[DOWNLOAD] "Keeping His Memory Alive (Daily Break)" by The Virginian Pilot # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Keeping His Memory Alive (Daily Break)
- Author : The Virginian Pilot
- Release Date : January 26, 2010
- Genre: Reference,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 61 KB
Description
The car crunched and shimmied down the cemetery road, kicking up dust and jostling retirees Tom Garrett, who was driving, and Sam Allen, riding shotgun. [paragraph] They'd brought two rakes, 10 bags of topsoil and the best of intentions, wanting to do right by a baseball player who had been laid to rest 40 summers ago at Lincoln Cemetery in Portsmouth. [paragraph] They parked the car and walked over to the grave site, where the white U.S. Navy headstone gave Leon Ruffin's vitals. [paragraph] February 11, 1912-August 14, 1970. [paragraph] "He died early," said Sam, who is 74 and knew Ruffin in his later years. [paragraph] "Let me bring out the rakes," said Tom, 60, heading back to the car. [paragraph] Like nearly everything else in this section of the cemetery - in the entire cemetery, for that matter - the tombstone was weathered and tired-looking. [paragraph] Elsewhere, headstones were leaning or overturned, grave sites sunken like collapsed lungs. The scrubby grass was rife with weeds and littered with beer cans, liquor bottles and other evidence of late-night trespassing. [paragraph] "Sad, sad, sad, sad," Tom said. [paragraph] At the foot of Ruffin's grave was a polished, Georgia gray granite marker that stood out, in this landscape of neglect, for its sheer, gleaming newness. It read: [paragraph] Charles Leon Ruffin. [paragraph] Negro League Legend. [paragraph] 1935-1950. [paragraph] Catcher [paragraph] 1946 World Champion Newark Eagles [paragraph] 1946 East-West Negro League All-Star. Black lithochrome made the sand-engraved letters jump out. On the marker's lower left corner was an engraving of a pair of crossed baseball bats, with a ball beneath. In the right corner, a catcher's mitt.