Letters
Sam Rice
My father, Joe Callahan, of Milford, Ill., played with and against Hall of Famer Sam Rice. Your story (The Secrets of Sam, July 19) jibes with everything he ever told me about Rice, including the tragedy of the 1912 tornado in Iroquois County, Ind., that killed Rice's wife and two children.
Did Rice really hold on to the ball in Game 3 of the 1925 World Series? "Sam held on to it all right," my dad replied, long before Sam's now famous letter was opened. "He was honest as the day is long, and he would never have fudged the truth about anything."
GENE CALLAHAN
Director, Governmental Relations
Major League Baseball
Washington, D.C.
I felt I had to write because your article misstated several facts. You wrote that Christine Rice was "the only child of Sam and Mary Rice." In fact, my sister, Christine, was not Sam Rice's child at all. Before our mother, Mary Kendall, married Sam, she was married to Herbert Adams. They had two daughters, me in 1940 and Christine almost two years later. Our father died on Dec. 28, 1946. Christine didn't live with Sam until 13 years later, when our mother and Sam married. Christine was then 16, and I was 18 and off on my own.
At the time of our father's death Rice was married to his second wife, Edith, who is not mentioned in your story. It was Sam and Edith who lived in the beautiful farmhouse next to the road in Ashton, Md., not Sam and Mary.
You say that after his first wife, Beulah, and children were killed in the 1912 tornado, Rice "didn't marry—again—until he was 39 years old, to Mary Kendall." Rice married Mary Kendall Adams on July 4, 1959, when he was 69, making her his third wife, not his second.
MARGARET A. ROBINSON
Fort Collins, Colo.
Congress and the Olympics
Contrary to your report on my testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (SCORECARD, July 26), I fully understand the right of individuals and government to voice their opinions on any issue. In fact, in my testimony, I stated that "I honor and respect the intent of the resolution."
I spoke against the process, not the content of the resolutions. As I testified, the resolutions "put the burden on me, as the IOC representative in the United States, to carry out a foreign policy objective...a task for which my position is simply not well suited." As for your statement that the IOC might retaliate if the resolution passed, I never stated that this would be the case.
Quoting from my testimony: "The IOC and the modern Olympic movement can and should be considered an untiring friend in the quest for world peace and recognition of human rights." Let us all continue to work together to achieve these goals.
ANITA L. DEFRANTZ
IOC Executive Board Member
Los Angeles
Bread for the Whitbread
Americans have always helped people in need, especially people who have worked hard to attain a goal. After reading Amy Nutt's story about the Ukrainian crew's efforts to prepare its yacht for the September start of the Whitbread Round the World Race (The Odessa Odyssey, Aug. 2), I decided I wanted to help the cause. Could you please tell me where to send my check?
GILBERT DOERING
Mountain View, Calif.
•Contributions may be sent to Capt. Anatoly Verba, Earth Ocean Sail Inc., 4320 Gandy Blvd., Tampa, Fla. 33611.—ED.
Dutch Stengle
I enjoyed all the articles in your Special Classic Edition (July 19). Regarding Casey Stengel's choice of baseball over dentistry as a career (What Might Have Been), my father-in-law, Dr. R.C. Stewart, was one class ahead of Stengel at Western Dental College in Kansas City, Mo. He told me that the dental school had a baseball team at the time, but that the dean made the students stop playing because they were ruining their fingers. Stengel dropped out of school shortly thereafter. The school's 1912 yearbook, Opsonin, includes a picture of Stengel's class and the following entry under juniors: "C.D. Stengle, 'Dutch' for short. Down South now playing baseball. Not at all talkative."
Should we note a bit of editorial sarcasm in the last sentence? By the way, the yearbook spelled Casey's name as I have typed it, not Stengel.
JIM SAYES
Tallahassee, Fla.
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MARK WALLHEISER
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