If not for Mama, Charlie Manuel might have been a mediocre college basketball player in Philadelphia instead of the manager of its major league baseball team. It was Mama who urged her third child to accept the $20,000 bonus from the
Minnesota Twins instead of the basketball offer at the University of Pennsylvania.
A new widow, Manuel's mama saw the bird in the hand — and the chickens that cash would buy, not to mention a new, three-bedroom house for her nine children still in residence in the tiny western Virginia town of Buena Vista. Always, Charles Fuqua Manuel — "Fook" to Mama — took care of his mother. With his daddy, Charles Sr., dead by the time he signed, at 19, Fook helped buy the house.
He made money playing pro ball for 19 years, in America and Japan, then coaching it. Always, he made sure the family was fed. Mama never remarried. She lived in that house for 44 years.
Yesterday, Mama died.
June Manuel, 87, succumbed at Roanoke Memorial Hospital after a brief illness. Upon a lengthy visit to her cozy brick home in 2005, she was in fine fettle:
"I look older than Mama," Manuel said.
He was right.
Rosy-cheeked, wearing a red sweater, tucked into an overstuffed chair, June Manuel glowed. She spoke like a woman who survived the Great Depression and the country's turmoil through the decades; she beamed when she spoke of her 11 children being well-positioned, owners of several vehicles, never jailed.
Twice a week or so Manuel called his mama. Every year, twice a year, once after the Phillies' season, once just before, her Fook would come by to visit. He would check her health. He would play golf with a buddy or two. He would leave, and he would promise, one day, to buy a house in Buena Vista and return, to be closer to her.
It seemed, perhaps, they had time. After all, June's mother, Ruby Edmonds, lived to be 100.
It turned out, they didn't.
Source:
Philly.com