Husband: widow of the first black player in Major League Baseball, Jackie Robinson.
(married 1946 - 1973)
Children: son, Jackie Robinson, Jr. (November 1946), daughter, Sharon, son, David.
Born: Rachel Annetta Isum (July 19, 1922), Los Angeles, California,
Residence: Chicago, Illinois
Education: Attended UCLA. There, she met Jackie in 1941, and she married him in 1946.
Occupation: Former nurse, Assistant Professor of nursing at Yale University and later, the Director of Nursing at the Connecticut Mental Health Center
She was married to Jackie Robinson, the man who broke baseball's color barrier and became the first black player in Major League Baseball when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
In 1973, after 27 years of marriage Jackie Robinson died died of a massive heart attack in their Connecticut home at 53, and Rachel founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the New York-based organization that provides mentoring and dozens of annual scholarships to outstanding African American and Hispanic students.
In 2007, she was awarded the Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award by Commissioner Bud Selig.
Rachel Robinson is the woman who knew how to smile through her fear. Throughout their 27 years of marriage, Jackie Robinson's wife managed to publicly mask her concerns. As courageously as her pioneering husband, she silently had endured the death threats, the taunts, the provocations, the stinging innuendo. Though they'd met in 1940, they were married just two weeks before they were to depart for their first spring training. They were newlyweds with only each other to turn to for support. Rachel was his rock." Now, Rachel spends considerable time recounting the tribulations she and her new husband endured in those early years of his baseball career.
Rachel Robinson, the pretty but painfully shy 24-year-old from Northern California became committed to the virtues Jackie Robinson had come to symbolize. In addition to being a mother of three - Jackie Jr., Sharon and David - an active baseball wife, and a professional woman with a distinguished career as a psychiatric nurse. Now, 60 years after Robinson's historic debut, Rachel Robinson remains the keeper of the flame. She is a medium of sorts, constantly summoning up her husband's spirit for new generations of Americans to behold. Her "overriding goal" for the 35 years she has lived without him has been to honor that legacy, to preach, practice and encourage its message of fortitude, character and opportunity.
She is 84 now, yet hardly a day goes by when she is not doing just that, invoking or promoting the memory of her late husband, who in becoming the first black major leaguer in the 20th century became so much more.
Articles:
Rachel Robinson: Still spreading the legacy
60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut
Advice from the Top: Robinson's widow offers lessons
Rachel Robinson, Founder of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, Hosts the Market Close
Commissioner honors Rachel Robinson
President Honors Jackie Robinson at Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony
No comments:
Post a Comment