Honolulu Record, August 26, 1948, vol. 1 no. 4, p. 6
George Herman (Babe) Ruth, whose death by cancer on August 16, was mourned by millions throughout the world, was quietly laid to rest at Gate of Heaven cemetery in New York's Westchester county, last Thursday. He was 54 years old.
The famed Sultan of Swat, for 22 years a major leaguer, the man who hit 714 homers in his lusty lifetime and who hit a record 60 in the 1927 season alone, died quietly and peacefully after a two-year fight against cancer of the throat.
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The Babe was the greatest and most universally-beloved athlete in the history of our nation, the most sportsminded country in the world. He will, in the minds of the people, surely rank with our greatest Presidents, warriors and poets.
Many anecdotes have been told and retold of the trials and tribulations of the Babe.
One of the unforgettables occured [sic] during the Babe's last visit to Los Angeles, when the American Legion was running its Pacific Southwest junior baseball championships at Hollywood's Gilmore Field last year. The Legion in years past had been viciously anti-Negro, but last summer there was a Negro youngster on the team representing San Diego.
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Before the games got underway the kids, about a hundred of them, gathered around Babe, and the photographers prepared to take their stock pictures. But Ruth saw the shy Negro boy standing far on the edge of the circle. He halted the photographers and called out in his then hoarse voice, "Hey Kid, come over here."
The Negro youngster bashfully came to him, whereupon the Babe threw his arm around his shoulder, nodded to the photographer, and said, "Okey [sic], Boys, shoot."
That was Babe Ruth.
Babe Ruth will remain in people's memories.