In Passing
Robert Peterson; baseball historian
Robert W. Peterson, author of a pioneering study of baseball history that ushered in an era of belated recognition for the stars of the old Negro Leagues, died of lung cancer Feb. 11 at his home in Lower Macungie Township, Pa. He was 80.
In 1970, Peterson published “Only the Ball Was White,” the first significant effort to chronicle the glory and bitterness of African American professional baseball in the first half of the 20th century. Greeted with near-universal praise, it was named by Sports Illustrated as one of the century’s 100 best sports books.
Prompted by Peterson’s touching but measured account, the National Baseball Hall of Fame began to honor Negro Leagues players in 1971, with the induction of legendary pitcher Satchel Paige. Since then, 17 other Negro Leagues standouts have received Hall of Fame plaques.
Peterson, who was white, traced his interest in black baseball to his youth, when a touring black professional team came to his home town in western Pennsylvania. In his book, he wrote that in 1939 he “saw Josh Gibson hit the longest home run ever struck in Warren County.”
New Albany, Miss.
Bettie Wilson, 115; daughter of slaves
Bettie Wilson, the daughter of freed slaves who was one of the three oldest people in America, died Monday at her home in New Albany, Miss., of complications from congestive heart failure, according to her great-granddaughter Della Shorter. Wilson was 115.
The three people, all women, celebrated their 115th birthday last summer. Two are still living, one in Tennessee and the other in Alabama. Wilson was the second oldest of the group.
“Bettie Wilson was amazing,” said Robert Young, a longevity researcher in Atlanta, who documented Wilson’s biographic data in recent years. “At 114 she was still able to read the newspaper and sign her name,” he said. She celebrated her last five birthdays with parties for several hundred relatives and friends.
Wilson is survived by her son Willie Rogers, 96. Other surviving relatives include five grandchildren, 46 great grandchildren and 95 great-great grandchildren.
Frederick, Md.
Robert Hotz, 91; aviation journalist
Robert Hotz, an influential editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine who went from being a fervent booster of NASA to one of its most vocal critics, died Thursday at Frederick (Md.) Memorial Hospital. Hotz, who lived on a farm near Myersville, Md., had Parkinson’s disease. He was 91.
As editor of the weekly aerospace journal from 1955 until 1979, Hotz made Aviation Week an indispensable source of information about military aircraft, space exploration and the airline industry. Called “the bulletin board for the military industrial community,” the magazine had a steady readership in political and intelligence circles and among the military, academia and everyday airplane buffs.
“Aviation Week is to airplane and space people what Rolling Stone is to rock musicians,” former astronaut Joseph Allen told the Washington Post in 1986.
Hotz trumpeted the wonders of military hardware and technology and was an early advocate of the space program. With well-placed intelligence and scientific sources on both sides of the Iron Curtain, he sounded early alarms of Soviet air power that helped lead to U.S. military buildups and to the “Star Wars” defense plans of President Ronald Reagan.
In 1986, after he was named to the presidential commission investigating the crash of the Challenger space shuttle, Hotz went on the attack against the NASA hierarchy. He accused it of shoddy planning, a cover-up and outright lying about the mid-air disaster, which took the lives of seven astronauts.
“Of course, there was a cover-up,” he said. “I believe they couldn’t face the fact that they … put these guys in a situation where they did not have adequate equipment to survive.”