Connecting the generations

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

By Sara Rae Lancaster

Ball in the FamilyUniform, league remind family of their connections to All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

Most women remember, as little girls, playing dress up. Judy Vanderford does, too. But she didn’t wear hand-me-down gowns, pretending to be the belle of the ball. She dressed in her mother’s old baseball uniforms and imagined she was a different kind of belle. A Racine Belle.

“I remember my sister and I would put on her uniforms when they were 100 sizes too big,” she recalled.

Vanderford’s mother is Joyce Hill Westerman, former All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player.

The league, created in 1943 by Chicago Cubs owner and chewing gum mogul Philip K. Wrigley to sustain baseball during World War II, started with four teams: Rockford Peaches, South Bend Blue Sox, Kenosha Comets and Racine Belles.

For Westerman, playing baseball was a dream come true. But not necessarily with the girls league. The 87-year-old Kenosha native remembers reading a newspaper article about the Comets and thinking, “I don’t know what kind of team this is, but I would never wear those dresses!”

By dresses, she means uniforms. The women were expected to play like men, but were required to look feminine. The distinctive uniforms, a short-skirted flared tunic, were designed to highlight their attractiveness.

Playing in “a dress,” however, couldn’t disguise the players’ raw athleticism and talent.

“I’ve never seen girls play ball like that,” recalled Westerman, who was pulled from the Nash Motors softball team to fill in on the Comets after the team suffered several injuries during the 1944 season. She decided to try out for the league the following year and was drafted by the Grand Rapids Chicks.

The rest, as they say, is history. During her career, Westerman played for the Fort Wayne Daisies, South Bend Blue Sox, Peoria Redwings and Racine Belles. In 1950, she married Raymond Westerman, then played two more seasons before retiring from baseball in 1952 to raise a family. The league folded shortly after in 1954.

Like many of her teammates, Westerman didn’t talk much about her baseball career.

“I did with my kids, but that’s about it,” she said. “Besides them, nobody really knew I played professional ball.”

Heather Vanderford, Westerman’s 27-year-old granddaughter, knew her grandmother was a great ball player. But it wasn’t until the movie “A League of Their Own” came out in 1992 that she fully understood.

“It wasn’t until then that I really understood just how good she was and how important it was. The movie brought everything together,” said the former Kenosha Bradford High School all-conference pitcher.

The movie, in which Westerman can be seen in the closing scenes, made Vanderford realize what these women did so her generation could play sports.

Of the 600 women who once played in the league, only a handful remain. Many are in their 80s. Those who can, including Westerman, continue to speak at community events. But unless Penny Marshall, the movie’s producer, has plans to make a sequel, the history of the league could die with its players.

“Their story isn’t in the history books, so it’s important the players continue to talk about it while they’re still here,” Judy Vanderford said. “But more importantly, the younger generations need to give it another kick start.”

What better way to spark new interest than to let those younger generations play on the teams that paved the way in women’s sports?

The World War II Girls Baseball Living History League is a reenactment league created to honor All-American Girls Professional Baseball League players and educate people about the league’s historical contributions. Judy and Heather play in the league , and the two are managing the Racine Belles this season.

Tryouts aren’t required, only a desire to share the league’s history. Games are played at various historical reenactments and museums throughout the Midwest and follow 1943 rules: 12-inch softballs, underhand fast pitch, 65-foot base paths and 40 feet between pitching mound and home plate.

Several players portray actual league players. For Heather, the choice was easy.

“This is my way to show my grandma how much she means to me and how important she’s been in my life,” said Vanderford, who proudly sports her grandma’s No. 6 on her Racine Belles replica uniform.

For $225, reenactment players can purchase a custom-made, reproduction uniform: dress, satin drawers, wool cap, belt and socks.

“It makes it so much more real,” Heather Vanderford said. “It feels as if you’ve stepped back in time.”

Players also use wooden bats and vintage gloves.

The league is in its formative years, but all three generations agree it’s a step in the right direction.

“It really is a tribute to the league and will help keep it alive,” Westerman said. “And that’s what we players worry about. We’re all getting up to that age where one day we’re not going to be around.”

It’ll be up to the younger generations, her daughter’s and granddaughter’s, to tell the story from there.

“We’re hoping they do,” she said, “and this will help.”

For more information about the World War II Girls Baseball Living history league visit www.ww2girlsbaseball.com. To learn more about the history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League visit www.aagpbl.org.

All dressed upIdea to photograph each generation in the pink dress wasn’t planned, but it has turned into a family tradition

Like its fabric, the origins of the “pink dress” are somewhat faded.

An Easter dress? Perhaps. A father doting on his new baby girl? That’s more likely.

“As far as I know, Dad just wanted to buy a dress for his daughter,” says Lynette Ernst of Racine.

“He just wanted to buy a dress for Carol, right?” she double-checks the story with her 96-year-old mother, Anna Ruth Terry, sitting across the table. The pink dress, safely stored in a glass case, rests between them.

Terry thinks for a moment. “I have no idea.”

What she does remember is being very upset with the amount her late husband, James Terry, paid for the dress. The year was 1937; it was The Great Depression. The dress cost somewhere between $2.98 and $3.98, or the equivalent of $50 today.

“He bought everything money could buy,” Terry recalls. “Anything the girls wanted, they got.”

James Terry worked as a mail clerk for the U.S. Railway. He sorted mail on the train as it traveled from Chicago to Pittsburgh. As a result, he wasn’t at the family’s home in Plymouth, Ind., for days at a time. It was during a layover in Pittsburgh that he purchased the dress for Carol, Ernst’s older sister, who was 10 months old at the time.

Ernst shows a photograph of Carol, an infant with fair skin, light hair and full cheeks. She’s wearing the dress, the color of the fabric and the blue flowers embroidered along the collar more saturated than in real life. The slight tear under the right sleeve is not yet there.

“Then I came along in ’43, and this is me, 10 months old in the pink dress,” Ernst says as she carefully turns over a photograph of a wide-eyed little girl with dark brown hair.

Carol did not have children. Ernst had two sons. The dress stayed packed away until 1988 when Charlotte, the daughter of Ernst’s older son Carl, was born.

“And that’s Charlotte in the pink dress 51 years (after my photo was taken in it),” she says.

Ernst also had a foster daughter, Beverly, who gave birth to Hope in 1990. Just like Ernst’s other granddaughter, Hope was photographed in the dress.

In 1995, Ernst’s younger son, Jim, welcomed daughter Brittany. Brianna followed in 2000 and Brooke in 2004. Again, each was photographed in the pink dress at 10 months old.

The most recent photograph is of Charlotte’s daughter, Savannah, Ernst’s first great-granddaughter.

The idea to photograph each generation in the pink dress wasn’t planned. Ernst and Terry only stumbled upon the dress around the time Charlotte was born.

Ernst recalls, “I thought, ‘Oh, a girl! We’ll put her in the dress! After that I had to put everyone in the dress.”

James Terry never saw the other generations wear the dress. He died in 1985, three years before Charlotte’s birth. But in a sense, the legacy of that dress keeps his love for his family very much alive.

“He was a good dad,” Terry says of her late husband.

Ernst nods in agreement. She remembers meeting the train occasionally in Fort Wayne, where she went to college.

“He knew if I was standing on the platform I needed money,” she recalls. “He’d come to the door and slip me a $20 or something.”

She smiles at the memory. Although his job required a lot of travel, being “Dad” was his first priority when he was home. As grandchildren entered the scene, being Grandpa became equally important. He was, as Ernst and Terry recall, all about the children.

“Anything my boys wanted when they were little they pretty much got from Grandpa,” Ernst recalls.

When Ernst took in foster daughter Beverly, her father made sure she knew she was family, too.

Terry remembers that moment.

“My husband took hold of both of her hands and said, ‘Bev, you belong to us.’”

Ernst and Terry agree he’d be happy to know the pink dress that initially made his wife so upset is now a comfort.

The lovely little dress tells a story, and it could add another chapter this June: Ernst’s granddaughter Charlotte is expecting again.

“If she has another girl, we’ll be putting another baby in the dress,” Ernst says.

That’s 75 years’ worth of pictures of little girls in the pink dress.

It’s said a picture speaks a thousand words, but these photographs seem to say just one: love. {