50th anniversary of Roberto Clemente's death brings 'mixed emotions'

At some point on New Year’s Eve, Tom Walker and his wife of 48 years, Carolyn, will raise a toast in their Pine Township home to the man who Walker says saved his life a half-century ago: Roberto Clemente.

“None of this, none of the blessings I’ve had in life, would exist if it weren’t for that one incredible man,” Walker, 74, says of Clemente.

Walker was one of the last people to see the Pittsburgh Pirates legend alive.

On Dec. 31, 1972, 50 years ago today, Walker helped load relief supplies onto a Douglas DC-7 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The supplies were bound for Nicaragua, where days earlier an earthquake rocked the capital city of Managua, killing 10,000 people, injuring 20,000 and leaving 300,000 homeless.

Clemente sprang into action as soon as he learned of the tragedy. He had a special affection for the people of Nicaragua, having spent three weeks there in November and early December 1972 managing Puerto Rico’s national team in the Amateur World Series.

The New Year’s Eve relief flight was the fourth one Clemente helped orchestrate. It also was the first one he went on. He told people he wanted to go to Nicaragua in person so he could make sure relief supplies were getting to the people who needed them. There had been reports of government corruption and military officials diverting supplies.

Walker, then a 24-year-old pitcher in the Puerto Rican winter league who was coming off his rookie season in the major leagues, asked Clemente if he could join him on the relief flight. Clemente told him no.

“Tomás, it’s New Year’s Eve. Go party, gringo,” Walker recalled Clemente saying, along with the word “trulla,” a Spanish term for going out and singing Christmas songs around the holiday.

Walker went to a watering hole in the Condado section of San Juan. Clemente stepped into immortality.

The overloaded plane on which Clemente and four other men were riding crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff. His body was never found.

Clemente had established himself as one of baseball’s all-time greats. During the 1972 season, his last, Clemente became just the 10th player and the first Latin American in major league history to collect at least 3,000 career hits. He also won his 12th consecutive Gold Glove award as the National League’s best defensive right fielder.

Many people knew nothing about his humanitarian side — and Clemente preferred it that way.

Duane Rieder, executive director of the Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood, said Clemente frequently visited patients at what is now known as UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh throughout his 18-year career with the Pirates. He told hospital officials he would never return if they ever alerted the news media he was visiting.

“He was always doing things for the right reasons, not for money or attention,” Rieder said. “For Roberto, it was never about him.”

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Watch on TV: AT&T SportsNet will broadcast the Trib documentary “Roberto Clemente: Keeping the Dream Alive” at 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

Clemente’s tragic death while trying to help suffering people in another country revealed his humanitarian side to the world.

“I firmly believe the man upstairs wanted Roberto to leave that way in order for him to finally be known and recognized as not only one of the greatest players to ever play the game, but as one of the greatest human beings who ever walked on this earth,” said Al Oliver, 76, a former teammate of Clemente’s.

‘His legacy is stronger than ever’

Clemente’s family gave him the nickname Momen because as a boy he often said “momentito, momentito” — or “just a minute” — whenever he was called or asked to do something.

But he never hesitated to make a difference or help people in need.

“At age 11, he raised funds to erect a fence to protect his school, (named) Dr. Clemente Fernandez, from the road — a goal that was achieved. And when Momen was only 14 or 15 years old, one day, he went out on the road and saw a vehicle on fire. Without thinking twice, he went straight to the car and pulled out the driver,” Daliana Muratti wrote in her book “Roberto Clemente Is: Momen.”

“It’s in our nature,” said Clemente’s oldest son, Roberto Clemente Jr., who was 7 at the time of the plane crash. “We breathe of giving and helping and making sure we do the right thing for our neighbors.”

While the world lost a man who many people considered a hero 50 years ago today, the late Vera Clemente, then 31, lost her husband. Three young boys lost their father. Somehow, that is often overlooked, Clemente Jr. said.

“People are often engulfed in their own emotions of what Roberto Clemente meant to them,” he said.

“There are mixed emotions for me every year leading up to New Year’s Eve,” said Clemente Jr., 57, of the South Hills. “I always feel such a feeling of respect and admiration from people. From the time I was a kid, I have met people for the first time and there are tears coming down their face when they share their stories about what my father meant to them. I found myself consoling strangers as a kid, and no one asked me how I was.

“For me personally, this is my father, this is my dad, this is my protector who I lost at age 7. I missed him in so many stages of my life. I really feel that he was taken away too quickly. But, at this stage in my life, the outpouring of love for my father is just confirmation that 50 years later his legacy is stronger than ever. I believe his destiny was to go the way he went.”

As proof of the staying power of Clemente’s legacy, one can look to the Clemente Museum in Lawrenceville. Rieder said it attracted more than 15,000 visitors this year, about triple what it normally does.

“I think it has more to do with who Roberto was as a human being than who he was a player,” Rieder said. “His legacy resonates to this day, and especially in this day and age because I think for a lot of people it seems like there’s not enough good in the world. Looking to Roberto and what he did in his short time on Earth, I think it gives us all some hope that there is some good in the world.”

For the surviving Clementes, carrying on with life after the crash meant carrying on Roberto Clemente’s legacy of humanitarianism.

Almost immediately after Clemente’s death, his wife took up the mantle of trying to make one of her husband’s long-held dreams a reality. Roberto Clemente had dreamed of creating a place called Sports City — Ciudad Deportiva in Spanish — that would use sports as a vehicle to lift up Puerto Rican children, particularly ones from broken and impoverished homes. The sports complex in Clemente’s hometown of Carolina would serve more than 1 million children in the ensuing years.

The foundation created to run the complex would grow to serve children and families across Puerto Rico, the United States and beyond. In the aftermath of September’s Hurricane Ian, Clemente Jr. said, the foundation mobilized to provide meals to thousands of Puerto Rican families in the afternoons and offer free baseball clinics to children in the evenings.

While Tom and Carolyn Walker will carry on their annual New Year’s Eve tradition of honoring Roberto Clemente this year, Clemente Jr. said one of his traditions is going by the wayside — all because of the Southwest Airlines fiasco that resulted in the airline canceling thousands of flights this holiday season.

Clemente Jr. said he and his family had planned to fly Southwest to Puerto Rico on Wednesday, but the flight was one of the many canceled. Clemente Jr. said he will miss the foundation’s annual golf outing fundraiser, along with a yearly family pilgrimage to the beach site nearest to where Clemente’s plane went down.

“I think God was telling us to stay in Pittsburgh because it was such a special place for my father,” Clemente Jr. said.

Clemente Jr. said he and his family intend to go to the statue honoring his father outside PNC Park at noon today to place a memorial arrangement near the statue and observe a moment of silence. Candles will be lighted around the statue in the evening.

“It was meant to be.”