Jackie Robinson: Recalling a Legend

Months after surgeons replaced the kneecap that had carried him to a silver Olympic medal in 1936, Mack Robinson leans on a bookcase for support as he descends the stairs from his kitchen to his den.

The man who finished second to Jesse Owens in the Olympic 200-meter race five decades ago can stand for only a short time.

Robinson, 72, also takes insulin to fight diabetes, the disease that plagued his pioneering, baseball-playing brother, Jackie, before his death from a heart attack in 1972.

Other Robinsons

Elsewhere in Pasadena, Jackie Robinson’s other brother, Edgar, 76, lives in a rest home, while his sister, Willa Mae Walker, 71, worries that her $740 monthly income from Social Security and pensions falls below her expenses.

This month, however, the Robinsons will have a chance to forget their infirmities and other concerns. On Saturday, they will ride to Dodger Stadium where, in a nationally televised pregame ceremony, the Dodgers will honor Jackie Robinson for breaking baseball’s color line in 1947.

Jackie Robinson’s widow, Rachel, who grew up near the Los Angeles Coliseum, will fly in from New York to join her brother, Raymond Isum, 62, of Los Angeles and the Robinsons for the ceremony.

When the Dodgers play the San Francisco Giants after the ceremony, Robinson’s uniform number, 42, will be emblazoned on second base. Every other major league team will play its opening home game with the number painted on second base.

After Saturday’s game, Rachel Robinson will return to New York for the opening of an exhibition, “Jackie Robinson: An American Journey,” at The New-York Historical Society on April 17. The show is scheduled to appear at an undetermined site in Los Angeles next September.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which provides scholarships for black college students. Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who directed that the 1987 baseball season be dedicated to Jackie Robinson’s memory, will help lead a campaign to raise $2 million for the foundation.

Career Average of .311

Robinson hit .311 during a 10-year major-league career from 1947 to 1956 and was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, and the continuing tributes please his relatives. “I don’t think one could feel any greater than to see someone honored in your family,” Mack Robinson said.

Part of their pleasure derives from knowing that they suffered through the 1947 season with their trailblazing brother. Willa Mae Walker recalls that Jackie frequently telephoned that year to say that bigots had threatened his life.

“He would call and tell us what was happening so if it did happen, we wouldn’t have to find out about it in the newspaper,” Walker said.

“We were scared to death. We didn’t even think about going back East to watch him. In one game he had received three threats that said if he played, he would be dead by the third inning. We sat here and listened to the game on the radio all day waiting for a gunshot.”

While they worried about threats against Robinson in the East, the family encountered problems here. Walker worked in a hospital and said that when some patients found out that she was Jackie Robinson’s sister, they asked for another nurse.

Problem Not Unusual

“I told them I had nothing to do with Jack being signed up to play baseball,” she said, “but if they wanted to get someone else, to go to the desk and do it.”

Walker said racial problems were not unusual when her mother arrived in Pasadena from Georgia in 1920 with 14-month-old Jackie and four other children.

Deserted by her husband, she worked as a domestic to feed her family. By 1923, Mallie Robinson had saved enough money to buy a house on Pepper Street in a white neighborhood near Fair Oaks Avenue and Washington Boulevard.

Walker recalled that when the family moved into its home, whites tried to buy them out. The plan fizzled when a white resident declared the Robinsons were good neighbors.

Jackie Robinson’s brother, Frank, was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1939, and eventually the rest of the children moved out and wreckers tore down the home to build a housing project. All that remains is a barely noticeable sidewalk plaque that says Jackie Robinson lived at the site.

Walker, a widow with three children and 17 grandchildren, moved into a home in 1945 that she still occupies. Because of her financial situation, she uses utilities sparingly and recently waited more than three weeks to fix a broken glass pane in the front door.

A framed poster of the Jackie Robinson postage stamp hangs in the living room, the only clue in the house that she is his sister.

A mile away Mack Robinson sits in an easy chair in his den surrounded by pictures of himself, his brother and his 10 children. His wife of 32 years, Delano, fusses over him and reminds him to drink juice for his diabetes. The two met when Robinson took a trip to see his brother play in New York in 1954.

“I have nothing plush,” said Robinson, who worked as a street sweeper, a messenger and a corporate community relations representative after he returned from the Olympics. “I have no money. I don’t think I ever made more than $15,000 a year.

“But I never worried. I am more concerned about what I am able to do with what I have than worrying about what I don’t have.”

‘Black Sheep of the Family’

That philosophy is similar to one developed by Raymond Isum, who describes himself as “the black sheep of the family.” Isum, 62, lives in a house on 36th Place near Western Avenue, which his parents purchased in 1908 and where he and Rachel Robinson grew up. Isum’s shiny brown and beige 1934 Mercedes convertible sat in front of the glossy redwood-sided home as he discussed his upbringing in a recent interview.

Straight A Student

The retired auto shop foreman explained that his sister was a straight-A student in college who became a nurse and the head of the Jackie Robinson Foundation and that his brother, Charles, became a vice president of Schenley Distillers Co. in New York.

Isum said watching his brother, sister and his famous brother-in-law convinced him that being rich and famous had its price.

“When I was younger,” he said, “everywhere I went I looked for opportunity. Being around Rachel and Charles, I saw all the stuff that they had to go through to make it. I also saw the effect it had on them and I didn’t like it.

“I would go out with Jack. The notoriety of being with him was great. It didn’t affect me. But if he went into a room, everything stopped. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized. He always had to smile. It just wasn’t for me.

“But my approach has paid off. You know how many headaches I’ve had in my lifetime? I bet I’ve had four or five. I don’t let that mental pressure bother me.”

That does not discount his enormous admiration for his brother-in-law. Isum said he never doubted Robinson had the ability to play major league baseball. What he didn’t know was whether anyone could withstand the pressure from fans and opponents who wanted him to fail.

“To go through what he went through and to take it like he took it was unusual,” Isum said. “Because Jackie was a competitor. He was a hothead with a fiery temper.”

When Dodger General Manager Branch Rickey signed Robinson, he made the player promise not to fight back against threats or abuse until he became established. Rickey felt that such fights could incite riots and doom the integration experiment.

“He never had to keep his mouth shut until then,” said Isum, who witnessed Robinson’s first major league game on April 15, 1947. “Very few men could have done it. I could not have done it. No way. I’d be dead by now.”