Early Life
Six months after Clendenon was born in Neosho, Missouri, his father, Claude, died from leukemia. Claude Clendenon was a mathematics and psychology professor and chairman of the mathematics department at Langston University, an all-black school in Langston, Oklahoma. Clendenon's mother, Helen, demanded high academic achievement from her son. When he was only six years old, Clendenon's mother married former Negro Leagues baseball player Nish Williams. In addition to academic excellence, Clendenon's new stepfather decided he was going to make his stepson into a baseball player. Williams served as a coach on virtually every baseball team that Clendenon played on, including his college team at Atlanta's Morehouse College, and his semi-pro career with the Atlanta Black Crackers. Along with Williams, Clendenon also received pointers from some of the players Williams knew from the Negro Leagues, including Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe.
Read more about this topic: Donn Clendenon
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“It is so very late that we
May call it early by and by. Good night.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“But every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. I do not make it; I arrive there, and behold what was there already. I make! O no! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amazement, before the first opening to me of this august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)