Wednesday, August 20, 2003

The spirit of the NFL's first black quarterback lives in the back room of the New Kensington Elks club -- the "colored Elks," as one local white called it -- where, around a table, five African-American men huddle twice weekly in order to preserve history and memorialize a football trail blazer.

The spirt of the NFL's first black quarterback lives in a white woman who works as the chief curator at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.

The spirit of the NFL's first black quarterback lives in a white man who first introduced her to the valley legend.

Eighteen months after his death, Willie Thrower still lives, through them.

They share his story about race, one that seems to cut across such boundaries. They embody his story about fighting the quiet fight against obstacles.

Last August, this column mentioned how New Kensington's mayor appointed a committee to look into renaming Industrial Boulevard or the new Locust Street bridge in honor of the homegrown Thrower, who became the first to break the NFL quarterback color barrier, in 1953, and the first black to play the position in the Big Ten, in 1951.

Nothing came of it.

Honor got mired in political red tape, in committee, in some nowhere.

"There was 'name the Viaduct,' 'name a street,' and nobody made a decision," said Jim McNutt, a New Kensington photographer and longtime friend of Thrower. "We decided, let them do that. We're not going to drop the ball. We're going to do this right.'

"He's the one person I can say had no race borders in this area. Everybody loved Willie. Black and white."

McNutt is the gent who first introduced Anne Madarasz, the Heinz Center's chief curator, to Thrower. She spent hours at the Thrower home, taping an oral history, collecting artifacts. She put up a Heinz Center exhibit, "Hidden Pittsburgh A-Z," and Q was for Western Pennsylvania's famed quarterbacks.

Along with Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath, the one highlighted with a life-size, black-and-white photograph, was Willie "The Pro" Thrower. Those others were Hall of Famers. Thrower was, in her words, "a real important branch builder."

Today, Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick and Steve McNair and Kordell Stewart and Aaron Brooks follow the likes of Randall Cunningham and Doug Williams and James Harris on the black quarterback tree that grew from "The Pro" a half-century ago.

Madarasz donated the yearlong exhibit's Thrower memorabilia to Valley High School, where they are to be housed in a prominent trophy case. She didn't stop there. With help from the state, she sponsored five commemorative, yellow-on-blue historical markers to be erected throughout the area: one at PNC Park for the 1903 Pirates-Boston World Series, one in Homestead for the Library Athletic Club that produced Olympic swimmers, one in Bloomfield for Unitas, one for Greenlee Field, the Hill District home of the Pittsburgh Crawfords of the Negro Leagues and one beside Valley's Memorial Stadium for Thrower.

"How many people know Willie Thrower's story?" Madarasz said. "A lot of people should."

So many other white members of the community are involved. Boss Fletcher, widow of longtime New Kensington High School Coach Don Fletcher, has procured donations from "her boys," as she labels former players. Several of those players, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds befitting this old Allegheny River steel town, have pledged gifts or help. New Kensington graduate Ralph Buffone, profiled in this column one year ago, continues a letter-writing campaign that prompted a response from the White House and another from NAACP President Kweisi Mfume directly to Mayor Frank Link, who doubles as the Valley athletic director.

Yet the bulk of the fund-raising and memorial effort falls on the five black men at the Elks club.

Chip Harris, a New Kensington native and former Robert Morris basketball star, heads the group incorporated as the Willie Thrower All-Pro Memorial Committee. It started in April in the back room at the urging, in person, of McNutt and Madarasz. It has $2,000 in the bank, T-shirts and glasses to sell, and paperwork started toward becoming a nonprofit organization. And it has donations pledged from the local Rotary, Lions, Elks, Alle-Kiski Hall of Fame, Valley High Class of 2000 Reunion, and State Sen. Sean Logan (D)-Monroeville of the 45th District -- who promised $10,000 in a state grant.

"We should give him the appropriate memorial," said Logan, who is white.

The committee members' first goal is to erect a bronze statue of Thrower in a downtown parklet. The statue, costing $27,000, is being forged by a Louisville resident and New Kensington native named Stephen Paulovich, who is also white.

Their second goal is a successful charity banquet in October so they can pay for the statue and their two planned scholarships for Valley High graduates entering college or trade school. "They're going to be for everybody," committee member Bill Varner Sr. said of the grants, "black, white, yellow and green."

"Willie was the most humble man I ever met," McNutt added. "He wasn't mad at the prejudice that ran his life. He wasn't bitter."

The lesson here is a variation of the old African proverb: It takes a village to raise a fitting memorial. And in parts of this village, race thankfully matters no more.

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