My Aunt Mary

A week ago today my aunt Mary died at age 92. She worked her entire career for the local (Winston Salem Journal) paper covering high school and college sports and other local sports events (including tennis tournaments). She was a tiny lady who had a profound effect beyond both her size and her venue. She was one of the first female sportswriters in the country. During her lifetime she received almost every award a sportswriter can gain, including the Red Smith Award in 2005, which is the highest award a sportswriter can receive.

Mary was the middle sister of three. My mother was the oldest. Her younger sister, Cornelia, died about eleven months ago. Since my dad was an only child and my mother's sisters never married, Cornelia and Mary were the only outside family I knew when I was growing up. Mary worked until about ten years ago and Neely never was employed outside of the numerous civic and family duties she fulfilled.

In 2005 I did a post about a visit that my siblings and I had to a house that my family has occupied continuously since 1924.

My two aunts were a study in contrasts. Neely was outgoing, Mary a bit introverted. Neely also seemed to know a lot of stuff about a wide range of topics from the financial markets to tin soldiers. Mary graduated from Hollins (where my mother also graduated). Neely did not complete college although she was an avid reader.

Since my wife and I moved from Washington DC, I would see these two ladies at least twice a year, usually when I was going back to DC on business. What has always struck me on visits, including this one, was the community in which they lived. Part of that community was something they actively worked with others to create - in their neighborhood and in the city at large.

Yesterday we held a memorial service for Mary and here is what I said about her.

"Writing this eulogy has been hard for me. When I started working in the political realm, four decades ago, before I wrote speeches for elected officials, I wrote eulogies. Every politician gets asked to say something about the passing of this or that figure and most believe that a good way to test the skills of new staffers is to have them write for an audience who is unlikely to object. Even after I left working for politicians I have been asked to write a bit more than my share of eulogies.

Last October I found it pretty easy to figure out how to describe Neely, Mary’s younger sister. That was driven in part because Neely’s considerable range of positive qualities were known to a smaller share of people. Neely was Mary’s fashion coordinator but had a lot of other wonderful qualities. So in essence I was expanding her story a bit. But since last Sunday I have been stumped about how to characterize Mary in a way that doesn’t simply parrot all the material that has been written. The Journal did a marvelous set of articles including an absolutely superb column called Mary Garber, Hero. They caught my aunt in a way that few writers could. But then I began to think about this tiny figure who loomed so large and I began to think about some themes that others who worked with her or lived in her neighborhood might not have thought about. With that preface, there are five qualities that struck me about AME.

First, Mary typified George Bernard Shaw’s definition of an unreasonable person - “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man” Mary was the quintessential exemplar of Shaw’s definition, in spite of the politically incorrect nature of Shaw’s verbiage.

There was a stubbornness built on minor things. You better not bring her a steak that was not “blood rare.” But that stubbornness extended to larger things too.

Mary had a profound belief in equity, not in the political sense but on a more human level. When she began with the paper during World War II, there was no one else to write sports, so she took the job up. When the war ended she had a sports editor who had the good sense to figure out how to use her. She started in covering Black high school sports. In those days most papers in the South simply ignored what happened in those games or put them in a narrow section. As Diane Gentry said “She felt black parents were just as interested in reading about their sons in the newspaper as white parents.”

Being an unreasonable ground breaker had its moments. And Mary benefitted from some individuals who thought enough of her to make sure she could do her job. For example, when she expanded into college coverage, she needed the assistance of a security guard named John Baker to roust the athletes out of their locker rooms to get her quotes. But the point was she did not whine about that but simply figured out a way to get her job done. Jackie Robinson said to her at one point “keep your mouth shut and get your job done.” Mary thought that was good advice. Her first experience in covering college ball after the war got her initially assigned to the ladies box instead of the sports box. The paper forced the issue about where their reporter would work. When someone from the college called her editor and said why do you want a woman in the press box. Her editor had a simple reply, "That's our business. We want her and that's the way we're going to have it."

Then there is the story about Johnny Fredericks, then a high school basketball player. It seems Fredericks had ripped his shorts and asked Mary to sew them up. She did not know how to sew but agreed because she thought in a gym no one could come up with a needle and thread. As she told the story, someone found the needle and thread. The gym was not well lighted and so at one point she lost the needle but the kids found it for her. She told me at one point that was the most unnerving game she ever covered. She said “I was so afraid every time that boy went up for a rebound, I could just see my stitches ripping and he being exposed in all his glory.”

Mary’s second quality was a dichotomous belief in humanity; she worked hard on treating individuals well – her columns on sports are a good reflection of that. Her lifelong friend from Winston Salem State, BIghouse Gaines, had a good understanding about both sides of athletic competition – he said “Mary was always trying to help the underdog. I think her greatest strength is her positive honest approach, Mary would always look for the good in people.” But she could frequently sharpen an issue to clarity with amazing facility. For example,last June I was on a periodic trip to Winston and my youngest grandson had just been born. I asked her if she had any interest in seeing a picture of her newest grand-nephew. She said “Not really, all infants look the same.” A few minutes later she relented and took a cursory look and pronounced that my newest grandson was OK.

Mary decided, by some accounts, to become a reporter as early as age 8 by reporting back to grandparents in Ridgewood, N.J. She understood the importance of the news business on the big scale – of getting the facts right and on the small scale of recognizing accomplishments. In the time that I came to Winston to visit my two aunts, I cannot tell you how many men would come up to Mary in a restaurant and pull out a yellowed press clipping of a story Mary had written about a particularly important game many years before.

A THIRD characteristic was an absolute commitment to integrity. She took all her assignments as a chance to tell a story. She said “there is no such thing as a minor sport for people who play them.” In a long set of interviews she did with Diane Gentry she described that commitment. She said “Your integrity is your most important asset. You must be a person that people can trust. And if you're not, you're just not going to last in the newspaper business. Be able to admit you're wrong if you are and don't make a lot of excuses. Yes, you're going to make mistakes. Yes, you're going to screw up. Yes, you're going to get beaten on a story. But you just have to realize that this is part of the game. Learn from your mistakes. Accept criticism even if it's unfair. If your situation is intolerant, if you get on a paper, you don't approve of the way they do things, you don't like anything about them, then go look for another job but don't stab your paper in the back. Don't criticize it. Just get out of there.”

FOURTH, Mary’s commitment to family mirrored her commitment to humanity. Her first commitment was to her profession, but that did not mean she neglected her kin. She would visit California every other year and each of us were offered a “Mary Day” – we could do anything we wanted to – movies, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and Edy’s Ice Cream were three of my favorites.

You can read a lot about Mary on the net. But one such interaction, which my daughter Emily pointed out this week is not widely known, although because of Emily’s blog, it is on the net.

When Emily was graduating from college. Mary wrote her a note. Emily had gone to college and quickly migrated from the core focus of the college she was at, in economics, to art and literature. She offered Emily “One bit of advice. Take your time deciding what you want to do, even if you have to take a job you don't particularly want at first. It is always easier to get a job if you have one.”

Oddly the advice she gave Emily was not taken by Mary herself. She decided early what she wanted to do in life and then pursued it with energy and integrity.

Finally was her lack of pretension. Mary received a lot of awards in her life. I think she was fundamentally indifferent to them. She cared more about her role as a reporter and as a person who could guide people As you go through her life you can find numerous stories about her willingness to serve not only as a reporter but as a guide; stories about shy athletes who were convinced to try some things that others had not recognized; the huge football player who was tongue tied until he explained propogation of roses or the country boy who became a doctor because Mary said “Why not?” or the tennis player who was realistic about his chances in a tournament, which were not good. And Mary wrote about this kid who used his time at the tournament to think bigger thoughts.

When she interviewed Jesse Owens he called her a rich lady. "You're rich because you're doing something you love and you've earned the love and respect of so many people." Mary I thought that was a very nice touch for someone who really didn't know her at all to say something like that.

A fundamental precept of Mary’s life was built on the individual accomplishments, large and small, that bind a society together. She often told the story of two kids asking who the short lady was at a Soap Box Derby. One said "Do you see that lady down on the field there?" And the other kid said, "Yeah." And the first kid said, "That's Miss Mary Garber. And she don't care who you are, if you do something, she'll write about you." She took that as the highest compliment she could have had."