Jackie Robinson

Re “For Robinson, Game Was About Respect,” March 31:

I wanted to tell of a gracious moment Jackie Robinson once accorded two friends and me.

It was the 1940 football season. After a memorable season in 1939 when he and Kenny Washington were the stars, he was now the solo star. I was a sports writer for the Virgil Voice, our Virgil Junior High newspaper. I took the bus with the sports editor, Milt Wasserman, and a friend, Elliott Birnberg, to go to UCLA and interview him.

I believe no prior arrangements were made, but he took the time during football practice to walk up and down the sideline with us as we tried to think of things to ask. He couldn’t have been nicer.

He was the best open-field runner I’ve ever seen . . . still! He was Pacific Coast Conference high scorer in basketball--and a phenomenon to watch as he dribbled through everyone. And he held the record in the broad jump (long jump, now). He was certainly the best athlete I’ve ever seen. Baseball was not the big sport here in those days and, as Jim Murray said, may not have been his best sport. Robinson was great at anything and everything.

BILL GUMBINER

Sherman Oaks

* This was a great article. However, I found one exception in the last paragraph. Murray stated, “He made America live up to its promises.” It would have been better said: He tried to make America live up to its promises.

CARLIE HARRIS SR.

Harbor City