Dell Bethel, a pitcher in the Wisconsin State League; "bird dog" scout
and baseball technical advisor on the movie "Bang the Drum Slowly",
died on June 26, 2008, in Westlake, OH.

The first article below mentions he played for the Minneapolis Millers
of which we have no record.

http://tinyurl.com/62zjrq

http://www.chroniclet.com/2008/06/27/dell-bethel/


http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=bethel001del

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA

Sam also played minor league baseball.

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=carrig001her

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA

--- In BaseballNecrology@yahoogroups.com, GrandSlams@... wrote:
>
>
> Thanks, Rod.
>
> Note to all that the birth date on the card and on the Retrosheet
website is
> not correct. I have fixed the database as I added the death info.
Retrosheet
> will reflect the updated information at the next site update.
> David Vincent
>
>
>
> In a message dated 7/1/2008 1:05:26 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> rodericnelson@... writes:
>
> And a little more detail regarding his minor league umpire career
and
> military experience.
>
> _http://retrosheet.http://retrosheehttp://retrohttp://rethtt_
> (http://retrosheet.org/TSNUmpireCards/Carrigan-Herve-Sam.jpg)
>
> Rod  Nelson
>
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 12:49 PM, <_GrandSlams@..._
> (mailto:GrandSlams@...) > wrote:
>
>
> H. Sam Carrigan, 86, of Alamogordo, NM passed away on  Saturday,
June 28,
> 2008, in Alamogordo. He umpired in the AL from 1961  through 1964.
>
>
_http://www.legacy.http://www.legachttp://www.leghttp://wwhttp://www.l
e&DateRa
> nge=Today&Product=0_
> (http://www.legacy.com/ALAMOGORDONEWS/Obituaries.asp?
Page=SearchResults&DateRange=Today&Product=0)
>
> David  Vincent
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> **************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for
> fuel-efficient used cars.      (http://autos.aol.com/used?
ncid=aolaut00050000000007)
>

Lewis L. "Babe" Eubanks, who played 18 games with the Pauls Valley
Raiders of the Sooner State League, died on June 28, 2008 in Midwest
City, Oklahoma.

http://tinyurl.com/6jv5gl

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=eubank001lew

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=fraill001ant

IDs: MiLB-DB: fraill001ant



Akron Beacon Journal (OH) - July 1, 2008

Tony Joseph Frailly, 84, of Kenmore passed away Sunday, June 29, 2008
after a short illness at home surrounded by family.

He was born January 16, 1924 in Brewster, Ohio to the late Donato and
Maria (Cipriano) Ferrelli. He was an Air Force veteran of World War
II as a radio operator of a B-29, he was injured in Tinnian; was co-
owner of Ken-Bowl Lanes; played a short time with the Cleveland
Indians and St. Louis Browns.

He is survived by two sons, Brandon and Nathan; daughter, Dolly;
granddaughter, Ashley; brothers, Danny Frailly of Massillon and Bobby
Frailly of North Carolina; sister, Rose Singer; many nieces and
nephews and his long time loving companion, Christine.

Graveside service will be held at Sunset Hills Memory Gardens, 7920
Frank Road NW, North Canton.

Author and historian Tygiel dies at 59
Best known for his book on Robinson breaking color barrier

FROM:  MLB.com ~
By Justice B. Hill

Perhaps Jules Tygiel wasn't the most authoritative
source on "black baseball," but if other people did
have greater intellectual impact in mining the rich
history of segregated baseball, they'd still have to
pay their proper respects to Tygiel and his seminal
work.

For no academician raised research into that area of
baseball to serious scholarship the way Tygiel did.
His 1983 classic, "Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie
Robinson and His Legacy" might be, as somebody
put it recently, "one of the most definitive books in
baseball history on Jackie Robinson."

From the day his book on Robinson hit bookshelves,
Tygiel, a history professor at San Francisco State
University, became a much-sought source for any
topic related to Robinson and the Negro Leagues.

His pioneering research on black baseball, and its ties
to American history, will be missed. On Tuesday,
Tygiel died of cancer. He was 59.

"His book gave people a better understanding of what
the Negro Leagues represented," said Bob Kendrick,
marketing director of the Negro Leagues Baseball
Museum. "[One thing] we try to do here at the
Museum is to counter that whole aspect of vaudeville,
buffoonish and the things that so often had been linked
to black baseball."

Here comes Robinson, Kendrick said, to defy those
images. Here comes Tygiel, Kendrick said, to write an
account of that period in a literary voice tuned with an
intellectual's mind. Scholarship was at the heart of who
Tygiel was.

"He was an excellent scholar and teacher, and very, very
giving of his time to people," said Adrian Burgos, a
history professor at the University of Illinois and author
of "Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the
Color Line."

Tygiel, who mentored Burgos, earned his doctorate at
the University of California-Los Angeles in 1977, and he
taught at the University of Tennessee and the University
of Virginia before joining the history faculty at San
Francisco State in 1978.

Educated as a classical historian, Tygiel, like a handful of
his academic peers, found parallels between the changing
social and cultural fabric of America in the early 1900s and
sports.

As unyielding practices of Jim Crow stood as the barrier
to full participation of blacks in the experience, organized
baseball had its own unyielding practices, Tygiel said.
The sport built an invisible wall, rigid as granite in all
respects, in the late 1800s that blocked men with dark skin
from passing through it.

Those men had no choice, if pursuing baseball was their
quest, but to find an alternative for their passion.

They did. They formed leagues of their own.

"The realm of black baseball was a vibrant and colorful
one," Tygiel once wrote. "It offered a panorama of
innovations and enterprise, entertainment and excitement,
an unparalleled athletic achievement. It enriched the lives
of African Americans, and of other Americans who were
fortunate enough to witness its magic."

But his bent toward viewing history through an
unclouded lens ensured that Tygiel would find no solace
in the existence of two leagues: one black, one white;
both separated by the "nation's worst impulses: the
cancer of segregation and discrimination ..."

In his writings and teachings, Tygiel captured the
resiliency of black men who toiled outside the spotlight
of Major League Baseball. He wrote of their struggles; he
wrote of their achievements; and he lectured on their
leagues and all their shades of glory.

His scholarship proved an inspiration to other historians.

"'Baseball's Great Experiment' is a classic work on
baseball integration," Burgos said. "The way that Jules
did it was the right way, in that he incorporated the story
of the Negro Leagues into the story of baseball integration."

His book didn't just celebrate Robinson; Tygiel stitched
together the mosaic that led directly to the breaking of the
color barrier.

In doing so, Tygiel left behind a work that will be his
enduring legacy. While not the first book on black
baseball -- John Holway and Robert Peterson wrote
about this storied institution before anybody else -
"Baseball's Great Experiment" might have been the best.

"Long before Ken Burns' Baseball (1994) put the
Robinson story at the center of baseball history, and
14 years before the immense 50th-anniversary
celebrations of Robinson's 1947 debut with the Brooklyn
Dodgers, Tygiel's masterful account provided a
sophisticated, at times riveting, tale, deftly combining
social and cultural history with first-rate drama," a review
in The American Historical Review said of Tygiel's book.
"Historians with a special interest in mass culture, or race
relations in general, and sports and baseball in particular,
have been deeply in his debt for nearly two decades."

Tygiel, however, wrote about more than Robinson.

In his 2001 book "Past Time: Baseball as History,"
Tygiel penned a collection of essays that, according to
a review in The Washington Post, showed that "baseball,
far from being a freak show at the periphery of the
country's public and important business, has been part
and parcel of that business throughout its history."

But like a few others before him, and many after him,
Tygiel found that sports in general and baseball
specifically dovetailed with the emerging progress whites
and blacks have made in bridging the racial divide that
U.S. courts had sanctioned.

"With someone like Professor Tygiel, who wrote this
wonderful account, he gave people a better understanding
and a better appreciation of what the Negro Leagues
represented," Kendrick said.

Duane Eldon Kratzer, Sr., who played for four seasons in the minors in
the 1930s, died on July 1, 2008.

http://tinyurl.com/6pfd7x

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=kratze001dua

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA

James Pfohl Martin, a World War II vet and POW who played in Wisconsin
State League for one season died on June 30, 2008.

http://tinyurl.com/67zacd

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=martin015jam

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA

Robert "Bob" Savage (not to be confused with John Robert "Bob" Savage
who played with the Philadelphia A's in the 1940s), who played in the
West Texas-New Mexico League before serving in the US Navy in World War
II, died on July 2, 2008 in Des Moines, IA.

http://tinyurl.com/6yusr6

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=savage001rob

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA

Link to Jim Martin's Baseball in Wartime biography.

http://www.baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/martin_jim.htm

Gary Bedingfield

--- In BaseballNecrology@yahoogroups.com, "morrisjvm"
<jack.morris@...> wrote:
>
> James Pfohl Martin, a World War II vet and POW who played in
Wisconsin
> State League for one season died on June 30, 2008.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/67zacd
>
> http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=martin015jam
>
> Jack Morris
> East Coventry, PA
>

Porter "Pete" Sickels died on June 28, 2008 in Maine.  According to
his obituary, he played minor league baseball in the Cardinals
organization.  Although not listed in any of the guides, Porter F
Sickels is listed in the 1954 Minor League Digest as a left-handed
hitting third baseman, born in 1931, height 5'8", weight 140.  He may
have been a "less than."  Does anyone have information on his playing
record?

-- Ed Washuta

Portland Press Herald (ME) - June 30, 2008

'Pete' Sickels, 77, teacher, coach, Maine Baseball Hall of Famer

Porter ''Pete'' Sickels saved the minor league contract he had with
the St. Louis Cardinals.
From time to time, Mr. Sickels would reminisce about the searing
Georgia heat, about the bus rides alongside guys like him - farm
league baseball players looking for a shot at the big leagues.
''It was a childhood dream,'' said Craig Sickels of Freeport, Mr.
Sickels' son.
Mr. Sickels, a high school baseball star who played professionally
and was inducted recently into the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame, died
Saturday at his camp in Weld. He was 77 and had suffered from
Parkinson's disease for several years.
Mr. Sickels was born on May 3, 1931, in Great Barrington, Mass. He
grew up in Buxton, across the street from a baseball diamond, and
started playing as a child, said his wife of 54 years, Jean Sickels.
He joined Deering High School's baseball team while he was still in
middle school, and spent his varsity career at shortstop, family
members said.
Mr. Sickels graduated from Deering in 1949 and earned a bachelor's
degree from the University of New Hampshire in 1954.
While Mr. Sickels was in college, a professional scout offered him a
spot on a St. Louis Cardinals summer league farm team in Georgia. He
spent the summers of 1952 and 1953 with the club as a utility
infielder, his son said.
Mr. Sickels never made it to the major leagues, but he left his mark
on Maine baseball in other ways, family members said.
Mr. Sickels was a math and physics teacher who coached baseball at
Kents Hill School in Readfield and Mount Blue High School in
Farmington for a total of more than 25 years. He was the driving
force behind the creation of Farmington's American Legion baseball
team in the mid-1970s.
Family members said Mr. Sickels was a humble, quiet man who enjoyed a
variety of sports - he also coached skiing and tennis - and loved to
hunt, fish and work in his vegetable garden.
Craig Sickels said his father told few outside of his family about
the summers he spent chasing his childhood dream in Georgia.
When he introduced his father at the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame
induction ceremony last summer, Craig Sickels, who played high school
baseball, talked about how his father's best advice didn't cover
fielding grounders or hitting a curveball.
''His best advice was on display every day, in the way that he
carried himself - his work ethic, his compassion,'' he said.

Paul Edwin Cooke, a minor league player in the 1940s, died in
Bastrop, LA on May 22, 2008.

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=cooke-001pau

An obituary appeared in the Bastrop Daily Enterprise - May 24, 2008

Paul Edwin Cooke

Mr. Paul Edwin Cooke, 83, of Bastrop, died Thursday, May 22, 2008 at
the Summerlin Lane Nursing Home in Bastrop. In fulfilling his
request, Mr. Cooke donated his body to medical research. A
celebration of his life will be held at a later date under the
direction of Cox Funeral Home of Bastrop.
Mr. Paul Edwin Cooke was born July 23, 1924 in North Little Rock,
Ark. to the late A.P. and Nora Parker Cooke. Mr. Cooke was a retired
carpenter and a member of the First United Methodist Church of
Bastrop. Mr. Cooke was a former professional baseball player having
been drafted in the major leagues by the St. Louis Browns. He was an
avid golfer and loved all sports.
He is preceded in death by his parents, three brothers, and four
sisters.
Surviving Mr. Cooke is his wife of sixty years, Jacqueline P. Cooke
of Bastrop; two daughters, Donna Gay Musgrove and husband William Don
Musgrove of Cabot, Ark., and Deidra Kinnaird and husband James
Kinnaird of Bastrop; two sons, Paul Edwin Cooke II and wife Jerrita
Cooke of Boise, Idaho, and Craig Parker Cooke and wife Angela Cooke
of Eros, La.; ten grandchildren, Jacqueline Hamilton, Karen
Robertson, Laney Musgrove, Shane Kinnaird, Shannon Kinnaird, Shantel
Stephens, Hannah Cooke, Alison Cooke, Kristin Cooke, and Kaitlyn
Cooke; and eleven great-grandchildren.
The family request that for those who wish memorials be made to the
Louisiana Methodist Children's Home or to the charity of the donor's
choice.

Gene P DeAngelis, a minor league player in the Cubs organization during
the 1940s, died on May 30, 2008.

http://newsleader.recordpub.com/news/article/3882241?page=0

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=deange001eug

-- Ed Washuta

Roland Thomas, who played in the minor leagues in the 1940s, died on
July 1, 2008 in Little Rock, AR.

http://tinyurl.com/6dqeng

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=thomas001rol

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA

Edward L. LeClair, who played in the San Francisco Giants organization,
died on June 23, 2008 in DeSoto, MO.

http://tinyurl.com/635s3l

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=leclai002edw

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA

William J Andress, who umpired three games in the National League in
1979, died in Newport, KY on May 19, 2008.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/A/Pandrb901.htm

The Cincinnati Enquirer - May 21, 2008

NEWPORT- William J. Andress, 83, died Monday May 19 at Baptist
Convalescent Center, Newport.
He worked for SCM Corporation and Purolator, Cincinnati, was a World
War II Navy veteran, a member of St. Therese Church, Southgate where
his parish activities included choir, lector, Eucharist Minister,
Legion of Mary and Holy Name Society and he was a local umpire for
softball and baseball leagues at the high school, college and
professional level.
His wife, Imogene 'Jean' and son, William E. Andress died previously.
Survivors include his son, Michael A. Andress; daughter, Janet E.
Andress; sister, Elizabeth Young and two grandchildren.
A Memorial Mass will be 10 a.m. Saturday May 24 at St. Therese
Church, Southgate. His body was donated to the University of
Cincinnati College of Science. Muehlenkamp-Erschell Funeral Home,
Newport is handling arrangements.
Memorials: Alzheimer's Association, 644 Linn Street, Cincinnati, OH
45203; or St. Therese Parish, 11 Temple Place, Southgate, KY 41071.

---- Rod Nelson <rodericnelson@...> wrote:
> Julio Gotay Sanchez, former ballplayer for the Mayaguez Indians in Puerto
> Rican professional baseball, passed away yesterday, Friday, of respiratory
> failure in the Santo Asilo de Damas hospital in Ponce. He was 69 years of
> age. He is survived by Silvia his wife, with whom he was married 48 years
> and their children Julio, Agustín and the twins Irma and Silvia. Gotay
> entered the hospital on June 17 to be treated for cancer of the prostate and
> passed away yesterday. The body of the well-known ballplayer was exhibited
> today, Saturday, in the funeral parlor of Jackie Oliver, in the Cuatro
> Calles area of Ponce. Tomorrow, Sunday, the body will be transferred to his
> native town, Fajardo, to be held in the Carrasco funeral home and the burial
> will be on Monday, at 1:00pm, in the new cemetery, located in the Florence
> barrio of Fajardo. Gotay Sanchez also played in the Puerto Rican Beisbol
> League with the Santurce Crabbers and was a close friend of the great
> Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates. In addition, he played with the
> St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Angels and the Houston Astros in the Major
> Leagues . After his retirement as professional ballplayer, he finished his
> education and for many years was a school master in Ponce, the city where he
> made his home.
>
>
>
> http://www.baseball-reference.com/g/gotayju01.shtml
>
>
>
> Rod Nelson
> HI ROD. THANKS FOR THE OBIT NOTICE. GOOD TO BE IN CONTACT AGAIN.
   BEST WISHES,  BOB CURLEY.................
>
>
> From: latinobaseball@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Tony Menendez
> Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 7:49 PM
> To: latinobaseball@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [latinobaseball] Julio Gotay.....
>
>
>
> Julio Gotay Sánchez, ex siore de los Indios de Mayagüez en el béisbol
> profesional puertorriqueño, falleció ayer, viernes, de un fallo respiratorio
> en el hospital Santo Asilo de Damas de Ponce. Tenía 69 años de edad.
> Le sobreviven su esposa Silvia, con la que estuvo casado 48 años y sus hijos
> Julio, Agustín y las gemelas Irma y Silvia.
> Gotay fue recluido el 17 de junio en el hospital Damas para ser tratado de
> cáncer en la próstata y falleció ayer.
> El cadáver del conocido pelotero estará expuesto hoy, sábado, en la
> funeraria Jackie Oliver, en el sector Cuatro Calles de Ponce.
> Mañana, domingo, el cadáver será trasladado a su pueblo natal, Fajardo,
para
> ser velado en la funeraria Carrasco y el sepelio se realizará el lunes,
> desde la una de la tarde, en el cementerio nuevo, localizado en el barrio
> Florencia de Fajardo.
> Gotay Sánchez también jugó en la liga puertorriqueña de béisbol con los
> Cangrejeros de Santurce y fue compañero del fallecido Roberto Clemente en
> los Piratas de Pittsburgh.
> Además, en las Grandes Ligas jugó con los Cardenales de San Luis, Angelinos
> de Los �ngeles y Astros de Houston.
> Tras su retiro como pelotero profesional se graduó de educación y fue
> durante muchos años maestro en escuelas de Ponce, ciudad en la que se
> estableció.
>
> http://www.baseballlatino.net/
>
>
>
> _
>

<Note:  His civil rights bio stated he was in the Pirates organization,
although I could find no record for him.  Perhaps someone else can.>

High-Profile Activist Louis Coleman Dies

Photo:
http://www.kltprc.net/images/coleman_louis.jpg

FROM:  The Louisville Courier-Journal ~
By Peter Smith and Andrew Wolfson

The Rev. Louis Coleman Jr. -- Louisville's best-known
activist, who picketed or prayed over three decades in
front of nearly every major Kentucky institution to
advance civil rights, promote minority hiring or protest
police shootings -- died Saturday. He was 64.

Coleman died at Norton Suburban Hospital less than an
hour after suffering the first of a series of seizures,
Coleman's wife, Etta, told his longtime friend and fellow
activist, Mattie Jones.

Between the fourth and fifth seizure, he told his wife,
"I'm ready to go home," Jones said.

"We've lost another great warrior," she added. "Not only
did he stand for Louisville, but for the whole state of
Kentucky and for every human being."

Coleman was long one of the highest-profile and most
polarizing figures in Louisville -- even though he never
led a huge congregation and usually drew only a handful
of committed colleagues to his protests.

Bullhorn in hand, chanting 1960s-vintage activist anthems
such as "We Shall Not Be Moved," Coleman would
protest everywhere from the governor's office to school
offices to remote construction sites over a lack of
minority hiring.

"We're going to agitate and agitate and agitate until justice
falls down," he said in 2000. That was during a protest
outside police headquarters -- but he could have been
describing any of the demonstrations that he held as
frequently as three times a day around the state.

Coleman went so frequently from protest to protest that
his picket signs sometimes had unrelated slogans on the
front and back.

He used a theatrical flair to draw attention to his causes.
He once paid an LG&E bill with 45,000 pennies to protest
the company's treatment of the poor, and he and his
colleagues dined on buns and lemonade on a card table
outside the Louisville Country Club to call attention to its
lack of black members.

"There's no question and no doubt that he was a
committed individual who will be missed by the community,"
said a lifelong friend, Raoul Cunningham, president of the
Louisville branch of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.

"People are not necessarily going to run out and join a
protest, but you'll find they're very, very supportive of those
who do," he said.

A Dedicated Activist

Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, an occasional target
of Coleman's protests, said he respected his work.

"Reverend Coleman was a tireless fighter and a voice for
those without a voice," Abramson said in a statement.
"We didn't always agree with each other, but I never
doubted his dedication and devotion."  Louisville Metro
Police Chief Robert White agreed.

In 2004, when people protesting a police shooting began
breaking White's office windows, the chief spoke with
Coleman and agreed to meet with protesters at Coleman's
headquarters, and he credited that dialogue with defusing
the situation.

"That pretty much calmed the scenario, not only for that
day, but it was a momentum that kind of carried through
controversial issues," White said. "It opened the door for
communication that had not been there in the past on both
parts."

Coleman was the longtime head of the Justice Resource
Center and pastor of First Congregational Methodist
Church in western Louisville.

He saved his sermon preparation for late nights, putting
hundreds of thousands of miles on his vehicles serving
as a pastor and informal employment counselor, social
worker and old-fashioned ward politician.

Beyond protesting, he conducted gun buybacks to reduce
street violence; visited congregants in nursing homes; and
patrolled streets, trying to get both drug users and pushers
to change their ways.

Coleman was inducted into the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall
of Fame in 2000. He also had his critics, black and white,
who said he was quick to charge racism, failed to do his
homework before complaining and was stuck in the protest
mode of the 1960s. And although Coleman complained about
lack of minority contractors, when the state awarded him
contracts to seek minority vendors, it ultimately did not renew
the contracts, citing a lack of results.

Coleman said he agreed with one criticism -- that he stretched
himself too thin, but said not enough other people were
taking on these causes.

"Louisville is a city where people are very comfortable with
the way things are," he once said. "We are not going to do
things the Louisville way."

He Had Several Successes.

His threats to escalate protests at Valhalla Golf Club around
the PGA Championship of 1996 forced the golf organization
to take concrete steps to expand the role of minorities in the
sport nationwide.

His threat to unleash a boycott of Papa John's Pizza forced
the University of Louisville to find additional black
subcontractors to finish the new football stadium named for
the pizza company and to adopt minority-contracting goals
for all future projects.

His relentless complaints about smokestack emissions in
the Rubbertown area prompted state funding for air
monitoring, which revealed excessive levels of chemicals in
the air and prompted a stringent toxic-air control program
throughout Jefferson County.

A one-time minor-league baseball player who grew up
attending segregated schools, Coleman was one of
Louisville's most visible remaining links to the civil-rights
generation, working regularly with such national figures
as the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Fred Shuttlesworth and
comedian-activist Dick Gregory.

"Nobody covers as much territory and spends as much time
of his life for the liberation of suffering people," Gregory
said in 1991. "I don't know another human being on this
planet who has love and sincerity and commitment that he
has."

Astonishing Amount of Work

Coleman's range and daily schedule were astonishing.
The Courier-Journal mentioned him in 1,076 stories and
letters in the 1990s alone.

In 2003, Coleman announced he was cutting back on his
civil-rights work. He wanted to spend more time with
family after realizing his mortality following a blood-clot
scare two years earlier. But if he did cut back, it wasn't by
much, as he continued making fusses and making headlines.

"When I view the Scriptures," he once said, "I see where
the Lord that I serve challenged evils in His society, and
I feel strongly that the church ought to be about that too."

For all his grass-roots work, he had friends in high places.

Former Humana Inc. Chairman David Jones, a racquetball
partner, said about Coleman in 1991 that "he has a
calmness and dignity about him even when he has his
bullhorn in his hand. He knows what's going on. He's bright.
He's loving. He's well-directed. The issues that he gets
involved with come from the heart."

Survivors include his wife; three children, Andrea Coleman
White, Rachel Curry and Louis Odell Coleman; a sister,
Ellen Beard; and 12 grandchildren.

Billy Jack Stinchcomb, who played for six seasons in the minors
including playing in the Midwest and Carolina Leagues, died on July 4,
2008 in Tyler, TX.

http://tinyurl.com/5edk77

http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/player.php?milbID=stinch001bil

Jack Morris
East Coventry, PA