Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain (39 page)

Canton had not seen an event like this since President William McKinley’s memorial service in September 1901. McKinley had been assassinated in Buffalo, and the funeral service was held there. Then, after the body was taken to Washington, he was brought home to Canton, where a memorial service was held prior to his burial. If there were any people who attended that one, seventy-eight years earlier, and who filed past Thurman’s coffin on Sunday, it went undiscovered.

The Thurman Munson funeral, in fact, would be held in the McKinley Room of the Canton Memorial Civic Center. It was scheduled for 9:30 on that Monday morning, August 6. The original plans called for it to be at the Rossi Funeral Home, but when the size of it
became clear—with the entire Yankee team coming—it was moved. The Yankees were scheduled to play the fourth game of their four-game series with Baltimore that night in Yankee Stadium and would return to New York after the service.

Rossi nevertheless handled the arrangements in cooperation with Diana. “When you have a burn victim, that’s a horrible thing,” recalls Marion Rossi. “But Thurman’s body was recognizable. His face was virtually unharmed. Diana was on top of all the details; very composed, despite the enormous tragedy that hit her. The arrangements like the music to be played, the order of speakers: that was all her planning.”

On Sunday, starting at two p.m., about three thousand people filed past Thurman’s bier paying last respects at the Civic Center. Piping and drapes had been set up to create a walkway entering and then exiting the casket area. In between were scores of floral displays. Youngsters wore their Little League uniforms. Diana, Tracy, and Kelly visited in the afternoon. Diana kept up with New York newspaper coverage, as visitors from New York had brought the papers to her.

In New York, a larger-than-usual number of players attended Sunday morning chapel service in Yankee Stadium, conducted by Tom Skinner. “We should remember the privilege of knowing a man like Thurman Munson,” he told the Yankee and Oriole players. He also talked about not carrying grudges. Reggie Jackson, who had not been speaking to Moss Klein of the
Newark Star-Ledger
, then went to Klein and said, “Are you going to the funeral?” When Klein said he was, Jackson said, “That’s good; I’m glad,” and their feud was over.

Marty Noble of the
Bergen Record
was not as impressed. “I liked Reggie, perhaps more than most newspaper guys,” he said. “But not that weekend. I didn’t like him wiping his eyes on Friday night while everyone else was standing at attention, and I didn’t like the oversized Bible he carried with him to the funeral, with gold fringes. He just had this need to call attention to himself.”

Friends and family, filing into the spectacular two-year-old Munson home, had kept Diana going, along with her motherly responsibilities. On Saturday, she allowed a photographer from the
Repository
into the house to take a picture of her looking at Thurman’s MVP plaque on the wall. Flowers, cards, and telegrams were pouring into the home, some just addressed to “Mrs. Thurman Munson, Canton, OH.” The curious simply drove by the house slowly. Police were outside keeping the sightseers from stopping and controlling access to the home.

“She’s not ready to talk to the press,” said her closest friend, Joanne Fulz. “The family is holding up, but they’re still not ready to discuss it. The kids are doing well. They’ll go through periods of questioning what happened and times of sadness, but you know kids, they bounce back.”

Canton was always more of a football town, in the pocket of the nation where Friday night high school football, like McKinley versus Massillon, felt as big as the Super Bowl. But on this day, Canton, population 93,000, turned its attention to its favorite baseball son.

I flew out on Sunday night, landing at Cleveland and renting a Lincoln Town Car because I was to pick up Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, American League president Lee MacPhail, and my old boss Bob Fishel (now the league’s PR director) early Monday at Akron-Canton Airport, in order to take them to the funeral. For MacPhail, of course, it was full circle. As Yankee general manager, he was in the Munson home the day Thurman had signed his Yankee contract eleven years earlier.

Kuhn had weighed whether it was his place to be there. I was part of that discussion in his office on Friday afternoon. It was a question of whether a commissioner should be attending a player’s funeral because he was a star player. He had not, after all, attended Lymon Bostock’s funeral the year before when the Angels outfielder had been shot to death. He didn’t want to do the wrong thing by the Munson family, or by his office, or to send the wrong message, particularly
along racial lines, as Bostock was black. Kuhn was often the subject of ridicule for his stuffed-shirt appearance and seemingly endless string of losses to the Players Association, but I found him to be a decent man with a great love for baseball and a keen intelligence. (I later coauthored
his
memoir with him, putting him into a small club with Munson.)

I was straightforward about it. “He was the captain of the reigning world champions,” I said, painful as it was now to use the word “was.” “You presented the World Series trophy to him in the clubhouse ten months ago. I think the commissioner should be there.”

When I landed in Cleveland, I ran into the Piniellas and the Murcers, who had flown out after the Sunday game to be with Diana. I offered them a ride; Bobby, Lou, and Anita sat in the back, with Kay in the front along with Mike Heath, who now played for Oakland and happened to run into us. Heath was one of a number of former teammates who had come in at their own expense for this. Murcer navigated the route to the Munson house, and he and Lou talked in the backseat about what each would say at the funeral. Diana had asked them to be the two eulogists. It was raining, and in the dark it was hard to find the house, but Bobby had managed to remember the turn off Market Avenue.

Heath was uncomfortable going to the house, not really knowing the family, but Murcer had told him he would absolutely be welcome. Mike had been a Yankee catcher behind Thurman in 1978 and had flown in from Seattle.

I had little idea what to say to Diana, because “I’m so sorry” seemed so insignificant. But she gave me a warm hug and she took the lead.

“I want you to know how much that book you did with Thurman means to us all now,” she said to me. “We will always have that.”

I said what I hoped were a few appropriate words, and remember ending with “I’ll always be proud of being linked with Thurman.”

I was so amazed by her presence. She was thirty-one years old and about to become a very public figure. In 1979, many of us were still judging “funeral behavior” by the example set by Jacqueline Kennedy sixteen years before. No one who lived through that would ever forget her dignity. What many had forgotten, or never stopped to contemplate, was that Jackie Kennedy was only thirty-four at the time of her husband’s death.

I told Diana that I would be bringing the commissioner to the funeral in the morning. She seemed pleased.

And then she asked about my upcoming fatherhood. I couldn’t believe she could think of that or ask it at that moment. What a lady she was to have asked at a time like this.

Tracy and Kelly, nine and seven, were such sad figures for those of us in attendance. Gene Michael, Thurman’s fellow Kent State alum and Yankee teammate, and now manager at Columbus, remarked to me that they must be in such shock they couldn’t possibly understand all of this. Michael Munson, four, was scampering around the house. Diana’s mother, Pauline, was helping with him. Ruth Munson, Thurman’s mother, sat quietly by herself, visited every few moments by one of her daughters. There was talk at the house about whether Darrell Munson would have heard the news, whether he was even alive, where he lived, and whether he might attend the funeral. It was all quite mysterious. The Munsons and the Dominicks were not getting along well at this time and this event failed to bring them closer.

This was my first time in this house, a fourteen-room mansion set back about 250 feet from the street, behind a circular driveway and a big lawn. White pillars marked the front entrance. It was magnificent, drawn from a similar plan that had been used in constructing the home in Norwood where I had worked with Thurman on his book. It was light brown, two and a half stories high. Stone from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii had been hauled in, as Thurman supervised the construction down to the smallest detail.

Thurman’s office, through double mahogany doors, included the model of the Citation on his desk and the 1976 MVP award on the wall. And there was the framed photo of the four great Yankee catchers together: Dickey, Berra, Howard, and Thurm, which I had set up with tough cooperation from Munson himself.

I left to go back to my hotel around eleven p.m. The next morning, after a five a.m. wake-up call, I headed for the airport to pick up Kuhn, MacPhail, and Fishel.

Back in the Bronx, traveling secretary Bill Kane had arranged for three Carey buses to take players, their wives, and front office people to Newark Airport for the charter flight that was to depart at 8:15 a.m. For most of those who would make the trip, the day also began around 5 a.m., with the players and wives instructed to be at Yankee Stadium by 6:45. There was a flight delay and the Delta 727 arrived about a half hour late, touching down at Akron-Canton at 9:27. The last-minute charter cost about $20,000 to book.

Fortunately, the wreckage had been removed to a remote hangar by the day of the funeral, but no one in a window seat could avoid looking down during the landing and feeling heightened emotion at being so close to the spot where Thurman had died. There were a few floral wreaths at the site of the accident on Greenburg Road, and it was reported that some scavengers had been by to remove scrap metal, perhaps as souvenirs.

“Landing at that airport was one of the worst parts of that terrible day,” said Gene Monahan.

The Yankee players and wives boarded three buses leased from A&M Transit Lines and sped down I-77 under police escort. They got off the highway and headed down Market Street, passing construction workers who stopped to watch the buses pass.

Inside the Civic Center, some seven hundred people were gathering for the private funeral, sitting there staring at the American flag-draped coffin, with some two hundred floral wreaths around it, with an oil painting of Thurman in his Yankee uniform, framed
in gold, hanging above it. The music of Neil Diamond played softly. Outside, a local color guard was assembled to form a path for arriving dignitaries.

“I had no idea that Neil Diamond was Thurman’s favorite,” says his sister Darla. “I had once heard a tape and asked what it was and was told, ‘That’s
Hot August Night
by Neil Diamond,’ and I said, ‘Oh, I love that so, I have to get it.’ So it was my favorite album, and there I was sitting in the Civic Center, and they’re playing it, and someone says to me, ‘Neil Diamond was his favorite.’ We had that in common and I didn’t even know it. And of course, a hot August night was when he crashed.”

Besides Diana and her three children, besides Piniella and Murcer, besides Duane and Janice and Darla and their mother, Ruth, plus so many friends and neighbors from the Worley School and Lehman, were the mayor of Canton, Stanley Cmich; the young Cleveland mayor, Dennis Kucinich; Gabe Paul, now back as the Indians’ president; Phil Seghi, his general manager; and Bob Lemon, so recently deposed as Yankee manager, attending another funeral nine months after he buried his son. Herb Score, the Indians’ broadcaster, was there, as was Al Rosen, who had just recently resigned as president of the Yankees. Sports agent Bob Wolff was also there.

Duane wore a short-sleeved yellow shirt with a tie and no jacket. Janice was in a black dress, her hair up in a bun. Darla, her hair shoulder length, wore a blue-and-white short-sleeved dress and large glasses. Duane kept his arm around her throughout.

Ruth Munson, heavy, moving awkwardly with an unsteady gait, was in a striped shirt and vest over a long dark skirt. Her children stayed close to her. She was experiencing the worst loss a mother could possibly feel, and the expression on her face showed it.

Gabe, ever the glad-hander, spent time introducing Kucinich to everyone. “Say hello to Mayor Kucinich,” he’d bellow. He was “working the room,” working to score some points with the mayor by
introducing him to all the celebrities. Kucinich, later the U.S. Congressman who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, was also the son of a truck driver.

As for me, I had no calling as a Secret Service agent; that was for sure. I screwed up my only assignment, picking up Kuhn, MacPhail, and Fishel.

I had parked at the small airport and gone inside to await their arrival. In the age before cell phones, this was no easy task. There was no posting of a landing time for their private jet. Since the lobby area of the airport was small, I figured I would just wait there and see them. But they had somehow expected me to be waiting on the tarmac for them with the car, as perhaps someone more experienced at such things would do, and when I failed to appear, another car was summoned and they left for the funeral without me. I was now in deep panic. They had landed at 8:51 and I was totally unaware of it.

After what felt like an eternity, I went to the office of the airport manager, who told me that they had landed and were being driven to the funeral home. I raced to my car, and somehow arrived at the same time they did, pulling up alongside of them in front of the building, a few minutes ahead of the team. I felt so foolish, but there was no problem whatsoever. We parked, shook hands, and entered. I sat to Kuhn’s left, about twelve rows back, with Fishel on my left. The front rows were reserved for the team, which arrived, with wives, in the three buses. Diana met them in the lobby; that morning was the first time she broke down in front of people.

All the players and their wives entered a separate room, where they individually hugged Diana and pledged their love and help. Reggie Jackson carried his oversized Bible with gold fringe.