This Pirates pitcher had family ties to Martin Luther King Jr.
A great uncle of Watson's, Tom Offenburger, was an aide to MLK and a spokesperson for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference starting in 1966.
By
Dave Brown
•
2 min read
In 1966, Tom Offenburger quit his job with U.S. News and World Report after 10 years there in order join the civil rights movement on the front lines. As the director of information for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, his new bosses were none other than Rev. Martin Luther King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy. Offenburger had decided that year, not long after interviewing both men at a news event, that he could be doing more to help people who needed it.
Pittsburgh Pirates left-hander Tony Watson, a great nephew of Offenburger's, marveled at his relative's place behind the scenes of history. Reporter Stephen J. Nesbitt of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette examined Offenburger's life and Watson's family's connection to MLK on his national holiday Monday:
Mr. Offenburger isn't often counted among the central figures of the civil-rights movement, but he played a key supporting role, one his sister Beverly Watson — Mr. Watson’s grandmother — and brother Chuck Offenburger still are eager to explain. Both still live in Iowa, not far from where they grew up.
"Tom's strategy was always to explain the civil-rights movement’s message in terms that white people back home in Shenandoah, Iowa, would understand," said Chuck Offenburger, 68, a former longtime columnist for the Des Moines Register. "If they could understand what the civil-rights leaders were doing, they would support it, and they would stand with them. If they understood."
[...]
Mr. Watson never saw his great-uncle’s name in U.S. history textbooks as a high schooler in Grimes, Iowa, but he has heard the stories, and marveled.
"It's pretty crazy when you really step back and grasp that he was right there," Mr. Watson said, "right on the ground floor."
The Offenburger boys are brothers to Watson's paternal grandmother, Beverly Watson. The family has loved baseball (even before Tony got to playing it), though nobody was especially good at until Watson came along. Tom Offenburger was described as "a baseball zealot" who would have been especially proud of his great-nephew. Tony Watson was just a month old when his great uncle died at age 52 after undergoing surgery to replace two heart valves.
Offenburger also loved the Braves, to the point that Andrew Young -- another legendary civil rights leader for and with whom Offenburger had worked -- gave him updates on the team's progress during hospital visits. The Braves reached the playoffs later that season, after Offenburger had died.
When he fell into a coma, Offenburger was visited often at Emory University Hospital by Mr. Young, then mayor of Atlanta, who would pat him on arm and say, “Tom, the Braves won tonight.”
“He was getting baseball reports ’til the end,” Chuck Offenburger said.
