by Ralph HUBBELL
The man asked, Why dont you write something that you have never written
before? His thinking was to go back to the beginning the years before
sportscasting and sports writing and MCeeing and speech making, etc., occupied my time
from the distant then to the now. His invitation was accepted so that this visit with all
of you will definitely be from the beginning October twenty-seventh in the year
1909.
My birthplace was Duluth, Minn., and you can understand that I dont recall much
of that city, inasmuch as my family moved to Hamburg, N.Y. when I was two weeks into this
world. My father, Ralph Hubbell, Sr., worked for a telephone company and was transferred
to Buffalo at that time. My first seven years were preceded by a move into Buffalo where
my two brothers, Albert and Philip, resided with our parents on Norwood Avenue.
The Hubbell Family, Janet, Albert, |
Ralph at age 8. |
Tragedy for the Hubbell clan was soon upon us for my mother, Janet, contracted
tuberculosis and was sent to a hospital in Saranac Lake where she died in 1919. The last
time we saw her was three years before she passed away inasmuch as children were not
allowed to visit in those years. Shortly thereafter, my father disappeared from our lives
with the result that Emily Welch, Mothers sister, our beloved Tem, took over the
dual parent role.
She was a traveling school teacher and when Tem traveled we traveled. Every school change
resulted in our losing a year so that I graduated from high school at the age of twenty,
having attended fourteen different schools. We schooled in Virginia, Ohio, New York and,
finally, Brooklyn where graduation came in 1930.
Right here I pause to remember Aunt Emily Tem. She was easily the most remarkable
person I ever knew and, when she realized that raising three young lads would require more
income than what she earned teaching, she started a small girls camp in Maine
Camp Wabunaki. She started with ten campers in a senior camp and when she retired some
twenty-five years later she had two camps, senior and junior, and was, herself, president
of the National Camp Directors Association.
Aunt Emily Hamilton Welch, Educator and Camp Director in 1960. |
After I graduated I turned down Tems offer to send me to college and joined the
world of the unemployed, for it was in the middle of a deep depression. In succession I
sold typewriters (one a portable to Tem), sold Quaker Oats, ran a YMCA switchboard for a
place to sleep and finally worked as daytime boss of a cheap hotel on Sixth Avenue.
When Tem heard about that she contacted the Westminister Church in Buffalo
and I was given the job of assistant boys worker at Westminister Community Center on Adams
Street here in town.
My pay was $27.00 a month but my rent was thirty bucks. So, to make up the difference, I
hatched an idea. In school I had always been fascinated by poetry. Listening to a radio
music program one day I heard the needle stick in a record groove. The sponsor was Frank
Meyers Appliance Store and I called immediately and told him about the needle. When I
suggested a poetry half-hour with music background he told me to drop by. Result? One week
later I did a half-hour poetry show Monday through Saturday for five dollars a week. It
paid the difference.
That was in 1931. In 1932 I took the job of boys worker in the Little Italy Neighborhood
Association in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn and intended to make that my lifes
work. But one day, in visiting my brother Phil in Buffalo, I ducked into WEBR to just
reminisce and say my greetings and was told that an announcing job was open. Three weeks
later I said goodbye to Little Italy and Hello to Buffalo and the rest of my years you
know all about all 63 of them.
So there you have it, dear friends, and I want you all to know what else you have
the forever thanks of one Ralph Hubbell for your compassion and your loyalty, treasures
that are mine to keep for always.
During Jim Thorpes world wide travels to visit children, he stopped in Buffalo in 1955 to help Ilio DiPaolo promote a wrestling event at the Aud.
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Joe McCarthys When Joe passed away on January 13, 1978in Millard Fillmore HospitalI was holding his hand.
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Sandy Hawley was indeed the finest jockey in all of Canada...and we enjoyed many interesting interviews. |
It was exciting to have spent time with Babe Ruth. |
Ralph Hubbell has retired from the clock and is
now on his own time...writing for 2 community newspapersspeaking when
askedserving on 4 Hall of Fame
committeesand writing his 7th book.