Maintaining The Robinson Legacy
It’s 5 hours before the curtain goes up and Rachel Robinson has 500 things to do.
On this day in early February, she has driven 80 miles from her home on the Connecticut coast to attend the announcement that her grandson Jesse Simms has accepted a football scholarship to UCLA. Four newspapers and three television stations want interviews. The Jackie Robinson Foundation has called twice.
That evening, she was honored at the ESPY Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York City for the 50th anniversary of her late husband Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier.
In the past two months there have been a lot of days like that. There were symposiums at Long Island University and lectures, book signings and fund-raisers across the country. There were questions on subjects ranging from Roberto Alomar to Branch Rickey to the couple’s first spring training in segregated Daytona Beach, Fla.
All this while running a foundation that has provided more than 425 college scholarship nationwide, including many at UCLA, the couple’s alma mater.
Maintaining a legacy is Rachel Robinson’s full-time job. Nurturing a dream has become a lifetime passion.
“She is a champion of the human spirit,” said daughter Sharon. “Although my father was a national figure, she was a cornerstone for our family. Her partnership with my father was very real. A lot of this anniversary celebration is testament to her.”
The actual anniversary of Robinson’s first game with the Dodgers is April 15.
“A major anniversary like this gives you an opportunity to celebrate not just the triumphs, but we can look back at the social change that has taken place because of Jack,” Rachel Robinson said. “I feel that he was a catalyst for the civil-rights movement. But if that’s all we do then we have missed an opportunity to deepen the experience. I think we also need to look at what is happening today and how much needs to be done. Look at the issues and how intractable racism is today. We are entering into a new millennium and hopefully we will have new ideas and structures in place and support things that need to be done.”
What gives Rachel Robinson’s message depth today is the fire with which she took the idea of keeping her husband’s memory alive. There are many baseball players who do not know anything about Jackie Robinson, who died 25 years ago of a heart attack after a long bout with diabetes. Rachel, in her early 70s, wants to show that he is more than a grainy black-and-white image on ESPN.
So she has personalized their experience, articulating the triumphs and tragedies of their life together. The year before Robinson died, the couple lost their oldest son, Jack Jr., who battled drug problems before he was killed in an auto accident.
Rachel Robinson doesn’t hide from the notion that her husband’s celebrity contributed to their son’s death or that the couple didn’t know how to read the signs.
“Jackie Jr. was damaged by that and we did not know how to help him because it was new to us as well,” she said. “We were living through those times that were so difficult.”
Jackie retired from the Dodgers after the 1957 season and moved into labor and political arenas. In 1960, Rachel earned a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., an hour from the couple’s Stamford home.
“Aunt Rachel is one of the neatest people I’ve ever met,” said William Robinson, son of Jackie’s older brother, Mack. “She just pulls you aside and gets into your life - what are you doing, are you done with school, what’s your game plan, how are you going to attack it? She’s really a caring person.”
Her true vision is for the students who receive her assistance.
“There is still a lot of hatred in the world, a lot of misunderstanding and our kids are being hurt by that,” she said. “They are growing up in that environment and we can’t afford it… . What’s happening to me is happening to you.”