NEW YORK – As a year comes to a close, typically retrospective stories run about the marquee names who passed away over the previous twelve months. As a result, when there's a celebrity death at year's end, it runs the risk of being eclipsed by the boldfaced names of people whose lives were lost earlier in the year. That's by no means the case for Meadowlark Lemon. The face of the Harlem Globetrotters was 83 when he died Sunday in Scottsdale, Arizona.
His passing is more than a loss to the sport of basketball. His life story speaks volumes about changes in American culture and public life that he helped to effect, as pointed out by a former teammate, who had remained a lifelong friend.
"He did what he had to do to survive," said Carl Green, 83, in an interview Monday about Lemon, who was Green's roommate during some of their global barnstorming tours.
"This was in the '50's," Green said, pointing out that for an African American man in Wilmington, North Carolina, like Meadowlark Lemon, 65 years ago, the opportunities for any fulfilling work were few and far between.
Lemon acknowledged that himself in his induction speech at the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003. "I've had a good run," he said. "I've had a great run."
Green, Lemon's friend of more than six decades, put it another way. "He did what he had to do to survive," he said.
When the two friends met, Meadowlark Lemon was a 20 year-old from the segregated South, who used his considerable physical and social skills over 24 years with the Globetrotters to pave the way for many others.
"You take [Stephen] Curry, you take Michael Jordan," said Green. "All that's the same stuff." He said that without the earliest Globetrotters, like himself and Meadowlark Lemon, blazing a trail by becoming the best players in the world when blacks were barred from playing in the NBA, the pro leagues would be nothing like they are now.
It took dedication, said Green, for those types of changes to take place, and that Lemon embodied the devotion and skill that were necessary. "As soon as we'd go to a town, he'd go to the gym," Green told PIX11 News. "Everything was about the game."
The team willingly went into war zones, behind the Iron Curtain, and, during the two dozen years that Lemon was active, they played in nearly 100 countries, many of which were nations with which the United States had strained relations.
The early, world champion Globetrotters, featuring Meadowlark Lemon and Carl Green, and then the later, crowd-wowing Globetrotters that Meadowlark captained, open doors diplomatically, athletically and culturally in ways that Lemon emphasized to Green in his last conversation with him, just days ago, on Christmas.
"'The world don't know us,'" Green said, quoting his dearly departed friend. "'The NBA doesn't give us credit.' I swear to God that's what he said to me.'"
