A tribute to two victims of cancer

This is a story that needs to be told. Since 1958, it has be This is a story that needs to be told. Since 1958, it has been stored in the memory closet. It needs to be rescued from the ages of darkness.

In 1957, Ted Williams, then baseball’s wonder boy, batted .388.

He slumped in 1957, dropping to a respectable .328, which by today’s fiscal standards likely would have earned him at least $2 million for a summer’s work.

In those hallowed baseball days, Williams appearance at home plate once was described thusly by author John Updike: “Whenever Williams was at the plate – pounding the dirt from his cleats, gouging a pit in the batter’s box with his left foot, wringing resin out of the bat handle with his vehement grip, switching the stick at the pitcher with an electric ferocity – it was like having a familiar Leonardo appear in a shuffle of Saturday Evening Post covers.”

Besides the game of baseball, Ted Williams had a huge heart for a favorite charity, the Jimmy Fund, the one that still remains dedicated to lessening the fright of a disease called cancer.

You could accompany him to the Boston Children’s Hospital and sleep there nights in a hallway cot, never to be mentioned in the news columns. This I know, because or either four or five different nights, I accompanied Williams and left the comfort of a hotel bed to sleep on one of those transportable cots. This was Ted Williams’ way of greeting the dawn among the cancer-inflicted kids.

I unearth this bit of Williams’ early lifestyle because a summer gathering of men and women played a game of golf two days ago in support of the Jimmy Fund and the two local hospitals, the Eastern Maine Medical Center and St. Joseph’s.

But that is all preliminary. Though a wonderfully successful venture, it is not my untold story.

I need to return to 1958 when Williams, the darling of dyed-in-britches Red Sox fandom, became something of a hero in the eyes of a 7-year-old Eddington child, Judy Lynn Miner. The Ted and Judy love affair was spawned in Division 28, Boston Children’s Hospital, where this extraordinary child of the 50s was a frequent patient.

Judy Lynn was the daughter of now-widowed mother Ruth and the late Thomas Stanley Miner Sr.

Williams found time for Judy Lynn, often between road trips, though he was sparing in any conversations with baseball writers, especially those who enjoyed probing into the great man’s private world.

Judy Lynn’s hero, she learned, had a 40th birthday coming up on Aug. 30, so why not a birthday cake for her friend? Remember now, she was a child and terribly weakened by a killer disease. In the Division 28 kitchen unit, she fashioned up a cake, appropriately decorated and complete with candles.

A Jimmy Fund volunteer and an ardent Red Sox follower offered to take the cake to Fenway Park and present it to Williams with Judy Lynn’s love and best wishes.

The big hit man of baseball was touched. For once, he could not find the words to express his true feelings. Likewise the hour when word came of Judy Lynn’s passing. How could a child of her class die, Williams kept asking.

Judy Lynn’s widowed mother to this day remains grateful for the offered hand of the Jimmy Fund and particularly Judy’s friend, Teddy Ballgame.

“The Jimmy Fund is very close to my heart,” Ruth Miner was saying, “and so long as I live I will never forget his kindness and caring for a little girl who was very sick and had to spend months from her family by distance but always in our thoughts and progress. Mr. Williams was a very special man then and remains so today.”

As a final thought, Ruth Miner added: “Perhaps, one of these days, you might ask Mr. Williams if remembers the birthday cake or the little girl who made it for his 40th birthday.”

I can tell you, Ted remembers the moment to this day, when reminded recently: “Certainly I remember the cake and that little girl. God she was a cutie. She had the sweetest smile, even when she was hurting. God, I’d forgotten. She was from Maine, huh? I have thought of her many times, and the birthday cake. Tell her mother, will you?”

This all cames into focus in the aftermath of another Jimmy Fund day at the beautifully-manicured and ancient Penobscot Valley Country Club.

Any deliverer of the written word knows it is dangerous attempting to give credit for one of these functions. The help comes from sponsors like Unicel, J.J. Nissen, American Airlines, the Bangor Elks, the Bangor Daily News, Polaroid and a hundred others with a feel for the Jimmy Fund.

The permanent tournament chairman, and I have hereby named him the everlasting quarterback because he has done such a splendid manaRick O’Connor, will tell you if there’s credit to be spread it belongs to his working committee.

He is right about that, citing committee help from such reliable mortals as Ed Armstrong, Bill Zoidis, Jim Sukeforth, John Conti, Paul Hansen, Matt Billings, Liz Ducharme, Tim Samway, Vince Kremin and Frank Jordan, and those are only part of the lineup.

On a personal and final note, the tournament as a memorial to my late wife and friend Barbara has been a pleasant and gratifying success. When the invitation came forth three years for a Barbara Leavitt Memorial Golf Classic from the Jimmy Fund folk and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of Boston, there was momentary reluctance on the part of our two daughters, Lisa and Lizbeth, and the chairman of the Leavitt household – me.

The Pearl of Her Sex was not of the kind willing to have her name splashed over the airwaves and in newspaper headlines. Yet, we three knew, the Jimmy Fund had long been in the forefront of Dana-Farber’s cancer research and treatment. And she had been a supporter.

For the tournament’s support, thanks is the only word from two of the victims of cancer, the tiny, 7-year-girl who baked Ted Williams’ 40th birthday cake and my very much missed friend and wife of so many memorable years.