  They were leaders in advancing minority
business opportunities in Wayne County.
Their determination to develop
minority-owned businesses is symbolic of our commitment at BOPE
Founding Members: Front Row: Loo Oates,
Annette Parker, Charles Sutton-Middle Row: Carver Durham, Chauncey Douglas,
Betty Jackson-Back Row: Oscar Hines Jr. Belinda Carraway, Antonio Thompson and
Dr. Rickey Stovall III
BOPE in association with the BPTN Network Presents A Community Banquet to Honor
Negro League
Baseball Legends and Community Leaders and Business Incons
Negro League Baseball Legends and
Community Leaders Banquet
When: May 16, 2008 at 8:00
p.m.
Where: Quality Inn Suites,
Conference Center
708 Corporate Drive Goldsboro, NC 27534 You are invited to attend a "A Night
with Negro League Baseball Legends and Community
Leaders on Friday, May 16, 2008.
cost: $25.00 Per Person....$300.00
Corporate Table
sponorships available..
History of Negro Legends
Bobo Nate
Smalls
 Keynote Speaker, Pastor Chauncy Douglas  MC and Entertainment
LaSalle LaSalle
Loo Oates
Courtesy of News and Sports January 3, 2007
Loo Oates Aboard Big Red With The Indianapolis
Clowns
by: John Devard
The early days
Loo Oates traces his early baseball
skills to the footsteps of his father, Jack Oates, his uncle, T-Meat Raynor
and much older players like Bruce Bennett who taught him the ropes around the
sandlots on his way to becoming a member of the Indianapolis Clowns, and
his pitching coach, Charles Middlebrooks, who was instructmental in him
eventually ending up in the Atlanta Braves farm system.
I played in a summer league in Newton Grove
when I was 12 or 13' said Oates. I was playing with guys in the army, in
college and guys 18 or 19. They threw me to the wolves and made me
play.
Not only was Oates a tremendous
hitter, he was the "ace" of the Clowns staff who threw three or four times
a week, winning almost 100% of his games. "Oates estimates he won maybe 30 games
his first year." In high school (Carver High School) Oates says he only lost
maybe two-three games.
Baseball was so important to Oates, that he
would help his cousins and neighbors with their chores so they could play ball. Our entertainment on the weekend was church and
baseball stated Oates.
Back then baseball was like a religion to
black people.
During the summers, Oates, whose father
knew he had the talent to be a baseball player, would go to a camp in Ocean
City, New Jersey run by the Philles and play, working at his uncle's service
station to earn money.
High school
Upon his return to Carver, his desire
to play baseball was intensified by a teacher's unwitting remarks.
She said something to me you
should never say to a10th-grader. She said. "you should forget about that
nonsense of playing baseball. Go down to that pickle plant and get you a job. To
this day, I will not eat pickles. I knew I was either going to play baseball or
go to college.
Becoming a Clown
Oates arrived at the Clowns camp with
300 other hopefuls, but only 40 made the two teams and a player had to be
versitable by playing more than one position. But from the outset, the
Clowns owner would not let Oates do anything but pitch. He used him to sell
programs and do the PA announcements. The star attraction, Nature Boy Williams,
traveled with his own car, a pink caddy convertible.
Oates arrived with a devastating
fast ball, a nasty curve and with the break of camp, had been assigned to
the Clowns main team. He credits pitching coach, Charles Middlebrooks with
teaching him the slider to complete his arsenal, which made him almost
un-hittable. Like the Harlem Globe Trotters, the Clowns carried their own team,
The New York Stars. That's when the main star, "Nature Boy Williams," made
the statement, "O", you got to take it easy on the stars, or you have to pitch
for the A team... scolding him about striking out the stars."
Oates and the rest of the Clowns were
forced to sleep in jails or wealthy blacks home. Oates very seldom had to do the
jail scene, because he was on the A-Team, but like the rest of the team, they
would make sandwiches to avoid being denied service in restaurants and most
times would time their arrival at their destination shortly before game time.
Oates states, that the movie, Bingo Long and The Traveling All-stars was a great
take-off of the Clowns, with Sam"Birmingham Sam" Bryson and Dero "The Dwarf"
Alston playing roles in the film.
Showing out
The part Oates liked best about
playing with the Clowns was, when the seventh, eighth, and ninth batter
came to the plate, he would called the infielders/outfielder in and they
would lay around the infield chatting while he struck out the side. The salary
was okay said Oates, who made between $600 and $800 a month. The showman like
Nature Boy Williams commanded much higher salaries.
Oates wanted to be in the
minors
From the very beginning, Oates had a
contentious relationship with Clowns owner, Ed Hamman. Hamman was known for overpricing the contracts of his players, Oates
recalled. He knew that the Braves tried to purchase his contract from Hamman
before the Clowns broke spring training camp his first year. Hamman even had me
riding with him in his car to games stated Oates. I guess that was a way to
keep me close.
Sold to Atlanta
But after playing for the Clowns for
two years, Hamman finally sold Oates contract to the Braves for $10,000. Before Oates would report to the Braves camp in
Waycross Ga. on the advice of his pitching coach, Charles Middlebrooks, Oates
refused to report and Hamman eventually gave him $1.000.00. Oates never spoke to
Hamman after his contract was sold, and in conversations, he finds any
mention of Hamman distasteful. Another reason Hamman wanted Oates on the
A-Team, Oates surmised that he wanted to keep him away from Middlebrooks, still
a very good pitcher, but a savvy veteran who knew the ropes and took Oates under
his wings. He was accused of favoring Oates, by pitching him more than the other
pitchers. Middlebrooks simple explanation was. "He's my ace.
Saying goodbye
Oates eventually developed arm
trouble,and finished his career playing in Canada, but had to retire due to
arm trouble,"which he contributed" to the many games pitched for the
Clowns. He pursued his educational goals at Long Island University in New
York and studied anthropology, simply because "people told me I couldn't do it."
Oates did do it and, after earning an MBA from Adelphi, and studying law at
Brooklyn Law School, he went on to star with the great Brooklyn USA famed
softball team in Brooklyn New York in the 70's.
For Oates, playing with the Clowns was
the beginning of his education. When I left the Clowns I had played in 40
states, Canada and Mexico," he said. I took away a full understanding of what
you had to do, understanding the next level of playing ball and the next
level of playing life.
In retirement
Today, Oates is retired due to health
problems, from the company he founded in 1989, the Black Pages Today Network,
relinquishing the reins to his daughters,
but continues to write a weekly column and is working on a book "The Boys of Big
Red" a look at the life and times of an Indianapolis Clown. Once you do
your best, that's all you can do stated Oates.
On The Internet:
The Oates Report: www.loooatesreport.com
 Hubert Wooten
Courtesy of The News Argus Through the eyes of a Clown: Hubert Wooten was among the last of the barnstormers. Hubert Wooten doesn't have any photos of himself
from the old days, when times were tough and glorious all rolled into one. He
has no baseball cards that captured the likeness of a much younger Wooten --
Daddy Wooten -- as he was called four decades ago, and no statistics showing
that the kid could hit, run and throw.
What he does have are golden memories.
Memories of the long nights on the old bus, Big
Red. Memories of the four years he was with the "Harlem Globetrotters of
baseball." Memories of playing with and managing baseball great Satchel Paige,
the ageless Hall of Famer who was perhaps 50 years his senior.
And memories of a dream.
"If we had any sense, we would have kept stats, and
we would have taken pictures of the guys," says Wooten, now 61. "But we were out
there just trying to get to the next level. We wanted to make it to the big
leagues, and the rest of it didn't matter.
"As long as we played that day."
Wooten, who was born in Goldsboro on Sept. 6, 1944,
and graduated from Carver High School, played from 1965-68 with the last of the
barnstormers, the Indianapolis Clowns.
The Clowns, best known for their comedy routine,
were the longest-running franchise in the Negro League. By the mid-1960s, they
were the only team left. So they were always on the move, taking seemingly
endless road trips.
"We had this bus called Big Red, I'll tell you we
slept on it," he recalls. "We'd play a game, say in Milwaukee, then we'd go like
300 miles, check into a motel long enough to take a shower and go to the field
for a doubleheader. We'd play one at two, then played another that started at
seven that night. We'd go back to the motel, go to sleep, check out early that
morning, get back on Big Red and jump 200, 300 more miles.
"Always on the bus."
Like the Globetrotters, the Clowns always had a big
following.
"When we pulled up in a town, people were all
around Big Red, wanting to see the Clowns," he says with a smile.
They were there to see the talented players, and
they were there for the show. A show where the catcher would perhaps play his
position from a rocking chair, where buckets of confetti were thrown into the
stands, and where firecrackers found their way behind an unsuspecting umpire.
And there was the world-famous shadow ball, where
the Clowns would play the game in slow motion -- with crazy antics, at times --
with an imaginary ball.
"We'd put on a show," Daddy Wooten recalls. "After
seven innings, we'd do the shadow ball, we'd do a little dance to the Harlem
Globetrotters music, 'Sweet Georgia Brown.' We had special guys who were really
good at that, like Nature Boy, Birmingham Sam, Bobo, Steve Anderson, the
one-armed fellow. We had firecrackers that we'd light behind an ump, they would
explode and he'd jump up.
"It was really comical and people really enjoyed
it. We also had a good time, and we had a chance to play every day."
He always had power
Daddy Wooten wasn't a big man by any means -- he
stands just 5-foot-8 ("maybe 5-foot-8 1/2," he laughs). But there wasn't a
ballpark that could hold him if he got into a pitch.
"I've always had power and people wonder how," he
says. "And I'd tell them, 'It happens when you work on a farm.' When I was a
youngster, I had to cut wood, I had to walk behind that mule, and I had to take
two 50-pound bags of fertilizer, one in this hand and one in the other, and
carry them across the field. I didn't get my power in the gym, I got my power on
the farm."
Wooten played ball his junior and senior seasons
when Carver High started a baseball program.
When he graduated, he went to a baseball school in
West Palm Beach, Fla.
He signed a minor league contract with the Vero
Beach Dodgers in 1964 where he pitched and played in the outfield.
"I went over there and they said, 'You're raw, you
have good talent but you need to play every day,'" he said. "Then they sent a
letter to Ed Hamman, who owned the Clowns, and he sent me a ticket to meet me in
Chicago.
"After meeting Ed, I signed with the Clowns."
With the Clowns, Hamman helped Hubert Wooten get
his nickname.
"Daddy Wooten, that's what they called me," he
says. "One time, I hit a ball off the wall, and Ed was standing over there, he
was laughing and said, 'That's the daddy.' And Sandy Perkins said, 'Yeah, we're
going to name him Daddy Wooten.' And that name just stuck."
Daddy Wooten loved to play every position. Well,
almost every position.
"I played all positions except one, and that was
catcher," he says with a smile. "They made a mistake once and I had to get back
there. All our catchers were hurt and they had one coming in, and I had to get
back there. We had a fellow on the mound that day who was about 6-foot-6 and he
could throw 95-96 mph and we were in Nebraska. And I'll tell you, he'd throw,
they'd swing, I'd close my eyes and the ball would go by. I walked all night. I
told Ed, 'The only plate I want to get behind is one with food on it. And when
it's gone, I'm gone.'
"So I played all positions in the infield, I'd play
outfield and I could come in and relief pitch every night -- It didn't bother my
arm."
At the plate, Daddy Wooten was a good hitter with
some pop.
"I had good power, good speed, good arm," he said.
"There was no park that we played in I couldn't hit it out of. In Pittsburgh, at
old Forbes Field, I hit one over the scoreboard in left field, which was about
75-feet high."
He doesn't know what his stats were during his
tenure with the Clowns, but Wooten has a pretty good idea.
"If I was rounding it off, I probably batted about
.310, .315 in my four years there," he said. "I hit maybe 12, 14 home runs a
year. We played a lot of local clubs who were loaded up with All-Stars -- you
were going against the best."
But the Clowns were no slouches, either. In fact,
Wooten says he can only remember the team losing four times -- in four years.
"We had a good team ourselves, I'd say it would
have been a good Double-A or Triple-A ballclub," Wooten says. "We had some
outstanding ballplayers."
Managing Satch During his final two years with the Clowns, Daddy
Wooten served as player/manager of the team.
In his first season of managing, one of the biggest
names in baseball hooked on with the Clowns -- ageless pitcher Satchel Paige.
The Hall of Famer's birthday is often listed as
July 7, 1906 -- which would have made Paige 61 (the age Wooten is now) in 1967
-- but no one really knew for sure.
Not even Daddy Wooten.
"I asked him one time, 'Satch, how old are you?'
And he said, 'I'm a good way from 100, but I'm older than 75,'" Wooten recalls.
"He wouldn't tell me."
But no matter how old Paige was, the man could
still play.
"He could still throw the ball," Daddy Wooten said.
"We were at old Comiskey Park and he told me to get behind the plate and a
photographer was standing behind me. He was throwing strikes on the corner and
the man said, 'Can you believe his eyesight is that good to see this far?' I
said, 'That old man never ceases to amaze me.'
"He had a pretty good fastball still, he could
throw the scrooge and he showed that hesitation pitch he was famous for. And he
was very knowledgeable about the game, he'd try to help you -- and that was the
good thing about him."
Satch had respect for his young manager, too.
"My problem was they were saying I wasn't tall
enough," Wooten said. "Matter of fact, Satch told me one time, 'I'll tell you
what, if you had been about 6-feet with your power, your speed and your arm,
there's no way in the world you'd be out here, you'd be gone. The only thing you
weren't gifted with was height."
Paige even compared Wooten with another Negro
League legend and a Hall of Famer.
"Another time, Satch and I were sitting on the bus,
he took his teeth out and he said, 'Boy, let me tell you something, you are
built about like Josh Gibson was,'" Wooten says. "He said, 'But you ain't going
to hit as hard as he did.'"
Living on peanut butter and jelly
Hubert Wooten didn't play for the money, which was
a good thing.
"You weren't making any money," he says. "But you
weren't thinking about money. All you were thinking about was catching the eye
of some scout.
"After every two weeks, you got paid. Depending on
what type of ballplayer you were, some would get $150, some $250, something like
that."
That type of money didn't lend itself to fine
dining and upscale restaurants.
"You see, during that time, you got meal money,
perhaps 15 dollars, and made it last all week," Wooten says. "The guys would get
together and get some bologna and peanut butter and jelly. People don't
understand now, but that bologna and peanut butter and jelly was pretty good
back then."
Where the Clowns bedded down at night was also, at
times, an adventure. The things we went through during that time, especially in
the South, the blacks couldn't stay uptown," Wooten recalls. "One time in
Montgomery, Alabama, we slept in a funeral home. Can you believe that? Some
places in Mississippi, Georgia, we'd stay with well-to-do black people."
But he wouldn't trade any of it. "It was tough, but
it was an enjoyable life. I don't think $2 million could have carried me to the
places I went, the things I did and the people I met. "Would I do it again? Sure
I would, I'd go right back out there -- hoping."
Kannapolis man recalls seasons in Negro Leagues
 Courtesy of the SALISBURY POST REMEMBERING THE GLORY DAYS: Kannapolis resident Willie Sheelor played baseball in the Negro American League some 50 years ago. KANNAPOLIS — Willie Sheelor just can’t help but
smile when he talks about opening the mailbox and finding someone has written
asking for his autograph or sent him a baseball to sign.
“Makes me feel like I’m important,” he says,
chuckling. “Makes me feel good.”
Sheelor, a 73-year-old Kannapolis native, and men
like him have gained importance the past several years as baseball and black
America look to reclaim a once-neglected piece of their shared
heritage.
Sheelor played four seasons — four glorious,
sun-drenched summers — for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League.
From 1952 to 1955, he started at second base for one of the last all-black teams
in the last all-black league.
Though his playing days came after the heyday of
the Negro Leagues, after Jackie Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers and
broke down organized baseball’s color barrier, the memories lack no luster for
Sheelor.
“We played it because we loved it,” he said
recently at his home on Beaumont Avenue in the Little Texas
Community.
Sheelor graduated from high school in 1947, the
same year Robinson became the first black player to take the field for a Major
League Baseball team.
Robinson’s success opened the dugout for other
black players in the mainstream game, signaling the end of Jim Crow baseball,
and with it the eventual demise of organized blacks-only teams.
The once-thriving and profitable Negro Leagues,
which at their height included American and National leagues with teams all over
the country, immediately felt the blow.
Attendance dwindled as Major League teams siphoned
off talent from the Negro Leagues and black fans started following the on-field
exploits of Robinson and those who followed him.
By the early 1950s, most Negro Leagues teams had
batted around for the final time, leaving a handful to play in a reorganized
American Negro League.
For half a century, blacks played in the shadow of
organized white baseball.
Teams with names like the Kansas City Monarchs, the
Baltimore Elite Giants and the Homestead Grays, as well as the Memphis Red Sox
and the Birmingham Black Barons, could count on loyal and proud
fans.
For 30 years, they had their own leagues, their own
World Series, their own All-Star Games.
Sheelor was born in a section of Kannapolis known
then as “Georgia Town.” His father labored at Cannon Mills, the textile giant
that built the mill village, and his mother cleaned houses.
Sheelor played basketball at Carver High, the black
high school in the segregated system, but Carver didn’t have a baseball team. So
he got his hardball experience in local sandlot games.
After graduation, he followed his father to the
mill, where for decades just about any young Kannapolis man who wanted to could
find work. He spent his days loading boxes onto trucks in the shipping
department.
Life wasn’t all work, though. Sheelor joined an
amateur baseball league with teams in Concord, Charlotte and other area towns
that played on Saturdays. He stayed in that league until the summer of
1952.
A scout walked up to Sheelor after a game in
Kannapolis that year and asked if he’d like to play professional ball.
“He just asked me would I be interested in leaving
home and playing for the Memphis Red Sox,” Sheelor recalled. “And I hadn’t heard
of no Memphis Red Sox at the time.”
He’d never been away from home, either. The offer
to travel, getting paid to do something he loved, sounded pretty
good.
“I told him I would if my mother agreed to it,” he
said.
She said yes, and the next day the scout drove
Sheelor to Memphis, Tenn., to join his new team.
Sheelor arrived at the Memphis ball park in April,
about a month after the season started, and he played the following
day.
Six weeks later, he took over as the team’s
starting second baseman.
Summers in the Negro Leagues were busy. The team
played almost every day during the March-to-September season and rarely stayed
in any town more than a day. After games, the players loaded up on the team
bus.
“Sometimes we had to ride all night to get to the
next town where we played,”Sheelor said. “I really enjoyed it, though, seeing
different towns, how different people lived.”
Before games, the team would ride around town in
its bus advertising that day’s contest.
Many teams had their own ballparks, while some
shared fields with white minor-league teams, Sheelor said. A black doctor owned
the Red Sox, who their own stadium, and a nice one, he said.
Some teams weren’t so fortunate. Sheelor remembers
playing in some parks where only a low-lying wire fence marked the end of the
outfield, a hazard for players chasing long fly balls.
Pulling into a new town, the team would stay in a
boarding house because most motels wouldn’t rent rooms to blacks. Most gasoline
stations where they fueled the bus wouldn’t let them use the restrooms,
either.
“A lot of times, we had to stop on the side of the
road and hit the woods,” Sheelor said.
But Sheelor says he doesn’t recall much more about
the racism he and other black players faced, doesn’t really care to. He
remembers the game, mostly, and the feeling of being a hero, at least to some.
“It seemed like people respected you more,” as a professional ballplayer.
Sheelor doesn’t know if any records of his
statistics still exist. A resurgence in interest in the Negro Leagues has hit
hurdles because of poor record-keeping.
And though he can’t remember his pay exactly, he
knows it was more than he made working in the mill, where he returned to the
loading dock during the off-season.
But it wasn’t just the money that kept Sheelor’s
mind on Memphis during those winter months hefting heavy boxes. It was
baseball.
“I couldn’t wait ’til the summer to go back,” he
said.
Sheelor didn’t immediately return home after each
regular season. He joined teammates and other black players on barnstorming
tours.
A tradition in the Negro Leagues, barnstorming
allowed players the chance to make extra money by staging exhibitions and
splitting the gate receipts with organizers.
Before integration, teams of black all-stars would
travel the country playing white all-star squads. By the time Sheelor broke in,
that had ended and only black major leaguers returned for the
exhibitions.
During those tours Sheelor played against a young
outfielder named Willie Mays, who starred for the New York and San Francisco
Giants and is enshrined in the Baseball of Hall of Fame.
Mays reigned on the base paths, Sheelor
said.
“He stole bases ’bout all the time, and he could
hit the ball good,” he recalls. “We always tried to trick him — pitch out and
catch him off base — but we never could.”
Sheelor also wonders at the memory of a young Hank
Aaron, who played for the Negro Leagues’ Indianapolis Clowns before moving on to
the Milwaukee Braves of the National League.
Aaron already displayed the prowess in the batter’s
box that he’d use to hit 755 home runs and set the all-time career record in the
Major Leagues.
“He hit the ball out of the park two or three times
a game,” Sheelor said. “He was something, I tell you.”
Not all the eventual all-stars Sheelor knew gained
their fame at home plate or in the field. A young man named Charley Pride
pitched two years for Memphis and roomed with Sheelor for a season.
Sheelor remembers Pride, now a country-music icon,
bringing his guitar on the bus and leading the entertainment between towns. He
also recalls him as a tough, determined ballplayer.
“If a team beat him today, he’d be wanting to pitch
the next day; he didn’t give up,” Sheelor said. “He always told us he was going
to be somebody, and it happened.”
It’s not hard to imagine Sheelor patrolling his
turf between first base and second, diving to rob a batter of a sure single or
snatching up a sharply hit ground ball and starting a double play.
Though gray hair wanders out from beneath his cap
and a gray mustache sneaks off to the corners of his mouth, he still moves
easily on his wiry second-baseman’s frame.
And he still smiles easily, and laughs often, when
talking about his diamond days.
His professional baseball career ended after the
1955 season, but it was effectively over more than a year earlier. In 1954,
Sheelor suffered a broken leg sliding into home plate in the eighth inning of
mid-season game.
Sheelor scored the winning run but collided with
the opposing team’s catcher, who blocked the plate as hard as he could. Sheelor
spent the rest of the season in Kannapolis, recovering.
During that time, he met Helen, who would become
his wife. When he returned to Memphis the next summer, the leg bothered him all
season, and it still hurts sometimes.
After the ’55 season, he came back to Kannapolis
for good. He married Helen, they had three sons and he worked for Cannon Mills
for another 37 years.
Sheelor came along late in the game, after famed
Negro Leagues pitcher Satchel Paige became the oldest rookie ever in Major
League Baseball, after black stars like Roy Campanella and Ernie Banks made the
leap into the mainstream.
At 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds, he wasn’t much of a
long-ball threat. And though he could field with the best of them, he says, the
major league scouts were looking for power hitters and great
pitchers.
If he has one regret, it’s that he never got the
chance to compete against some of those guys and against white players. He would
“love to have played against the best.”
Still, he adds, what he didn’t do doesn’t tarnish
the few summers he got paid to do something he would have done for
free.
And on reflection, he says, “I love the game ...
Back then, I was just glad to play.”
 Bobo Nate Smalls
When he was a young boy, Nate Smalls
collected and traded cards of famous athletes. Now, he has his own card —
complete with a photo of him in his Indianapolis Clowns uniform and a short
biography. “I never thought I’d have my own card,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “I never thought I’d create one for myself — not in a million years, not in a million years.” The autographed cards show Smalls in uniform. On back, the card mentions that Smalls, a native of Savannah, Ga., won 30 games in three consecutive years and played in more games than any other Indy Clowns player. And he was the only person to throw four baseballs with one hand to four people at the same time. Smalls played with the Clowns — a barnstorming team, similar to the Harlem Globetrotters — from 1965 to 1986. Smalls said when he first joined the Clowns, “I was as serious as I could be.” But when the top entertainer, Birmingham Sam, quit in 1966, Smalls took on his nickname, BoBo, and became the top entertainer. At 59 years old, he said, “I’m the baby of the bunch.” Smalls came up with the idea of the cards when he realized the older Negro Baseball League players were dying. “All these guys were passing away, but not leaving anything back for the people to look at,” he said. “If anything happens (to me), people can say, ‘This is what he did when he played with the Clowns.’ “I wanted to leave something for people to remember me by.” He went to Speedy’s Quick Print, where he and a worker came up with the design. The finished product looks like a trading card, but people will need to get it laminated. For now, he’s giving the cards away, but later he might sell them for a small fee. Another exciting development for Smalls is that Terry Carrell and Derrick Anderson with the University of Illinois have interviewed him for a book they’re doing about the Negro Baseball League. Black baseball ended in 1952, but the Clowns continued until 1986. The book has to be called “The Last One,” Smalls said, because the Clowns were the last league, and he’s the last black barnstorming player. Also, he has incorporated his business, which promotes himself as a speaker and other activities, as The Last One, Inc. “If anyone’s going to tell the last story, it’s going to be me,” he said. After the book comes out, there’s the possibility of a movie and talk shows, he said. He hopes Danville youth get hold of a BoBo trading card so they have a part of history, he said. Smalls, who helps coach at Danville High School and mentors at the Boys & Girls Club, also is interested in steering young people along the right path. Larry Lillard, his friend and agent, has traveled with Smalls across the country when he’s appeared at schools. “He’s always pushing that these kids need to get their lives in order,” he said, adding that Smalls liked to “have his fun” when he was a teenager. But now, Lillard said, Smalls is pushing to get the drug issue under control. “They’re selling poison to our people,” he said. |
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
Copyright: 1998-2008 |