HAWKINS HAD A TOUGH CALL : ROBINSON INSPIRED N.D. CAREER.

Byline: Chicago Tribune 

Tommy Hawkins had a decision to make in the spring of 1955. He had finished an exceptional basketball career at Parker High School as Chicago's best player and several colleges were after him.

His first visit was to Notre Dame, where he found the beauty of the campus awe-inspiring and the faculty and staff warm and welcoming, the student body . . . white. Overwhelmingly white.

Hawkins struggled with his feelings. He wanted to go to Notre Dame, even though he would be the only African-American on the basketball team, one of only 10 on campus. Friends told him those proportions were a recipe for failure. But Hawkins kept recalling an April day on the South Side eight years before, when his mother, Juanita, had summoned him and his friends from playing, made them hush up and sit still. She told them something enormous was about to happen.

``I think I can paraphrase it, God rest her soul,'' Hawkins said. ``She told us Jackie Robinson was going to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers and this would open doors for young black kids like us. That if he was successful, others would come behind him.''

Hawkins followed his intuition and went to South Bend. He eventually would meet Robinson and come to know his family. Hawkins' successful passage through Notre Dame led to a 10-year professional basketball career, a stint in the broadcast booth and, finally, his current position as vice president for communications of the Dodgers, Robinson's team.

All because of a decision made with borrowed courage.

It is 50 years since Robinson broke in, 25 since he died. Hawkins lost his mother a little less than a year ago. Reflecting on the crossroads where he found himself in 1955, seeing himself as a high school senior again, teetering between worlds, Hawkins pauses a long time. His throat constricts and his voice drops to a whisper.

``That's when the Jackie thing tapped in,'' Hawkins said. ``Jackie had opened the door and I had to step through.''

Hawkins deeply regrets baseball's demise in the inner city, which, he believes, springs from the deterioration of the black family. Basketball thrives in part because it is cheap and can be practiced alone. Baseball can't sprout through cracks like weeds in asphalt. It needs space, other bodies, adults to promote and teach it.

``The black male has not taken the role within the community that should be taken,'' Hawkins said. ``It takes an investment of time. A lot of people say blacks don't have that time, that it's survival out there, working for a living. But blacks have to make that time.''

Last May, the forces that intertwined in Hawkins' life back in 1955 came together again one last time. He was in Los Angeles, on his way to deliver a luncheon speech to local students who had won scholarships from the Jackie Robinson Foundation, when he received a long-distance phone call. His mother, weakened by cancer and a series of strokes, had passed away in Chicago at age 87.

``I thought, do I call and tell them I can't come, or would Mom want me to suck it up?'' Hawkins said. ``I decided to go, and not to tell anyone. I didn't want to inject myself.''

Hawkins stood up before 150 kids and parents and VIPs, including Robinson's widow, and sailed through about three-quarters of his prepared remarks.

``Then I got to the part where I was trying to convey to them what my mother had conveyed to me when I was 9, and I completely broke up,'' he said.

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Photo

Photo: Tommy Hawkins, now an executive with the Dodgers, had a successful 10-year career in the NBA.