The Books of Sharon Robinson

“It takes courage to be a pioneer”1

 

 

There is a lovely scene in Ken Burns’ documentary series Jackie Robinson in which Robinson’s daughter, Sharon, remembers what it was like for her to spend time with him when she was a child. After Robinson’s retirement from baseball in 1957, just before Sharon turned 7, he regularly commuted from the family’s home in Stamford, Connecticut to Manhattan, where he had accepted a position as president of personnel with the New York-based coffee business Chock full o’Nuts. “My special time with my dad was going into New York City,” Sharon recalled. “So I put on white gloves and I was all dressed up. But it was just dad and I in that car driving along.”2

Sharon was only 22 when her father died of a heart attack, but what you repeatedly find in the many books she has written about him shows that although they had relatively few years together, the father left an indelible impression on the daughter. His example inspired her own uniquely enriching forms of service to the world, as a writer, consultant, businesswoman, and health care professional. Things were not guaranteed to work out so well. It can be hard to be the child of a celebrity. In the pages of her books, Sharon candidly reveals many of her own personal troubles, and those of siblings.3

Compared to many other depictions of Jackie Robinson on the page, Sharon Robinson’s important contribution to the wealth of material that has been written about her father consists of stories based on her personal experiences that provide readers with intimate insights into what Jackie Robinson was like as a person off the field, to his family, in the privacy of his home.

The Turquoise Bathrobe

Jackie Robinson occupies a storied position in the pantheon of American heroes. He was a skilled baseball player, a civil rights activist, and a trailblazer. In considering a life lived to such a high pinnacle of achievement, it can be difficult to picture the individual behind the icon. For this reason, while reading Sharon Robinson’s books about her father, one finds oneself most touched by the personal details that reveal to us what Robinson was like as a man.

There is a wonderful scene at the beginning of Sharon’s autobiographical Child of the Dream: A Memoir of 1963, a chapter book for young readers, in which she describes the morning before her 13th birthday. Her father is not at home. He had been hospitalized for a knee operation. Further complications from infection kept him in the hospital. Sharon experiences natural disappointment at not having her father with her for such an important life moment—the transition from being a child to being a teen.

She looks over at her mother and grandmother who are making breakfast and thinks to herself that normally her father would have been standing beside them stirring the grits.4 Robinson remains in the hospital, cut off from this intimate family scene and his usual position within it. This memory of Robinson at the stove demonstrates who this great hero of American sports was to his child, the role he played for his daughter as part of fondly recalled domestic patterns.

On the day of her birthday, the family goes to see the 43-year-old Robinson at the hospital. When they enter his room, Sharon says “I see Dad sitting in a chair. He is wearing his favorite turquoise bathrobe.”5 In that description the reader is given the gift of intimacy, seeing a titan of baseball as a person, and in a moment of vulnerability as he struggles to recover his health.

Although the scene celebrates a moment of relief for Sharon, since Robinson appears to be doing better, there is a pathos as well. As readers we know what the child did not, that although Robinson would defeat this injury, he had only a handful of years to live. That knowledge renders this vivid glimpse of him in a hospital room wearing his favorite turquoise bathrobe even more poignant. While Child of the Dream is a book for young readers, such intimate insights make the book a welcome read for readers of any age who are interested in learning more about Robinson’s life in all its fullness.

Wings

Early on in Jackie Robinson: American Hero, a biography about her father written as a chapter book for young readers, Sharon includes a breathtaking photograph. The picture shows Robinson as a young man of college age wearing a white University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) tank top and white shorts. He is in the act of doing something seemingly impossible.

Like a bird of prey, he hovers high in the sky, one muscled arm flung out horizontally beside him, the other thrust powerfully behind. His legs lunge forward, extended above empty air, high above the people shown standing in the background. He drives one bare foot forward with such force it appears on the verge of kicking through the frame. This picture of Jackie in the midst of a flying broad jump is one of the best illustrations in Jackie Robinson: American Hero. The reader witnesses him seemingly able to stride through mid-air, like a god. Viewed as a symbol, this picture of Robinson feels like an appropriate image for someone so many see as an emblem of resilience and success.

This photograph draws attention to the extraordinary fullness of Robinson’s accomplishments. This is something Sharon carefully does in many of her books. We tend to think of Robinson in his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform with the famous 42 on the back. But Sharon’s selection of such photos reminds us that Robinson excelled at a wide range of sports.

As Sharon recounts in Jackie Robinson: American Hero, at one time Robinson “set a record for competing in two different sports in two different cities on the same day.” In the morning he had been in Pomona, where he set “a new broad-jump record of 25 feet 6½ inches.” That afternoon, he played shortstop in Glendale and “helped bring them a championship!”6 While at UCLA, Sharon reminds us, her father excelled on their football, baseball, basketball, and track and field teams.

Sharon never witnessed most of the athletic feats she describes. She was only 6 when Jackie Robinson retired from baseball. As she explains in Child of the Dream, she learned about her father’s extraordinary athletic prowess mainly from the awed descriptions provided to her by his fans. During one visit to his Chock full o’Nuts office in New York, while her father conducted business upstairs, Sharon recalls sitting at the lunch counter while the servers and patrons told her stories about seeing her father play.

Once my father and I took the train all the way to Pittsburgh just to see Jackie play. You know that no one since Babe Ruth brought more fans into ballparks.”

“Your daddy kept the pitchers guessing while he danced on and off the base. Then, just when the pitcher figured out his rhythm, he’d steal home!7

These excited retellings about Robinson during his glory days as a ballplayer enlivened Sharon’s mental image of what her father had been like on the field. As Robinson re-entered the coffee shop to collect his daughter, she noticed all the laughter and good spirits just talking about him had provoked, the wonder and magic of what his extraordinary athletic gifts had brought into the world: “He is so important to them, I would think each time.”8

Bread upon the waters

In a television interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1963 – the same year in which Sharon Robinson’s Child of the Dream is set – the interviewer asks Robinson what had most helped him in overcoming the difficulties and deprivations of his childhood and what advice he would give others about how best to meet life’s challenges.

Robinson considers for a moment and then says, “My mother insisted when I was a youngster that I get a church background.” He explained that he had taught Sunday School classes and while he did not claim to be “the greatest religious person in the world,” this upbringing had shaped his perspective. As a result of this upbringing, he said he had developed “a sincere interest in other people.” He adds, “I believe, frankly, that a person who casts his bread upon the waters it will come back twofold.”9 This expression arises from the wisdom literature contained in the Bible’s Hebrew scriptures, where it appears in this form in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.”10 As Robinson explains to the interviewer, what this meant for him was that “in helping others I have helped myself.”11

If Sharon Robinson in her books depicts Jackie Robinson in moments of personal vulnerability and at the height of his athletic achievements, she also captures his generosity of spirit – the ways in which, as he said himself, he wished to enrich the lives of others. One of the books in which Sharon Robinson beautifully captures Robinson’s deep spirit of altruism is Jackie’s Nine: Jackie Robinson’s Values to Live By.

Near the beginning of this book, Sharon writes about a visit she and her son Jesse made in 1987 to see the Reverend Jesse Jackson and his family. They were there for Thanksgiving and as they spoke Sharon noted that their conversation led to a discussion about her father. “We talked about why some athletes’ fame lives on and others’ fades with time.” Reverend Jackson thought the difference lay between what it means to be a champion and what it means to be a hero. “A champion” he opined, “wins a World Series or an Olympic event and is hoisted on the shoulders of teammates and fans. A hero carries the people on his shoulders.”12

Sharon shows how her father carried others on his shoulders by sharing stories about Robinson – supplemented by those of other heroes and sheroes (as she writes). These various accounts exemplify what Sharon saw as her father’s core strengths of character: Courage, Determination, Teamwork, Persistence, Integrity, Citizenship, Justice, Commitment, and Excellence.

Legacy

One of the strengths Sharon Robinson brings to her writing is that she had to grapple with the question of how she would find and share her gifts with others while living in the shadow of one of America’s most celebrated individuals. As they were growing up, this fact made life somewhat difficult for Sharon and her two siblings, Jackie Jr. and David. As she recalls in her memoir Stealing Home, “As childhood faded, the pressure to achieve escalated. The question was in what area and by what criteria should we measure our own success?”13

This idea of how to find and develop your personal abilities animates many of Sharon Robinson’s books. She encourages her readers not merely to admire Robinson but to learn from his example. There is a humbleness in this task that Sharon admits to having learned from her parents, but she also exercises this gift in ways unique to herself. In so doing she situates her depictions of her famous father in ways that point to questions we all harbor: “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” “What will be my legacy?”

In Child of the Dream, Sharon discusses learning as a child about one of Jackie Robinson’s most important legacies beyond baseball: his contributions to the civil rights activism of the 1960s.

One evening while sitting on the sofa at home, Sharon hears George Wallace’s 1963 inaugural speech as the newly-elected governor of Alabama on the TV: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” She reacts to his speech with understandable fright, leading her mother, Rachel Robinson, to reassure her that there are also people fighting for things to change.14

This leads to a discussion about her father’s involvement in helping to advance those rights, and about the fact that some of the protests have incurred vicious reprisals, including the jailing of civil rights activists and the bombing of churches. Sharon, worried by this information, asks how there can be an end to the violence. Her mother replies, “One institution at a time. Baseball, the army, public buses—these are all fights that have been won.”15

Rachel asks her daughter if she remembers the nine students from Little Rock, Arkansas. She does. Sharon remembers that there were nine Black students enrolled in an Arkansas high school. The governor had called in the National Guard to stop them from attending. She remembered that the students had reached out to her father. “I’m so proud they called Dad,” she says. “What they did was so important.”16

Sharon had been only 7 at the time, so her mother is impressed that she remembers. “Those students were inspired by his bravery,” her mother explained. “It takes courage to be a pioneer and stand up against injustice. Doesn’t matter where it happens, on the baseball field, marching in the street, or entering a school that doesn’t want you there.”17

On another occasion, after her older brother Jackie Jr. has run away from home, Sharon remembers that during that tense, heartrending time for her family she had a significant conversation with her father about institutionalized racism. He recognized that the teenaged Sharon had been shaken by what she had heard George Wallace saying on TV about segregation lasting forever. One night Robinson comes to her bedroom and gently broaches the topic with her. In response to her concerns, he admits that the challenge is real, but that people will protest and that the leaders of the civil rights movement plan to march for freedom. Surprised at his choice of words, Sharon asks, “But aren’t Black people already free?” To which he replies, “Guess it depends on how you define freedom.”18

 

Testing the Ice: A True Story About Jackie Robinson, written by Sharon Robinson and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. (Courtesy of Scholastic Publishers)

 

Testing the Ice

In her memoir Stealing Home Sharon provides a story that she realizes provides a perfect metaphor for her father’s life-long habit of self-sacrifice. As children, the Robinson siblings loved skating and playing hockey on the lake that was situated on the family property. In the winter after the lake froze, her father would go out on the ice to test its thickness, tapping methodically with his broomstick as he moved farther onto the lake. Sometimes he would hit an air bubble, causing a great noise of cracking. The children feared the ice might break. This image stayed strongly with her and later became the basis for her picture book for young children Testing the Ice: A True Story about Jackie Robinson.19

Sharon recognized while reflecting on those childhood memories how fraught this activity was with danger. As an adult she realized this activity of carefully checking the ice to ensure its safety was like her father’s integration of what was then considered major-league baseball. “No one really knew what would happen”; he had to “feel his way along an uncleared path.”20

In the books of Sharon Robinson, among all the intimate details of her father that she provides, this is the Jackie Robinson who emerges most strongly on the page: an individual who had the courage to go out in advance of others, at great peril to himself, to make conditions better for those who would follow.

SHARON HAMILTON is the chair of the Society for American Baseball Research’s (SABR) Century Research Committee, which celebrates important milestones in baseball history. She served as project manager for the special 100th anniversary SABR Century 1921 project at SABR.org.

 

Notes

1 Rachel Robinson in dialogue recalled by Sharon Robinson in Sharon Robinson, Child of the Dream: A Memoir of 1963 (New York: Scholastic Press, 2019), chap. 7, Kindle.

2 Sharon Robinson, interview, in Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, Jackie Robinson, a two-part, four-hour documentary on Jackie Robinson (2016): https://kenburns.com/films/jackie-robinson/

3 A list of Sharon Robinson’s books can be found on her website: http://www.sharonrobinsonink.com/books

4 Sharon Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 1, Kindle.

5 Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 6, Kindle.

6 Sharon Robinson, Jackie Robinson: American Hero (New York: Scholastic Press, 2013), chap. 2, Kindle.

7 Sharon Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 11, Kindle.

8 Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 11, Kindle.

9 Jackie Robinson, interview, “Baseball star Jackie Robinson talks race relations” (1963), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Digital Archives, https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1664440038

10 Ecclesiastes 11: 1. King James Bible.

11 Jackie Robinson, interview, “Baseball star Jackie Robinson talks race relations.”

12 Sharon Robinson, Jackie’s Nine: Jackie Robinson’s Values to Live By (New York: Scholastic Press, 2001), Introduction, Kindle.

13 Sharon Robinson, Stealing Home: An Intimate Family Portrait by the daughter of Jackie Robinson (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 92.

14 Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 7, Kindle.

15 Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 7, Kindle.

16 Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 7, Kindle.

17 Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 7, Kindle.

18 Robinson, Child of the Dream, chap. 8, Kindle.

19 Sharon Robinson, Testing the Ice: A True Story About Jackie Robinson (New York: Scholastic Press, 2009).

20 Robinson, Stealing Home, 45.