Althea Gibson
Donald O'Connor

Both in their 70s (late?)

Gibson was the first black tennis pro who won Whimbleton '56/'58

O'Connor was a child star in Vaudville and whent on to The Big Screen as a comedic performer.


talk umongst yourselves...




spell check edit
[This message was edited Sun Sep 28 9:07:56 PDT 2003 by 00769BAD]

you're kidding, right?

...actually, I thought that Donald O'Connor died years ago...

but, Althea too?

man...

So many folks going this year...and the unsuspecting ones too!

TheMadMonkey said:

Nope, he kicked on saturday, he had pneumonia a few years ago though.

R.I.P. to both. ( I enjoyed O'Connors' Francis mule movies when I was a tadpole).

:F:

00769BAD said:

:LOL: I know I shouldn't :LOL: but it was funny as hell the way you said it "he kicked"

Paisley said:

Show some respect!!

Chico319 said:

What?

Chico319 said:

YES! Donald O'Connor was one of the most talented entertainers of his time...he also seemed to be a kind and sweet man...




I loved 'Singin' in the Rain'

What a loss...I hope his family is dealing with this as best as they can...

He was great! I loved his movies when I was a kid...!

Thanks Mr. O'Connor.

Before there was the great Arthur Ashe, there was:





'Overlooked Heroine'

Net results from Gibson's remarkable career sometimes lost in shuffle

Althea Gibson
Perhaps there remains, even today, a certain amount of racism and sexism that Althea Gibson must battle.

In our nation's selective memory of greatest athletes ever, our three-minute sound-byte world of daring dunks, touchdown runs and towering home runs, rarely is Gibson named as one of the best and most significant athletes of our time.

But by any standard, she probably was.

Born on a cotton farm in South Carolina, where her parents were sharecroppers, Gibson was long and lean, extremely strong, with a bit of attitude.

"I was mischievous," Gibson said. "I got into things a lot."

And generations of African-American athletes can only thank Gibson for getting into as many things as she did.

She would become the first black athlete - male or female - allowed into United States Lawn Tennis Association tournaments. She would be the first African-American to win a Wimbledon singles title, the first to play at the U.S. Open in Forest Hills, N.Y., and the first to play in the French Open.

She was the first to win the U.S. Open. And after a remarkable career that spanned almost 20 years and yielded nearly 100 professional titles, including five Grand Slam crowns, Gibson took up golf and became the first African-American to earn an LPGA card.

Of tennis, Gibson recalled to a biographer in 1965, "I just found that I had a skill at hitting that ball. And I enjoyed the competition."

Gibson picked up the game, thanks to a New York Police Athletic League coach who saw this tall, skinny girl playing paddleball in the streets of Harlem.

After finally agreeing to join PAL coach Buddy Walker at a nearby public tennis facility to try and learn tennis, Gibson immediately began to dominate.

Walker bought a pair of second-hand wooden tennis rackets for Gibson and taught her the basic rules of the game. In her first series of matches against more-experienced teenaged boys, Gibson won every match.

She won the New York state championship six times from 1944-1950. She was the No. 1 player in the American Tennis Association, the nation's oldest African-American sports organization, for seven consecutive years.

The logical next move was to begin competing in the all-white world of the USLTA, but Gibson was denied every time she tried to enter a tournament.

Finally, Alice Marble, a respected former U.S. Open champion who admired Gibson's talents, wrote a searing letter to the editor in the July 1950 American Lawn Tennis magazine.

In the letter, Marble wrote that she was embarrassed by "the bigotry" exhibited by her fellow all-white members of the USLTA.

One week later, Gibson received an invitation to the following month's U.S. Open.

And on Aug. 28, 1950, Gibson stepped onto Court 14 at Forest Hills and defeated Barbara Knapp 6-2, 6-2 in the first U.S. Open match involving an African-American athlete.

In 1957, she won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. In 1958, she repeated the feat.

"People thought I was ruthless," Gibson said. "I was. I didn't give a darn who was on the other side of the net. I'd knock you down if you got in the way. I just wanted to play my best."

She was one of the nation's greatest athletes. And inspired many.







Althea Gibson, First Black Tennis Star, Dies at 76

Sun September 28, 2003 02:20 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Trailblazer Althea Gibson, the first black tennis player to win the Wimbledon and U.S. national championships, died on Sunday at age 76, according to media reports.
Gibson, who dominated women's tennis in the late 1950s and is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, had been seriously ill for years. She died in East Orange General Hospital, New Jersey, reports said.

Gibson, born to sharecroppers on a cotton farm in South Carolina and raised in Harlem, became the first American black to play in the U.S. championships in 1950 after posting a string of titles in the all-black American Tennis Association.

In 1951 she broke the racial barrier at Wimbledon.

Five years later, the tall, powerful right-hander became the first black woman to win a major tennis crown by winning the French championships title.

That triumph set the stage for a brilliant two-year run.

In 1957, Gibson became the first black to win the Wimbledon women's singles title and she repeated the feat by claiming the U.S. national crown at Forest Hills.

Her triumphs made her a national figure. After her victory at Wimbledon, she was given a ticker-tape parade in New York.

Gibson dominated the next season as well, again sweeping Wimbledon and the U.S. championship titles in 1958.

Gibson retired from the amateur ranks in tennis after the 1958 season. In all, she won 11 major tennis titles in singles and doubles.

There was no professional women's tennis circuit at the time, so Gibson parlayed her great amateur success into a lucrative series of exhibition tennis matches, preceding Harlem Globetrotters basketball games.

She then turned her athletic skills to golf and joined the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour in 1964.

Gibson failed to win at golf and retired from the tour in 1971. She tried her hand at professional tennis but at age 34 was past her prime on the court.

Gibson went on to become New Jersey state commissioner of athletics in 1975, a position she held for a decade.

Her legacy as a pioneering black woman in sports was appreciated recently by Venus Williams, who along with her sister, Serena, became the first black women to triumph at Wimbledon and the U.S. championships since Gibson's day.

"I knew she was watching when Serena won the U.S. Open and she's happy to see another black woman win in her lifetime," Venus said after winning the 2000 U.S. Open, one year after her sister had followed Gibson's example by winning the 1999 Open.

Thank Nova Baby,
I felt for a minit that
her history would be lost on these folks...








I wonder if 'someone' will come up with some dark secret about her acomplishments???

00769BAD said:

You're quite welcome, BAD MAN.











The countdown begins...

rdhull said:

Yeah, he was a crackup.
I most remember some song he did.
I am the something something something...

00769BAD said:

Only a punkass would do things like that.

rdhull said:

BUT!!! it has been done

00769BAD said:

It has?? Here on the org? Well then that person must be a punkass of the org then. I bet he or she has issues.

rdhull said:

itsunderthebridge edit
[This message was edited Sun Sep 28 14:19:50 PDT 2003 by 00769BAD]

00769BAD said:

Well hopefully this person, he or she, does not have children to pass along these traits etc. I hate that. I deal with people on the daily who are messed up because of what their parents did and/or how they were, their issues etc.

rdhull said:

In most cases, it just an ego issue.

00769BAD said:

If so then it's a poor ego strength issue and/or as well as a poor super-ego...psychodynamically speaking that is.

rdhull said:

I understood that...

for both of them

00769BAD said:

it's funny, you're all just waiting for this supposed person to come along and ruin the thread and here you've gone and ruined it yourselves


congratulations on letting paranoia get the best of you.
[This message was edited Sun Sep 28 15:09:02 PDT 2003 by AaronMaximus]

AaronMaximus said:

NO BODY WAS TALKIN 'BOUT YOU!!!

00769BAD said:

obviously.

00769BAD said:

Uh-Oh! Here we go. Soon to be a thread.

Chico319 said:

doubtful