Hank and Billye Aaron looked elegant for the United Negro College Fund dinner in 2019. (Photo … [+] by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
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Thanks to his widow Billye, the memory and legacy of Henry Louis Aaron still occupies a large space in Major League Baseball and beyond.
Three major anniversaries are coming up: the third anniversary of his passing, on Jan. 22; the 90th anniversary of his birth, on Feb. 5; and the 50th anniversary of his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s revered home run record, on Apr. 8.
At 87, Billye has already lived longer than her late husband. But she hasn’t let age stifle her energy.
In anticipation of Martin Luther King Day, she flew to Las Vegas to present the Hank Aaron Awards to the top hitter in each league and then enjoyed a Caribbean vacation.
When she’s home in Atlanta, though, Billye is busy attending baseball events, going to games at Truist Park, and promoting the Aaron agenda of advancing civil rights and helping children.
Of the upcoming golden anniversary celebration, she admits to mixed feelings.
“It’s hard to celebrate anything now after Henry has gone,” she said in an exclusive interview, “but I try my best to keep his legacy and understand what it would have meant to him if he were here.”
It is a legacy that was encouraged and nurtured by the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an Aaron friend who happened to be a great baseball fan.
They met after the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta in 1966.
Billye Aaron met her future husband seven years later when Aaron was a guest on her Atlanta television talk show. In retrospect, she realizes his legacy went far beyond his achievements in baseball.
“He appreciated that baseball recognized his contributions but it was a matter of the times in which we live,” she said. “Everybody seemed a little scared to jump into the ring because Babe Ruth held the record for so long.
“It just didn’t seem right to a lot of people that someone would come along and break that record. Especially some black kid. That didn’t sit well with a lot of people. “But we came to understand we lived in a society that places less value on African-Americans than it does on other people. It was just something we had to come to grips with.”
Even when he got the loudest and longest standing ovation at the 2019 Hall of Fame Inductions, the last he attended, Aaron never expressed excitement about it.
After hitting his historic 715th home run, Hank Aaron receives a vanity license plate from Jimmy … [+] Carter, then Georgia governor, as wife Billye beams.
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“Henry never glorified himself,” said Billye, a benefactor of the Morehouse College of Medicine and promoter of the United Negro College Fund.