'The Bob'

In 1960, as the civil rights movement intensified in his native United States, Bob Turner went from having the happiest moment of his life to fearing for the safety of his young interracial family in the Canadian community they called home. 

Early that year, a beaming Turner and his wife Dorris were celebrated in a gathering of friends and colleagues in Cornwall, Ont., an eastern Ontario mill town on the U.S. border.

Turner was a former baseball player from New Jersey whose early exposure to professional sports was in strictly segregated baseball. In Cornwall, he'd brought added life to the citys sports and recreation scene, intent on bringing together children of all ages, races and religions.

It is hard to hold back the tears of happiness, Turner told his Cornwall admirers that January. This token you have given me I consider the greatest tribute I ever had.

Only a few months later, however, the Turners went on vacation after he came under threat including a night he said his car was forced off the road.

My family is just about shot, Turner said during the scandal, now mostly forgotten but feared at the time as Cornwalls undoing as The Friendly City. 

Many in Cornwall today know about Bob Turner, or at least the arena that kept his name in the public eye for decades until it was torn down in 2013. 

But few people know the man and his larger story, including what Turner and his family went through. 

Turner was one of the first Black men to serve as a recreational director in the province, working in resoundingly white Ontario communities during a pivotal period in North American race relations.

He's a hero in so many ways, said Lee Theodore, a Black entrepreneur living in Cornwall. [He was] just being human in a time when that aspect of his humanity could be criticized, could be ridiculed, could be a source of danger. 

And yet despite those things, he chose to live publicly.

As a small group in Cornwall pushes for a new memorial to reflect Turners full legacy, CBC has spoken to over two dozen people including Turners two daughters, his coworkers, his friends, the kids he tutored, current Black Cornwall residents hes inspired and experts in baseball history to piece together his deeper story. 

The portrait that emerges is of a man who quietly helped break the barriers of his time, on and off the field, and an unshakeable marriage shattered only by Turners tragically premature death. 

Most kids can only dream of breaking into professional sports. Bob Turner did it before graduating from high school. 

In 1944, when he was only 17, Turner played several games with the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League (NNL). 

Considered outside organized baseball (which is why Turners time in the league isnt listed on his Sporting News Baseball Player Contract Card, according to MLB historian John Thorn), the NNL was one a series of leagues formed because of the ban against Black players in Major League Baseball.

How Turner met Effa Manley, a civil rights leader who co-owned and operated the Newark Eagles, remains one of his lifes mysteries. But super young recruits were not uncommon.

Turners teenage tryout in the same league that produced such MLB Hall of Famers as Satchel Paige, Ray Dandridge and Jackie Robinson the man who broke the major league colour barrier was the greatest thrill, especially with his parents there to watch his first game, Turner recounted later.

Dubbed by his yearbook the foremost man in the world of sports," Turner graduated in 1945 and went to New York University (NYU) where his three college years overlapped with a major inflection point for baseball.

In 1945, Robinson was signed to play on a Brooklyn Dodgers farm team. Two years after that, the Dodgers added Robinson to their major league roster, making him the first Black man in the modern game to share the field with white MLB cohorts.

Turner had big-league hopes too. Asked by a promoter to name his ambition in baseball, Turner said he wanted to reach the majors if given the chance.

But while he was reportedly scouted by the Dodgers, and the Chicago White Sox were also said to have taken a look at him, Turner never made it onto a major league team.

He did play, as a catcher mostly, in a number of other leagues throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, including for the Southwest International League's California-based Porterville Comets, later renamed the Padres and remembered as the first all-Black team in the minor leagues.

When Robinsons breakthrough failed to immediately spark a wider acceptance of Black players in the majors, Turner and a wave of former Negro League athletes sought opportunities to play baseball outside America.

In Canada, Turner played for both the Regina Caps and the Carman (Manitoba) Cardinals in a league straddling the Prairies and North Dakota. 

Players here met with less adversity than in the U.S., said Layton Revel, the founder of the Center for Negro League Baseball Research. 

You could go eat in a regular restaurant, Revel said. If you were African-American and you dated a white girl here in the United States, that could get you killedor end your professional baseball career.

Most of those American players eventually returned south of the border.

But Turner stayed in Canada. Hed fallen in love with an Ontario girl.

Bob Turner met Dorris Greenham in Brockville, Ont., in the summer of 1950. He was there to play ball; she was working in the area. 

The pair struck up a romance and, before the summer was over, married in nearby Athens, Greenhams rural hometown of fewer than 900 people. 

Turner was only the second Black person Greenham had ever seen, the first being a chauffeur, according to Phyllis Turner, the couples first daughter.

The fastball marriage did not initially sit well with some family members, Phyllis and her younger sister Joy Kinnear said. 

They got over it, Phyllis said. 

The Turner marriage is just one of the reasons their story resonates with Sen. Bernadette Clement, Cornwalls former mayor.

The first Black woman to serve as a mayor in Ontario, Clement is the child of interracial parents who married in 1964. Some in her family didnt immediately greet that union warmly either, she said.

My parents were courageous and brave, and it was difficult for them, Clement said.

For me, Bob Turner it's personal.

The Turners honeymoon phase soon faced another obstacle: the Korean War. 

A month after the wedding, Turner was drafted into the United States Army. He avoided getting sent abroad, having been promptly granted an honourable discharge thanks to a pre-existing disability. 

Greenham, whod never ventured any farther afield than Toronto, joined the newly-freed Turner in Mexico, California and other parts of the U.S during his final years in baseball.

The 12 years she spent with Turner were the best years of her life, Phyllis recalled her mother saying. 

She adored him, absolutely adored him.

But the couples travels also reflected tensions in Turners home country. 

Some states still had laws against interracial marriage, which wouldnt gain legal protection until the U.S. Supreme Courts landmark Loving vs. Virginia ruling in 1967.   

In one state, no one would rent the couple a room, so they stayed at a brothel. 

Another time, when the couple met at a southern airport, Greenham went to hug Turner. He pushed her towards another player who was paler, Phyllis said. 

She was like, what the hell's going on? she said. Daddy [later] explained that whatever state they were in, her just even hugging him would have been illegal.

By 1953, Greenham had grown tired of the road and wanted Turner to settle down, said Phyllis, who was born that same year. The couple also felt they couldnt raise interracial children in the States at that time.

So the next year, the family closed the book on Turners sports career and started a new chapter in Colborne, Ont. 

The village of under 1,200 people, then gripped with a local case of juvenile delinquency, was looking for a recreation director to keep kids in line. Enter Turner, who had majored in physical education at NYU.

Get a kid interested in a game and we wont find time for trouble, Turner told the Toronto Star a year into his new job.

Turner played for Colborne's Dodgers team and coached area youngsters in baseball. 

But with Greenhams help, Turner also oversaw a flurry of bingos, carnivals, teen dances and arts and crafts classes in a community that, until then, had basically nothing for youth to do, according to resident John Hill.

It was like opening up a theme park in town, Hill said. 

Talk to anyone from Colborne and the first thing theyll likely mention about Turner is the sizeable trumpet band and baton group he launched.

You know, 75-, 80-year-old women are [still] talking about when they starred," said Mandy Martin, the mayor of the Township of Crahame, which includes Colborne. 

Turner even tried raising over $45,000 (in todays dollars) to fly the group to California so they could participate in the Rose Parade. But he couldnt get the plan off the ground. 

Phyllis was told one family was fearful of letting more than one of their kids get on a plane in case something happened.

Arlis Teal, who was a teenaged member of ensemble, said some Colborne residents simply opposed Turner because he was Black. 

They couldn't quite understand why this white woman would marry a Black guy, Teal says. Hill, too, remembers his mother saying some people didn't like it.

Mom said [my dad] was almost sick, he was so upset, Phyllis recalled of the unrealized trip. 

Gord McDonald, one of the kids Turner coached in baseball, said his family made the Turners more than welcome in their house. 

When Joy was born in 1956, she was named after another local family friend, Joy Gifford. 

I can hear him laugh and clap his hands, Gifford says of Turners easygoing nature. 

And Dorris? She told me she married the man she loved, MacDonalds wife Carol says. 

Hill was shaken when he learned in 1958 that Turner was leaving Colborne to carry on his recreation work 300 kilometres away in Cornwall.

It was the 1950s and there [were] a lot of racial problems in the United States, Hill said. 

But in Colborne, with [us] having the ability to interact with this very impressive Black man, I think it dissolved any idea of [racial] inferiority for a whole generation of youth.

The Turners also considered moving to Chatham, Ont., but racial tensions there kept them away.

Mom and dad just weren't interested in taking on the battle, Phyllis said.

In Cornwall, Turner began working for a blue-collar city whose population had ballooned thanks to the recent expansion of its boundaries, making it more than 30 times the size of Colborne.

Just like Colborne, it was then a largely white community, one whose flagship newspaper, the Standard-Freeholder, regularly carried reports about the violence and discrimination faced by Black people in America. 

Joy and Phyllis remember only a few other Black people living in Cornwall when they were growing up.

Bernice Charlebois, Turners first secretary, recalled blurting out but youre Black! when she met her new boss. 

He laughed that hearty laugh of his and said, Yeah, I'm Black, Charlebois said.

He still hired me, she added, chuckling in embarrassment. Such a nice man.

Turner was easy to like, Charlebois and other colleagues said. Turner, in turn, said he enjoyed the best co-operation in Cornwall in all my seven years in the field of recreation.

Turners tenure saw the launch of Cornwalls minor baseball and hockey leagues, plus the opening of a new community centre. 

When the clock hit 5 p.m., he was outside teaching kids how to throw a ball.

Hes the grandfather of our minor sports, said Justin Towndale, Cornwalls current mayor. 

Turner reached a career high during that January 1960 Cornwall ceremony honouring his efforts.

But only a few months later, Turner showed up sweating on the doorstep of a family friend. Someone in Cornwall, he said, had run his car off the road. 

Turner had been suffering in silence for some time.    

Speaking to the shocked audience at a minor league baseball banquet in September 1960, then-mayor L.G. Archie Lavigne revealed his recreation director had received threatening phone calls for weeks.

Lavigne himself had been sent letters abusing Turner and denouncing the pairs plans for the new community centre. 

These vicious, vulgar, slanderous, cowardly, malcontent people who, for personal or political reasons, use such methods to spew out hate should stand up and be counted, Lavigne intoned.

Turner, who had asked the Standard-Freeholder not to report details of the campaign against him, told the newspaper he initially thought it might have been a drunk driver who ran him off the road.

But when I arrived home, I received a telephone call relating to the incident, he said. 

Eugene Bergeron remembers a rattled Turner coming to his fathers house that night to share what happened. 

Ill never forget that, Bergeron said. He was head of the recreation department, doing a very good job. Why would people do this to him?

At work, Turner had confided to his second secretary, Dorothy Blackburn, about his time in baseball, including how hed spend nights on a bus while the white guys could go sleep in the hotel. 

Now he was telling her about being followed home, unlisting his phone number and seeking police protection in Cornwall. 

I couldn't believe that would happen [here], Blackburn said. 

Phyllis remembers not being allowed to go outside during recess.

The family left town for a while, staying with Greeham's relatives in Athens.

Turner told the Standard-Freeholder he was debating whether to accept a job offer in another community. 

It must have been a struggle, Joy said of her parents, maintaining the strength of their relationship [and enduring] what they obviously must have endured.

Cornwall immediately recognized the reputational hit it would take if the Turners left for good. This was a community that, as Turners office helper Dave Kalil pointed out, billed itself as The Friendly City. 

Newspapers across Ontario had picked up the story of Turner being menaced. Phyllis said her family received letters of support from as far away as the west coast. 

In an editorial titled Cornwall stands to suffer from this ugly situation, the Standard-Freeholder wrote that critics resorting to the poison pen letter, the anonymous phone calls, the whispers and the backstabbing that are part of racial bigotry makes ones flesh crawl.

The pro-Turner camp quickly mobilized. Or as Cornwall historian Ian Bowering puts it: Our city fathers said, This is nonsense.

City council and local businesses formally endorsed Turner. In one of several letters to the editor, Mrs. F. A. McLean of nearby Summerstown wondered what local children would make of the situation. 

The ways of grown-ups must seem strange indeed to them, she wrote. 

Kids holding We Like Bob and This Is Not the South signs marched in front of Cornwall city hall. Andre Poirier, now 75, was among them.

Obviously it was the right thing to do, he said.

After a weeks soul-searching, Turner announced he and his family would stay in Cornwall. Our city is a mixture of many races and creeds and it is here that its true strength is found. One group is no less Cornwallites than another, he told the Standard-Freeholder.

As far as tolerance is concerned, Turner added, [some people] substitute slanderous remarks for love. We expect to influence [their thinking] by demonstrating the spirit of love toward them.

Towndale said that while what happened in the fall of 1960 was unfortunate, the response from the community was very telling.

Clement agrees. When she moved to Cornwall in 1991, decades after Turners death, there were still only an estimated 60 Black people in a city of over 40,000 residents.

But when Clement later became a city councillor and learned Turners story, it reinforced her decision to live in Cornwall.

It wasn't always easy, she said. I was counselled not to talk about the fact that I might become the first Black woman mayor. It was like, you don't need to talk about that.

For Theodore, who worked on Clements successful 2018 mayoral campaign and later co-opened Cornwalls first Caribbean restaurant, what stands out about the events of 1960 is Turners grace under fire. 

He didn't evoke any harsh sentiments, Theodore said. That's the victory for me.

The Cornwall Civic Memorial Centre opened in 1961. 

One of the few memories Joy has of her father is of him carrying her up a ladder while the centre was under construction.

After the leadup to the opening, I think both mom and dad felt the decision to come to Canada was the right one, Phyllis said. 

But Cornwall didnt enjoy its moral victory for very long.

A year and a half later, Turner walked into the hospital and never came back out alive. 

In April 1962, at the age of 35, Turner went to the Cornwall General Hospital for a minor operation. 

But something went wrong during the administration of anesthesia, and Turner slipped into a coma, according to his family and friends. 

The Standard-Freeholder reported almost daily on Turners unchanging condition, while Bergerons family kept protective watch over Turners hospital room. 

He died about one week later.

It was such a shock, Bergeron said. We didn't expect him to die. Very young man, very promising future.

Joy was five years old at the time. Phyllis, who remembers her family shielding her from media updates, was eight. 

Just upsetting and scary, Phyllis said of those days. 

Colborne's Arlis Teal was in a lunch line when she heard Turner was dead. 

I just about died along with him, she recalled. I couldn't believe he was gone.

Herb Trawick, a Black athlete who played for the Montreal Alouettes football team, went to visit Turner during his last days, as did Kalil.

Hed try to wake Bob up, Kalil said of Trawick. It didnt do much good. [Turner] just faded and faded. 

Blackburn, having cleaned out Turners desk, needed to be escorted outside when she broke down at the funeral home. 

Some in Turners family wanted more answers about the circumstances of his death. 

Greenham, who lived the rest of her life in Cornwall, was likely focused on now being a single parent, Joy says.

In his unaffected way, [Turner] was a source of inspiration to young people and his work in that direction will long be remembered, the Standard-Freeholder eulogized. 

Five days after the funeral, the city renamed the new memorial centre after Turner. Over the years, it became known simply as The Bob.

He could have gone so far, Towndale said of Turner. If things had worked out differently, he could still be a resident of the city. 

Nurse Dawn Ford had held the comatose Turners hand, telling him he was going to get better. She later befriended Greenham when she became an ardent advocate for Cornwalls accessible bus service. 

She just wouldn't give up until they got that bus going, Ford said, adding that Greenham deserves her own recognition for her contributions to Cornwall. 

Greenham died in 2011, two years before The Bob was torn down. 

Shes buried next to Turner in Athens, their graves dated five decades apart. 

She never remarried.

In the years since the recreation centre was demolished, people in the communities Turner served have been trying to keep his memory alive. 

Colbornes John Hill petitioned a local sports hall of fame to induct Turner.

In Cornwall, a display including a bust of Turners head was placed in the citys new sportsplex. 

But a group including Coun. Claude McIntosh is calling for a larger memorial or acknowledgement reflecting Turners full legacy.

It was a defining moment for the city, McIntosh said of Cornwall backing Turner in 1960. 

We were a factory town, easy to say we're a redneck city. And that really put Cornwall on the forefront of fighting racism."

Don't just tear down the building and let his name disappear," McIntosh added. 

Eugene Bergerons niece Kelly Bergeron raised money for a Turner-themed mural or statue, only to find out the city was working on its own plans, she said. 

It shouldn't be this difficult, she said, adding that Turner deserves more than a trophy case. 

Theres been talk more recently of naming an ice pad after Turner, but nothing has materialized yet. 

Turner was a baseball guy, Towndale said, and it's the kind of thing we want to do right.

Blackburn, who fears her days are numbered, hopes something comes together in her lifetime.

Whatever happens, Lee Theodore said Turners place in Cornwall history shouldnt be something only whispered about by people in the know.

It's an unfinished story, he said.

Material republished with the express permission of the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. 

Special thanks to Joy and Dale Kinnear, Phyllis Turner, Ian Bowering, Don Smith, the Cornwall Community Museum, and Postmedia.