Drew "Lefty" Rader

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Wouldn’t it be great to travel back in time to find out the missing part of a story? A case in point involves "Lefty" Rader, a local baseball star, whose 1921 foray into the major leagues lasted two innings of one game.

"Lefty" was born Drew Leon Rader in 1901 to parents James Benjamin Franklin Rader and Ida May Vanatta Rader of Elmira. His father was a fire fighter then worked as an engineer for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Rader was the couple's only child. They lived on Jefferson Street, later moving to Pennsylvania Avenue to live above the Red Brick Food Mart, a small neighborhood grocery they owned and operated. 

Former Red Brick Food Mart

Young  Rader attended Grammar School Number 9 and finished 8^th grade in 1914. He entered Elmira Free Academy that fall. In the EFA yearbook for 1920, it notes that senior Rader was “slow and steady” in his academic pursuits, which may account for why he shows up as a sophomore in the 1916, 1917, and 1918 yearbooks. He graduated when he was 20 years old in 1920.

Grammar School, No. 9

A 21^st century lens suggests World War I, the 1918 flu pandemic, or lack of academic skills may have slowed his progress, but there’s no evidence for this. There is evidence that he had athletic and management skills. As a sophomore, Rader played on, and was team captain, for the varsity basketball team, something he repeated as a junior when the team had a championship season. As a sophomore, junior, and senior, he competed in the high jump for the track team. As a junior he was manager for the varsity baseball team and served on the school’s Athletic Council. And in his senior year, in addition to athletics, Rader served on the Athletic Council, sang second tenor in the Senior Glee club, and helped organize the Senior Reception, a large formal event. Outside of school he was Captain of Company B 10^th regiment Military training commission. The wide range of his activities looks familiar to any current student applying to college. The description next to his senior portrait says that despite taking his time with academics “(h)e intends, however, to go to college…” which he did.  He enrolled and graduated from Syracuse University. So if Rader was the baseball manager, but didn't play for the school’s baseball team how was it he earned a berth as a pitcher for the 1921 Pittsburgh Pirates?

Apparently Rader showed such athletic promise and pitching prowess, he'd been been recruited and played for the Arctic League, a local semi-pro team. Articles in the Elmira Star Gazette praised his pitching, cool headedness, and overall potential for success in the game. The reporter also wrote of comments his father made that nothing would interfere with his son’s college aspirations.

Rader was 6’ 2” and 185 lbs.  Described as “husky” for his time, it was his left-handed pitching that earned him his nickname. Crowds would gather to watch him pitch. It was also his powerful southpaw style that brought in major league recruiters. Impressed, they offered Rader a spot on the 1921 Pittsburgh Pirates team. The 1921 season was notable for another reason. It was the year professional games were broadcast using the new medium of radio, and the  Pirates' games were among the first to hit the airwaves. 

When the twenty-year old joined the team, he proved in practice he could hit and throw with both hands. Things looked very promising. On July 18^th, 1921, Rader made his debut in the seventh inning of a game against the New York Giants. He gave up two hits but kept the Giants scoreless. The Pirates went on to win the game that night. Later, two of his teammates and two of his opponents from that game were inducted into the Hall of Fame. In October the Giants won the 1921 World Series against the New York Yankees.

In February of 1922, Rader was traded to the Minneapolis Millers, a minor league team for “more schooling.” He never played for Millers, apparently unhappy with how he was treated. The feeling must have been mutual since he was placed on a voluntary retired list that May. He approached the Arctics about playing in Elmira again, but was turned down by the manager when his salary request was deemed “too high.”

In the fall of 1921 Rader entered Syracuse University. His affiliation with a professional team however came with restrictions. He was prohibited to play with the university baseball team. He studied business administration, was active in the Square and Compass club, manager of the Boar’s Head Dramatic Society, and a member of Beta Theta Pi, an honorary accounting fraternity. When he was a junior he was appointed team manager. 

Rader graduated from Syracuse in 1926 and in 1931, he married twenty-six year old Annette J. Cullen from a suburb of New York City. Rader worked for the New York Telephone Company and they lived in Rockville Center, on Long Island, NY. The last reference to him playing ball shows up in a small article that mentions him playing for the 1931 Red Stars, a team sponsored by Macy’s. 

Here the trail ends. Rader died in 1975 with no obituary printed in the newspapers. An online search brings up a picture of him wearing a Pirates ball cap. This picture was added just a few years ago.

What circumstances stopped him from excelling as a ball player? Was he able to pursue his interests in managing and leadership the rest of his life? And what advice would he give to young players today? One can only dream.

More to the Story

by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

We have a photograph in our Bank Gallery showing two young Elmira men. George Brooks is seated on the left, and his younger brother Edward is on the right. At the bottom of the photo is a handwritten note that both graduated in 1886. Our museum label says that Edward Ulysses Anderson Brooks, the younger brother, is considered the first African American to graduate from Cornell University. Impressive, but there’s more to his story.

  

Brooks brothers George F. and Edward U.A.

In the late 1860s, the Brooks family left Washington D.C. Born into slavery, the Brooks parents were part of a new wave of hopeful black settlers relocating north to offer their children better lives. When they arrived in Elmira, the family consisted of four people: husband George, his wife Fanny, their daughter Nancy and son George F., the older brother seen in the photograph. 

The family first lived in a boarding house on Dickinson Street, then moved to a house on Clinton Street where they continued to live for many years. Mrs. Brooks contributed to the family income by offering laundry services out of their home. Mr. Brooks, when he could find employment, worked in nearby factories, or for construction companies doing physical labor. In 1872, their second son Edward was born. The couple eventually had eight other children, but we only have evidence that George and Edward survived.

It’s hard to say exactly when the photo was taken. One clue is what Edward was wearing. In the early 1880s, boys commonly wore shorts like these until eight or nine years old. This suggests the handwritten note refers to Edward’s graduation from primary school, at nine. When Edward was fifteen, his father died. George Brooks, aged 54 years old, was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in December 1887. Edward continued his schooling and graduated from Elmira Free Academy two years after his father died.

Edward U.A. Brooks, E.F.A. graduate 1889

In 1890, he won a competitive scholarship to attend nearby Cornell University. With that, Edward became one of a handful of African American Cornellians, among an enrollment of over four hundred students.

Cornell was founded in 1865 to offer students, regardless of religion or race, a coeducational, non-sectarian education. Unlike many universities, it meant Cornell would admit women and people of color. In practice, there were actually few women or students of color at that time. Records show it took eight years before the first woman graduated from Cornell, and five years after that for the first male black Cuban student to graduate. Edward is credited with being the University’s first African American graduate. This was an achievement he earned in just two years. Records identify five African American students attending or graduating from Cornell between the years 1889 and 1892. Who knows what their true college experience was like, they must have had more than Ithaca's steep hills to navigate. However in 1892, Edward completed his undergraduate studies and two years later earned his Master’s in law.

As a law student, Edward U.A. Brooks was one of Cornell’s early graduates. The law college had joined the university in 1887, twenty-two years after the university was founded. Edward was active on campus. He served as a judge for Cornell’s Moot Court to evaluate his fellow law students; was a member of Cornell’s cadet band; founded the Literary Union Club, a club to appeal to ‘young colored people’ in Ithaca; and was a member of the AME Zion church in town. He was an invited honorary member of Alpha Phi Alpha, a prestigious African American Fraternity which originated at Cornell. Today APA has chapters on campuses all around the nation and promotes African American leadership in a variety of fields.

After graduation, Edward returned to Elmira. He set up law practice on Lake Street and also filled in as substitute pastor for the AME Zion church’s Hope Chapel in Utica, NY. Established in 1848 as a place of worship and Sunday school for children, Hope Chapel was the only house of worship in the Utica area open to people of color.

Hope Chapel, Utica, NY

By 1896, Edward's name and law practice aren’t listed in Elmira's City Directory anymore. His life seems to have taken another direction. He returned to Hope Chapel, appointed pastor, and ministered there for the next seven years. During this time, he also earned a theological degree from Auburn Theological Seminary, in Auburn, New York. He moved to Auburn in 1911 to be the AME Zion church's pastor. In this capacity, he was also director of the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, an institution Harriet Tubman had set up to care for aging and indigent colored people. When Harriet Tubman was ninety years old, she became a resident herself. Reverend Brooks wrote to Booker T. Washington looking to raise the $10.00 it cost per week to provide care for ‘Auntie Harriet” in her final days.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged

Sometime before 1918, Edward married and took on leadership of the AME Zion church in Saratoga Springs. In 1921 he and a Mrs. Reverend E.U.A. Brooks are listed as charter members of the Saratoga Springs NAACP chapter. By 1923 they returned to Hope Chapel in Utica. He stayed and ministered there for another twenty three years, retiring at the age of seventy-five. 

His legacy includes his financial skills which saved the struggling Hope Chapel, and his advocacy for better housing, especially for African Americans. These were times when many were often barred from renting or owning their own homes. He stepped up to provide food, housing and clothes for folks arriving from the south, who often landed in Utica without adequate winter clothing. And, he officiated at over half-a-dozen mixed marriages, then illegal in twenty nine other states.

Reverend Edward U.A. Brooks died in 1954 at the age of eighty two, and was buried in Utica.

Our photograph shows a very serious looking young man of nine. Uncovering part of his story tells us so much more about his life, and is one reason why we are collecting our area’s Oral Histories.