Statue of Limitations : Mack Robinson May Not Be Around to Enjoy the Tribute to Brother Jackie

For nearly 50 years, Mack Robinson, an Olympic Games silver medalist, has worked to get his hometown of Pasadena to properly recognize the accomplishments--athletic and sociological--of his younger brother, Jackie.

Now, with the goal in sight, Mack may not be around to enjoy it.

A statue of the Robinson brothers in Pasadena’s civic center, across the street from the City Hall, is scheduled for an unveiling next summer. And Jackie will be recognized with a float in Rose Parade on New Year’s Day.

But Mack, 82 last July 18, is totally disabled, unable to talk and in a wheelchair. In the last five years, he has undergone quintuple bypass heart surgery, suffered a stroke and several seizures. Last month, he had abdominal surgery.

“We thought we’d lost him before the doctors took out his gall bladder,” said Delano Robinson, his wife of 41 years. “Since he had his first stroke on Christmas Day, 1990, Mack’s just gone down, down, down.

“When they took him to the hospital this last time, we were thinking more about a funeral than we were about having him home again, but by the grace of God, he’s back home with family. Just being home has been a help to him.”

Mack’s family, besides Delano, who combines a contagious optimism with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader, includes four sons, three daughters, 25 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. The Robinsons live in the same house Mack built on MacDonald Street in 1955, the year he married Delano.

“There’s a lot of love to go round for Mack,” Delano said. “He came home last month and he needs 24-hour care and we have to feed him, but now we can put him in the van, take him for a ride, and make his last days as comfortable as possible. He can’t speak, but he squeezes our fingers. Sometimes, when he wants to respond, he’ll get so frustrated he starts crying.”

In the meantime, Pasadena Robinson Memorial Inc. continues to creep closer to the culmination of its objective--a fitting tribute to the two men who did so much for Pasadena, with little or no recognition from their hometown.

Author Roger Kahn wrote of Jackie, “Should Robinson have been allowed to manage in the major leagues? That recurring question is inadequate. I believe Robinson should have been asked to become commissioner of baseball.”

In Pasadena, the recurring question of a proper memorial to Robinson is also inadequate. It is almost unconscionable that Jackie, the man who broke the color barrier in the major leagues--10 years before Martin Luther King Jr. founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--should not have been asked to be grand marshal of the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl game.

It was in the Rose Bowl, while playing halfback for Pasadena Junior College, that his daring style of running first attracted national attention in 1938 and led to crowds of as many as 40,000.

In the 50 years since Jackie broke baseball’s color barrier, only two black men have been Tournament of Roses grand marshal, and only one, baseball slugger Hank Aaron, was American. The other was the Brazilian soccer player Pele.

And there has been precedent for hometown grand marshals. Four Pasadenans have been honored in that time.

Jackie, who died of a heart attack Oct. 24, 1972, will finally get a moment in the sun on New Year’s Day when a float honoring him will be in the parade. It was entered jointly by the Museum of Tolerance and the Pasadena Robinson Memorial.

Jackie’s accomplishments are widely known, but only those with a long memory recall the exploits of Mack, five years older than Jackie.

In 1936, as a student at Pasadena JC, he stunned the track and field establishment by qualifying for the Olympic Games in the 200 meters, knocking out favorites Foy Draper of USC and 1932 silver medalist Ralph Metcalfe. At Berlin, he chased Jesse Owens to a world record in finishing second in the finals. In the heats, Robinson equaled the Olympic record.

“I always thought if I’d had some help--like getting some new shoes or some coaching--I could have beaten Jesse, or made it even closer than it was,” he insisted later. “He only beat me by a foot in the trials and I ran the same time he did in the Olympic heats [21.1 seconds] and he had to run 20.7 to beat me in the finals.

“All that time I had to run in the same old shoes I’d worn all season in JC meets. The spikes were barely nubs. I didn’t get a thing. It was like nobody knew I was around. The coaches all hung around Owens and the SC guys [Frank Wykoff and Draper] because their coach [Dean Cromwell] was one of the team coaches.”

During the Atlanta Olympics last summer, on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Games, members of the 1936 team were honored at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Mack was unable to attend, but Delano was there, along with Owens’ daughter, Marlene Rankin; John Woodruff, the 800-meter gold medalist, and sprinter Marty Glickman, among others.

“It was a sad, but a beautiful learning experience,” Delano Robinson said. “It was especially nice to see Marty Glickman. You know, Mack always talked about him, how he and Sam Stoller were left off the relay team because they were Jewish, so that the two SC guys could get a gold medal.”

On the morning of the first round of heats, Glickman and Stoller were dropped from the team after having practiced baton passing all week. According to Dave Wallechinsky’s “The Complete Book of the Olympics,” they were the only members of the U.S. squad who did not compete. The gold-medal winners were Owens, Metcalfe, Draper and Wykoff.

Mack was also invited to be a torch bearer before the Atlanta Games. His son, William, a veteran of the Los Angeles and New York marathons, ran on behalf of his father.

Some family biographers claim the Olympics were the end of Robinson’s athletic career, that he returned home to work to support his family. Not so. In 1937 he competed for Pasadena JC on what former USC coach Cromwell called “the strongest junior college team I’ve ever seen.” Besides running the 100, 220, 440, low hurdles and the relay, he set a national JC long-jump record of 25 feet 5 1/2 inches.

The following year, at the University of Oregon, he won the NCAA 220 and the AAU 200 meters.

Mack dropped out of school before the 1939 season and came home.

Although Jackie never returned to Pasadena after signing with the Dodgers, except to visit his family, Mack chose to remain in his hometown and work for fairness in a community that allowed African Americans to swim in the municipal pool only on Tuesdays, and allowed segregated theaters and downtown restaurants that did not admit blacks.

A lingering memory of old-timers is that of Mack, wearing his Olympic sweatshirt, with USA emblazoned across the front, sweeping the city’s streets.

Robinson had complained that he was ignored when he returned home from Berlin--only three people were at the train to meet him--compared to the civic welcome given many white athletes, but he insisted that wearing his USA sweatshirt was not a sign of insolence--as the city fathers thought.

“It was cold out there on the streets in the early morning and I didn’t have anything warmer to wear,” Mack said. “Maybe they didn’t think I was proud, but I had kids at home to feed. I doubt if there were any white silver medalists sweeping streets, though.”

Although both brothers were active in the NAACP and other civil-rights programs, they were not reluctant to be politically independent.

Jackie aroused the ire of many black leaders when he campaigned actively for Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968. And Mack raised some eyebrows when he questioned the perception that Adolf Hitler had deliberately snubbed Owens and other black medal winners at the ’36 Games.

“I was around Hitler on several occasions and I never noticed any reaction from him,” Mack said a few years ago. “I never thought he snubbed Jesse. The only thing I remember about color being an issue was when a German came up to me and rubbed a wet finger on my arm to see if the black would rub off. It was an entirely innocent thing. He was just curious. He’d probably never seen a black skin before. He acted like maybe I was painted black.”

Through the years, Mack worked as a volunteer with at-risk youth groups, coached track teams and struggled to improve the qualify of life in the northwest part of the city, where he lived, all the while lobbying for that memorial he felt fitting for Jackie.

The first model and sketches of the statue are scheduled to be shown to the memorial committee Tuesday. The sculptors are Ralph Helmick and Stuart Schechter, both of Newton, Mass., and John Outterbridge of Los Angeles.

The memorial, which will be 24 feet in diameter, will be located at the southwest corner of Holly Street and Garfield Avenue in Centennial Square. A rose garden is on the site now, but it will be relocated adjacent to the statue, according to Diane Scott, executive director of the memorial foundation.

About half the money needed for the project has been raised, including a $100,000 gift from the Minority Heritage Foundation. The final cost is expected to be $325,000 to $340,000.

“We are soliciting funds from individuals and businesses in Pasadena,” Scott said. “Any individual or family contributing $300, or a business $1,000, will have their names listed permanently on the memorial.”

Proceeds from the Jan. 11 matinee performance of the play “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” at the Pasadena Community Playhouse will also go toward the memorial fund. The story, by Sheldon Epps, takes place in a hotel room of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Branch Rickey where dancer Bojangles Robinson, boxer Joe Louis and singer-actor Paul Robeson are told that Jackie will be the first black ballplayer promoted to the major leagues.

The play runs from Jan. 10 through Feb. 23.