Reply #5: Here you go - it explains the whole thing with the timeline. [View All]

[Pirate Smile]

The impetus behind the awarding of the gold medal came from an unlikely source. It began with a query from George Mitrovich, the head of the City Club of San Diego, the Denver Forum and a former press attaché to the late Senator Robert Kennedy.

Mitrovich, a civic force behind the building of San Diego's PETCO Park, said he learned to appreciate the force that was Jackie Robinson as he forged a relationship with former Negro League star and manager Buck O'Neil, who has been honored numerous times in southern California for his contribution to baseball.

"It was Buck O'Neil, who first made me understand that before President Truman desegregated the military, before Brown vs. the Board of Education, before civil rights marches in the south and before the Birmingham bus boycott, before anyone ever heard of Martin Luther King Jr., there was Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier," Mitrovich said. "And the significance of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier was infinitely greater than its impact upon baseball. It had a huge societal effect."

After determining an apt and eloquent national recognition for Robinson, Mitrovich asked last year's Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, to author and present the Robinson gold medal bill to the Senate.

By law, a gold medal bill must be sponsored by 75 percent of the 290 members of the House of Representatives and at least 67 Senators.

It was presented to the Senate by Kerry and John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Feb. 4, 2003.

In his speech, Kerry told his colleagues that Robinson's signing by the Dodgers was so significant because it "engaged the American people in a constructive conversation about race."

"Off the field Jackie Robinson was a business leader, a civil rights leader and a human rights leader," Kerry said. "His ideas and principles influenced some of America's greatest politicians, including (Presidents) John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower. Jackie Robinson was more than a sports hero, he was an American hero."

The bill ultimately passed and was signed into law by President Bush last Oct. 29.

When the Robinson family is awarded the gold medal on March 2, the process will have taken nearly three years from the seed of the original idea to the actual ceremony.

"This kind of recognition helps us instill in children
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