Life&Communityy October 29, 2010

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THE COMMUNITY NEWS
w w w. c o m m u n i t y- n e w s . c o m

IT ‘TRULY IS’ TIME

Ramblin’
Reubene
Lichgates
and other Lifelong fan of Rangers franchise has high hopes for World Series
cemetery-
talk

Reubene Scott
news@community-news.com

If you should ever get

bored with your life, get in
your car and find yourself
an old cemetery. You could
start with “Lonesome Dove”
in Tarrant County, “Sandy” in
Blanco County or the strang-
est – down in Wood County
you can find “Little Hope
Cemetery,” and in Jack County
– and the last place I would
want to be buried – “Dark
Corner.”
For several years Tom and
I would go with his parents
to the “graveyard working”
at George’s Creek. It was an
annual event, I think the first
Sunday in May. It was far
from funeral like. There was a
lot of laughter as friends and
family gathered around tables
covered with great food. Some
of Papa’s family are buried
there but I don’t remember
who they were. (I am already
making plans to find them.) DOMINIC GENETTI/THE COMMUNITY NEWS
Some of those old cem- Built to house both MLB’s Washington Senators and the NFL’s Washington Redskins, RFK Stadium (D.C. Stadium 1962-1967) was home to professional base-
eteries have had a taberna- ball for 10 seasons before Senators owner Bob Short moved the team to Arlington, where they were renamed the Texas Rangers. With the exception of a few
cle there because there was exhibition games, RFK Stadium did not house a full baseball season until 2005 when the Montreal Expos moved from Canada to the United States’ capital city
no church. So there would and became the Washington Nationals. A new stadium has since been built in the district. Today, RFK Stadium hosts professional soccer along with college
be funerals, memorial ser- football.
vices, and those great “cem-
etery workings.” The thing I By Dominic Genetti No.1 on the music charts and the “You see the Washington Monument agreed to buy the team, owner Bob
The Community News
remember about those long single-season home run record set and you see all that.” Short said he would relocate. Nothing

ago events is that the graves
were scraped. There would
be no plants and certainly no
weeds. (I just figured out that
the good guys were buried
with their feet to the east and
the bad guys were laid out
north and south.)
Those early graves were
decorated with whatever they
had – broken crockery and
shells most often. (I never
found out why the wife is bur-
ied to the left of the husband.)
It never occurred to me
that a gate to a cemetery was
anything except a way to get
in, but those early graves had
a lichgate – a “corpse gate”, a
ceremonial gate with an over-
head arch. That was where
the funeral processions passed
while everyday visitors used a
small unarched gate. In Britian
the lichgate often was quite
fancy and some had gabled
roofs. There were smaller, less
elaborate grave houses and
some “grave sheds.” Some of
those graves had picket fences
around them. The grave hous-
es have mostly disappeared
now along with the lichgates.
Turn to REUBENE, page 5B
E
very pitch, every swing, every
moment of the 2010 World
Series, she won’t miss a single
second of it. In fact, you just might
hear her cries of joy if the Texas
Rangers win baseball’s champion-
ship during their first trip to the big
show for the first time in franchise
history.
A total of 39 hot Texas sum-
mers have come and gone with fans
draped in red and blue to support the
Lone Star State’s American League
ballplayers and 35 of them have all
ended with disappointment in the
final weeks of September or the early
weeks of October with nothing to
look forward to but the chances of
next year.
However, adrenaline-filled
Rangers fans across the state will
tell you that next year is now and for
Marcia Etie, it’s been a wait that has
stretched the entirety of the team’s
existence.
“All I have to say, ‘It’s time,’” Etie,
Parker County’s outreach repre-
sentative of Texas Congresswoman
Kay Granger, said referencing the
Rangers’ 2010 slogan. “I would just
have to say I’m the eternal optimist.”
The year was 1961; President
John F. Kennedy orders the Bay of
Pigs invasion in Cuba, Jimmy Dean’s
“Big Bad John” spent five weeks at
by Babe Ruth in 1927 would be
fought for and broken by his Yankee
successors. It was also the first year
that baseball expanded.
New teams were welcomed in
Anaheim with the Los Angeles
Angels and a new establishment of
Washington Senators was born after
the original team that only gave the
nation’s capital one World Series
championship in 1924 moved to
Minnesota to become the Twins.
A few years later, Etie, a native of
Alexandria, Virginia, attended her
first Senators game after holding a
fundraiser through her elementary
school.
“A friend of mine from school
and my sister and several of us put
together a family carnival to raise
money (muscular dystrophy),” she
said.
Taking part in the fundraiser
landed Etie, her sister and friends
tickets to a baseball game. The expe-
rience alone was an exciting one.
Not only to be going to a base-
ball game, but the gang was also
going to the team’s new stadium that
the Senators shared with football’s
Washington Redskins, D.C. Stadium
(later renamed RFK Stadium in
1968).
“Growing up in the D.C. area,
everything is impressive,” Etie said.
But to go to D.C. Stadium, the
first of five circular concrete mul-
tipurpose stadiums that would be
shared by MLB and NFL teams, was
“unbelievable.”
“The impression was kind of like,
almost like a giant soup bowl or
something being so circular,” Etie
recalled. “I remember Frank Howard
being such a name and knowing that
I saw him. He was the name.”
Nicknamed “The Capital
Punisher” for his powerful home
runs, Howard became the face of the
new Washington Senators franchise
that would not see a winning season
until 1969 when Hall of Famer Ted
Williams was hired as manager and
led the Senators to an 86-76, fourth
place finish, record. Howard had his
best season with Washington batting
.296 with 111 RBIs, 48 home runs
and 175 hits in 592 at-bats.
RFK Stadium also hosted the
1969 All-Star Game. The National
League won the game 9-3.
But three years later, the Senators
were gone.
“I remember a lot of my parents
and my parents’ friends talking about
it,” Etie said. “Baseball’s the American
game, this is the center of America
and we don’t have baseball now.”
By 1970, the Senators fell victim to
poor attendance, and unless someone
came along to help the nation’s game
in the nation’s capital and during the
1971 season the announcement was
made that the franchise was moving
to Arlington, Texas.
Outraged fans packed RFK
Stadium for the team’s final game
against the New York Yankees, and
spectators stormed the field collect-
ing dirt and just about anything
they could. The decision triggered
by thousands of fans forced the
Senators to forfeit.
RFK Stadium would not house
a professional baseball team for 34
years. The Montreal Expos moved to
Washington in 2005 and became the
Nationals. Etie, on the other hand,
had a drought from baseball for only
five years. In 1977, her husband took
a government job assignment in
Arlington and once again she got to
root for her team.
“Who would’ve thought moving
all this way and it’s my old team,” she
said. “It’s kind of like a whole new
opportunity.”
It wouldn’t be until 1996 when
the Rangers would make their first
postseason appearance by winning
the American League West Division.
“That was so amazing,” Etie said.
“Collectively, everyone held their
breath.”
Turn to ETIE, page 3B

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