by Staff Report - 11 months ago in Feel Good -This post is a reprint of the article by the Scioto County Daily News. Click here to read the entire article.
Born just after the end of WWII, Albert “Scoop” Oliver, Jr. grew up during the 1950s in a Rivertown on the banks of the mighty Ohio.
His great grandfather was a slave in Union Springs, Alabama and so his surname is from a slave owner.
His ancestors were brought to the US on slave ships of which there is some record. His grandfather, Issac, moved to Portsmouth, Ohio from the south bringing his wife, Caroline, and son Albert Sr., looking for a better way of life and work.
The grandfather would find work at a railroad Co. called Southern Ohio Railroad which would grow to be the biggest railroad yard East of the Mississippi River under Norfolk and Western Railway.
His father would grow into a sturdy man of athletic talent which would portend for his son becoming a professional athlete.
Albert Sr. would play basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters and was an alternate to the great Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Albert Sr. would die at age 54 from breathing brick dust where he worked in a brickyard in Portsmouth.
Silicosis would take his life and he died the day young Al was called up to the Pirates in 1968. He got to see his son play in one professional game in Gastonia, NC when Al was in the minor leagues with the Pirates.
Al was the oldest of 3 children born to Albert Senior and Sallie Jane Chambers, who was from Ripley, Ohio.
The young Ms. Chambers was born into a black family moving north during or after the Civil War and settled into the Rivertown of Ripley, which was connected to the Underground Railroad and freedom for slaves escaping north with the help of John Rankin.
Al was the oldest, Paula the middle child, and Jim the youngest. All are gone now, with Paula passing in March of 2019, and Al’s mother dying from diabetes when he was 11 years old in the mid-1950s. His mother always told young Al he was going to be a ballplayer. She was right.
Portsmouth was an industrial town of steel mills, brickyards, shoe factories, and a society where blacks were segregated in school and housing...