Wyonella Smith, 1921-2020 (Courtesy of Marie Ellis.)

Wyonella Smith had a love affair with Chicago. With a forward nature in her eyes, she saw the hopeful texture of its baseball seasons and she navigated local media in its black and white years. Mrs. Smith was the wife of trailblazing newspaper columnist and mid-1960s WGN-Channel 9 sports anchor Wendell Smith. Mrs. Smith died on Thanksgiving Day at the Montgomery Place Retirement Community in Hyde Park.

She was 99 years old.

Mrs. Smith lived in the same retirement center as Mary Frances Veeck, the wife of Baseball Hall of Famer Bill Veeck. Wendell Smith was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994. Mrs. Smith accepted the honor on his behalf in Cooperstown, N.Y. Mrs. Veeck celebrated her 100th birthday earlier this year. Mrs. Veeck and Mrs. Smith were fast friends for 60 years. Mrs. Smith attended all three weddings of the Veeck daughters.

Wyonella Hicks was born in Oxford, N.C. She met Wendell in the mid-1940s. The future Mrs. Smith was a secretary at the Pittsburgh Courier, the African-American newspaper where Wendell was sports editor. They married in 1949 and Wendell died in 1972 at the age of 58. He also died on Nov. 26.  Ironically, Mr. and Mrs. Smith were married on Nov. 26.

Mrs. Smith’s surviving relatives include great nephews, great great great nieces, niece Marie Ellis of Chicago and nephew Biff Henderson, the longtime stage manager for David Letterman. “I sat Biff when he was a baby,” Mrs. Smith told me on a 2013 road trip from Hyde Park to River North for a screening of the Jackie Robinson movie “42.”  She was my date. She was crazier about seeing Harrison Ford, who portrayed Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey in “42.”

Wendell and Wyonella –poetry in motion—had a relationship defined by love. “Every anniversary she and Uncle Wendell had, he would buy her a custom necklace,” Ellis said Wednesday. “When they first met at the Courier he bought her a custom gold typewriter charm necklace. You know how you can roll the typewriter to turn the pages? When you rolled it, it showed their anniversary. She always told me when you find a man, find a man that stays consistent and shows you love and support.

“Find a man that cherishes your moment in time.”

Civil rights pioneer-journalist-husband Wendell Smith

The Smiths moved to Chicago in the late 1940s. Wendell became the first Black reporter at the white-owned Chicago Herald-American. He was also the first African-American member of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Mrs. Smith told me, “The man in charge of Hearst papers in this area wanted to hire Wendell because the editor here was prejudiced. He wanted to get him upset.”

Mrs. Smith found office work with Abe Saperstein’s Chicago-based Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was also a pioneer in Negro League baseball of which the Smiths were champions. Saperstein helped secure Old Comiskey Park for the legendary Negro League East-West All-Star game. In her later years, Mrs. Smith worked in the public information office for the City of Chicago Department of Aging.

The Smiths met the Veecks in 1959 when Bill Veeck purchased a controlling interest in the Chicago White Sox. Wendell left the Herald-American in 1964 to join WGN as sports anchor. While at WGN he also began writing a sports column for the Chicago Sun-Times. His final column was on Jackie Robinson. Robinson died one month before Wendell Smith at the age of 53.

When Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, Branch Rickey hired Wendell as Robinson’s confidant. Rickey paid Wendell $50 per week to travel with Robinson. He arranged housing with Black families while also chronicling Robinson’s journey for the Courier. Wendell also ghostwrote a weekly newspaper column for Robinson. Wendell Smith was surely deserving of a Pulitzer Prize.

“Wyonella was a very interesting individual,” said Deborah E. Hart, CEO, and President of Montgomery Place. “She loved to talk about the Globetrotters. She did their travel arrangements. Curly Neal was one of her favorites and so was Meadowlark (Lemon.) They treated her with such respect. She had great pride for her husband being an African-American recognized in the sports world in those early days.” Just imagine the knowledge and patience Mrs. Smith had to possess to book a traveling Black basketball team across America in the 1950s and 60s.

Curly Neal, a favorite of Mrs. Smith’s. He died earlier this year at age 77.

“She used to say when you picked up the phone you couldn’t tell what her race was,” Ellis said. “But when the Harlem Globetrotters were mentioned it was clear ‘This is an African-American enterprise calling to make schedules.’  Sometimes she had an issue trying to book hotels and so forth. I would try to get her to talk more about segregation during her childhood, but she didn’t like to talk about that. She said that reminiscing of the hurtful pain only brings current sadness. She would say, ‘I am here right now, I want to remember how I got here.’ She wanted to live in the moment.”

In August 2012 Mrs. Smith found herself on the front page of the New York Times with Mrs. Veeck when writer Ben Strauss profiled their 53-year friendship. Mrs. Smith told Strauss, “We remember things about each other no one knows, things we sometimes forget. Some are serious and so many are happy.”

Mrs. Veeck’s daughter Marya said it was a coincidence that the longtime friends ended up together again at Montgomery Place. “We had holidays together and I’d see her when I’d visit my mom,” Veeck said. “She always called me ‘Baby’. They were good friends for so many years. My father and Wendell were good friends.”

The stylish Mrs. Smith (Courtesy of Montgomery Place.)

One beautiful bond between Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Veeck was their impeccable sense of style. “Even in her later years she insisted on putting on her makeup and dressing for dinner,” Hart said on Wednesday. “She didn’t like it if you happened to surprise her and she wasn’t dressed well. It was always a symbol for her to be well presented.”

Ellis added, “My Aunt Wyonnie was a full image of what a lady should be. She made sure she always had her jewelry. If you’re going to go out in the world make sure your appearance represents who you are. Be presentable because you represent your family.”

These moments resonate with the world Mrs. Smith left behind. The Veecks and the Smiths traveled together to Spring Training in Florida during the early 1960s. This was no easy task during segregation.

Mrs. Smith was gentle and giving. She baked chocolate chip cookies in Chicago and sent them to the Veeck family when they lived in Maryland in the mid-1960s. Wyonella Smith was a witness to the dynamics of human nature and she embraced understanding even in difficult times. Just like a gold necklace, she wore her spirit with incredible pride.

Services for Mrs. Smith will be private. She will be laid to rest next to her husband at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill.

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