia Beach, VA
Licensed in Commonwealth of Virginia
757-777-5972
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Thanks ML for posting this. I remember Brooks well playing basketball, pretty darned good. While Wilson exhorted him to come out for football, Brooks' dad correctly told him to stick with baseball.
Don Manes (Class of ’54)
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Great stories about Brooks. He was (is) truly an All American guy.
Although a year ahead of us in school, he was a fellow athlete ( LR Club etc.) noted for his baseball( American Legion) and Tiger basketball. He could have gone to U of A on a basketball scholarship but the Baltimore Orioles signed him to a baseball contract on Graduation Night from LRCHS. The rest of course is history, much of which is related in your e-mail.
He was a very good friend and I have bragged through the later years how I knew such a star athlete and went to school with him etc. ( along with Billy Cannon from football with Baton Rouge Istrouma High ( who Igor will also recall) who later went to LSU, won the Heisman Trophy, and then played pro football with the Houston Oilers etc.
Thanks for the story on Brooks. He’s really had an extraordinary life and I’m very proud for him.
Jimmy Martin
P.S. Brooks was also a good friend of Carolyn’s. Although a year ahead of her in school, they sort of grew up together through grade school, junior high and high school etc. Just another one of his many good friends and admirers.
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One summer evening back In 1957, some number of us alumnae of LRCHS sat legs-folded on the pavement at the circle turn-around of what then was The East Palisades housing development, overlooking the Arkansas River from its high ridgeline perch in the Heights. There was Bill Jones, Jim Weatherington, Fred Marshall and Brooks Robinson, joined also by Bill’s older brother on leave from the US Air Force, accompanied by a couple of his enlisted friends.
That evening became unforgettable for me due to Brooks not being of the character for which he was so widely appreciated -- a buoyant geniality that radiated into all who happened to be in his presence. Instead, on this occasion, his demeanor was subdued to point of seeming near total withdrawal into himself. I cannot remember him making a single comment or display reaction at all to that of others.
Never having been a sports enthusiast I was only vaguely aware of his athletic involvement, acquired at that by overheard conversation between friends who’d participated with him. Imagine my surprise when in about 1961 I opened a Life magazine article to read that he was that season’s Golden Glove winner. The article photos pictured him inflight with team on way to a game (I guess), and in one he was shown standing in the aisle flirting with a stewardess. Much later Wayne Young informed me that that 1957 summer followed his first year in the majors after which he’d been bumped down into the “minors”, possibly why he wasn’t his buoyant self that night.
Alvin Mooser
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I remember Brooks, his home room was next to mine and my brother was in his home room. Found out later, my husband Charles played withBrooks andGaylon Boshears among others. The field they played on out here on Sunday afternoons is for sale with Hugh modern house on it for only 1 ½ million. That’s Ferndale.
Marcella Rowland
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I enjoyed the Brooks Robinson write up. I can't remember where I was located when Brooks was in town and I made contact and we had a nice visit.....I felt very privileged to able to meet with him for a bit. He was still the same person he was at Central.
Ed Stebbins
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Class News
Our sympathies to the family of Dorothy Freeman who passed away last Tuesday morning, December 8.
She had a wonderful daughter, Diane, who took good care of her Mother. Dorothy had dementia and lived
with her daughter until the last several months of her life. Diane said although Dorothy left Little Rock when she
was 19 and lived the rest of her life in California, she always considered Arkansas home.
My condolences to all of the Riggs family......Buddy was special guy.....we used to go fishing and hunting
together a lot. He was a fine friend...Ed Stebbins
FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill Hedges has a daughter, Rebecca, who has what looks to me to be a darling shop in Houston, TX. Get on
Facebook and take a look. Maybe there will be some things you will want to order for Christmas! Also,
Lynda Dixon, Barbara Browne, Joyce Fuller, Iris Johnson, who am I missed????, why don't you run by.
PRETTY PLEASE HOUSTON
8791 KATY FREEWAY
HOUSTON, TX 77024
https://prettypleasehouston.com
Sorry I'm late this week . . . but better late than never, huh???
ML
