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Column: At L.A.’s Marshall High, a mother’s dedication keeps her daughter’s memory alive

Beverly Sutton chats with Rolland Brous before the John Marshall High School Athletic Hall of Fame ceremony.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
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The giant trophy sits in a high school hallway case behind glass that is smudged and scratched. Some names upon it are faded, others chipped. One remains clear.

“Leigh Francis Sutton Memorial Athlete of the Year.”

Its hefty wood base holding the silver statuette of a powerful woman with wings, the trophy has been awarded annually to the most accomplished female athlete at Los Angeles’ John Marshall High for the last 41 years.

It is named for Leigh Sutton, a former Marshall multi-sport athlete who died in an auto accident a few months after her 15th birthday in January 1976.

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The trophy is about achievement, empowerment, a testament to female athletics that began long before gender equity was popular.

It is also about a mother making sure nobody forgets her daughter.

For each of those 41 years, quietly, sometimes painfully, Beverly Sutton has personally facilitated the award. She has engraved the names in the big trophy. She has purchased small individual trophies. She has written a $500 scholarship check that accompanies the honor.

Yet she has never personally handed it out. She has never shaken a winner’s hand. She has never seen any of those winners play. The pain of her loss is still too great. Only twice in 41 years has she even sat in the audience for Senior Awards Nights, and both times the memories were so wrenching, she vowed never to return.

“The hurt never goes away, there is no such thing as it going away,” she said. “But I have to keep the trophy going. My daughter would think it was great. She would want it done.”

She can still hear Leigh shouting “Hey Mommy!” from across the playground where her daughter played basketball, softball or football.

This award is her way of shouting back, and its effects have been breathtaking.

Girls have used the trophy to inspire them to become the first in their families to attend college. Girls have used the honor to lead them to careers in athletics. Girls have used the money for books, for meal plans, for school supplies and, of course, for sports equipment that has enabled them to keep playing even when their collegiate playing days were finished.

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“The award has been incredible, the impact on all these girls has been amazing,” said Wendy Triplett, Marshall’s athletic director. “It has recognized female athletes long before they were being recognized. It has made the spirit of her daughter live forever in all of us.”

Beverly Sutton is 91 and still lives in the Los Feliz home where she and her late husband Fred raised Leigh and younger brother Jim. A representative from Los Angeles Marshall Sports Hall of Fame recently phoned with the news that they wanted to honor her as the first inductee who had never touched a ball or blown a whistle.

“What did I do to deserve it?” she said.

When she showed up at the school’s Sniffen Auditorium on Friday night for the ceremony, she found out. There were women lined up to thank her, women wearing giant white buttons bearing her daughter’s photo, women with stories of accomplishment and hope, women uplifted by a young girl they never met and a mother they didn’t know.

In her brief speech, Sutton said her honor belonged to all of these women, and thanked them for honoring her in return.

“I probably started all this because I wanted Leigh to be remembered,” she said, fighting back tears from a wound that never closes, addressing a mission that never ends. “What I have seen today, and who I have seen today, proves to me that she is not forgotten, and I thank you.”

The hundred or so guests were standing and cheering as Beverly Sutton slowly walked down the steps off the stage. They remained on their feet and clapped until she disappeared into the crowd, her small frame visible only through the glitter of one of those giant white buttons.

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Leigh Sutton played sports at a time when America still didn’t know quite what to do with women who played sports. She came of age in the years immediately after the 1972 passage of the gender-equalizing Title IX, so she was still subject to different rules, different standards, and few real records.

“The most accurate way to describe her was, she was just really, really good at everything,” said Jerry Arbogast, a classmate. “She would come over and play basketball with the boys because the girls’ team wouldn’t let her move. And she would beat us.”

Her brother Jim felt her wrath every day on their backyard basketball court. He was two years younger and never stood a chance.

“She wouldn’t just beat me, she would beat me up,” he said. “Back then, you just didn’t have many girls like that.”

Marshall High began at 10th grade at the time, so it was impressive that Leigh stepped right out of junior high and made the varsity basketball team during her sophomore year. By then she was already a softball star, and her mother has a framed photo of her plowing through an end sweep in flag football. It was her goal to attend UCLA and teach physical education.

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“She was that freckle-faced kid with long dark hair and Chuck Taylor tennis shoes,” said Steve Meek, who was two years ahead of her in school. “She was the spirit of athleticism, fiercely competitive yet always willing to give you a hand up off the floor.”

Then came the night of Jan. 31, 1976, when she was returning home from a Hollywood concert while sitting in the bed of a speeding pickup truck. There was a collision with another car, the truck flipped over, and Sutton was killed instantly along with classmate Bill Nickerson.

The funeral director discouraged the family from viewing Leigh’s remains. They were left with only her memory.

“The impact on Los Feliz was profound,” remembers longtime USC broadcaster Pete Arbogast, who was five years older than Sutton but coached a local girls’ basketball team for which she played. “It left the entire community reeling.”

Four months later, guided only by her grief, Beverly Sutton drove down to the Hollywood Trophy Company, picked out a statuette, and the “Leigh Francis Sutton Memorial Athlete Of The Year” award was created. She uses the same company today. She has saved every yellow receipt.

“I wanted my daughter to be remembered, and I guess that’s the only way I knew how,” Beverly said.

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The rules were simple, and are still intact today. The winner had to be a multi-sport female athlete with good grades and a letter certifying she would be attending college. School administrators would pick the winner, and her only obligation would be to send Beverly Sutton a thank-you note, all of which she still keeps in a thick scrapbook.

At the time, every other sports award at the school was for men. Unwittingly, Sutton created an empowering sports atmosphere for girls that remains strong at Marshall today.

“My mom did it without knowing what she was doing,” Jim said. “Today when someone creates an award they beat their chest and get on a soapbox, but my mom just wanted to honor good female athletes, and look what happened.”

Indeed, her daughter’s name became synonymous with strength, and a couple of local families even gave their daughters the middle name “Leigh” to honor her memory. Then there was the lasting effect on the winners of the award, few of whom have ever met Beverly Sutton, but all of whom know her story.

“I was like, whoa, this is really cool,” said Vickie Cerda, who won the award in 2001 and used it to help her start her life at Arizona State. “It meant a lot to me. It was somebody telling me my hard work had paid off.”

Dollie Lucero won the award in 1987 and played basketball at Glendale Community College before injuries cut her career short. She now works for a business management firm representing celebrities and athletes, but the award is still a highlight.

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“What [Beverly] has done to carry on her daughter’s legacy is incredible, extraordinary,” Lucero said. “’Marshall is very lucky to have someone like her.”

Beverly Sutton feels lucky to be able to help young women, and will continue to do so, but only back in the shadows. She returned after her Hall of Fame induction to the quiet anonymity of that house where her daughter’s clothes are still in drawers, her scrapbook is still on a desk, and there are bits of her voice on an aged cassette tape, forever here, forever 15.

The next time Beverly Sutton visits her daughter’s grave site at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetary, which she does often, she will talk to her about the Hall of Fame induction. She will tell her about all the strong women she met, all the memories the award has created, and, being her mother, she knows exactly the casual way Leigh will respond.

“I know she’ll say, ‘That’s great, Mom,’” Beverly said, mother and daughter separated for 41 years yet still connected, apart for half a lifetime yet still changing their world together.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

Get more of Bill Plaschke’s work and follow him on Twitter @BillPlaschke

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