Every now and then these past few weeks I’ve drifted off into what my wife calls “Banister World,” wondering the impact of my certified letter on total stranger? What has happened since the letter arrived? (See Post #404). Was it then hidden somewhere in a drawer? Was there ever a discussion about its shocking contents? Was a response slowly making its way to me through the mail? I don’t know why I suddenly expect instant answers to a 66 year-old unsolved mystery?
Would I next need to employ a different tactic? Or, should I just be patient and step back? I’m reading the book Getting Open, the story of Bill Garrett and the integration of college basketball. It presented itself as the closest resource to uncovering what life was like in my presumed birth mother’s home town, during the time just before I was born. It also seemed prophetic that my good friend just happened to have a copy of this book, when I mentioned a long-shot Bill Garrett connection with the Banisters. After all, it’s not exactly on the best seller list.
Shelbyville High School won the state basketball championship in March of 1947. My birth mother, Edna Faye, would have been 13 years old, soon to be 14 on April 9. Her twin brothers were only a year older, but sister Eva would have been 16 and in high school, perhaps along with 18 year old Elmer. Her older siblings included 20 year-old Elvin, Wilma 22, and Helen 23. Did they attend basketball games like most of the community who packed the bleachers? Cross Gym, where they played, held 3,500 spectators, one-third of the Shelbyville population at that time. Football was a minor sport in Indiana in that era, as farmers were confined to the fields until basketball season started in August. Did they know Bill Garrett or any of his teammates or coaches? Did they cheer for the “Golden Bears?”
Four years after Shelbyville brought home the hardware, I was born from an affair that took place around the Thanksgiving holiday of 1950. She would have finished her Junior year at Shelbville High with a noticeable baby bump and then secretly whisked-away to Indianapolis to give birth. Did she then return to Shelbyville or was she sent somewhere else to avoid any ridicule from fellow townspeople? Did my untimely appearance ruin her life plans? What happened to the father? Did the disapproving community brand her with a “Scarlet A?”
What happened next for her remains unknown? I’m appreciative that my life went on only slightly interrupted, with no recollection on my part. It wasn’t until years later that I began to even wonder about this woman that gave birth to me. Would she have loved me as much as my adopted parents? Would I have gotten to enjoy the same benefits and opportunities that only affluence could afford? Or, would I have just finished high school and stayed in rural Shelbyville my entire life? At that time, the Ku Klux Klan controlled Indiana’s laws, so it was rare for a predominately white school to have three regular black starters. As a result, they were mocked by the competition as,”The Black Bears.” Coach Frank Barnes was an integration pioneer, with a need to win games to preserve his job.
By the time, I was born in August of 1951, Bill Garrett had become the first black athlete in the Big Ten Conference, as the first to play at IU. Coach Branch McCracken made him an All-American his senior year. Garrett’s All-Star team then played the Harlem Globetrotters at the Indiana Fairgrounds in Indianapolis just after my birth mother’s 18th birthday, attracting over 14,000 basketball fans. Did she go to that game with classmates her Junior year to celebrate her city, with me still a hidden secret? Shelbyville’s most famous citizen was about to become a Boston Celtic, one of the first three black athletes to be drafted into the NBA. Or is this just another of my sports fantasies?
I feel a need to know more about the city of Shelbyville, so a trip to the city’s library later this month might be in order. I can look through some high school annuals and search for any Banister connections. The most important thing is to try to find a photo of my 5’2″ brown-eyed, mother. Will the unknown Marine father have also gone to Shelbyville High School? At twenty years old, he would have been the same age as my birth mother’s sister, Eva, and also could have gone to school with or played against Bill Garrett? According to the adoption agency, he was 6’2 1/2,” slightly taller than Garrett, and played basketball, football, and baseball. Also, my birth mother’s brothers, Elmer and Elvin, would have been about the same age as Garrett. Can I find them in a year book? If so, I can expand the “Banister World” fantasy.
I love you.