To people who grew up with Hank Aaron in Alabama, ‘He was larger than life to all of us’

© Associated Press Milwaukee Braves outfielder Henry “Hank” Aaron posed for a batting portrait at Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, during the exhibition season in 1961.

To baseball fans, Hank Aaron was the biggest star in the world, but to friends and family in Mobile, Alabama, he was … well, he was the biggest star in the world.

“Growing up … he was larger than life to all of us,” Angelia Williams said.

Today, she’s a 65-year-old school nurse in Kansas City, Missouri, reflecting on her experiences with “someone that we all looked up to.” Aaron died on Friday. He was 86 years old.  

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To talk to Williams about Hank Aaron is to go back in time about 50 years to Greater Morning Star Baptist Church in the Toulminville neighborhood, a low- to middle-income part of town where Black families lived.

“He would come home quite often,” she said. “It was a big to-do when he would come to the church.”

Williams was close with Aaron’s sisters, Gloria and Sarah.

“They were my mentors,” she said.  

That being the case, one might not have expected Williams to be starstruck when Hank returned to speak to the congregation where he had spent countless Sundays, but that would be wrong.

“We were just mesmerized seeing him get up there,” she said. “He would talk about his experiences on the road … I can’t really remember a whole lot about it.”

That said, she recalls exactly what was going on in the parking lot.

“Here was this Lamborghini parked right in the front,” she said. “I remember something red … it was a flashy color, you know? It was a quite unusual car, I was like, ‘Lamborghini?’”

And he had an entourage.

“Oh, yeah. Definitely,” Williams said. “He had bodyguards there. Yes he did.”

‘I slept in Hank Aaron’s bedroom’

Baseball is just what people in Mobile do. Satchel Paige is from Mobile. So is Ozzie Smith. And Willie McCovey.  

But for Williams, it’ll always be about Hank.

“I spent a lot of time in their home,” Williams said. “I remember teasing some people after I moved to Kansas City, they said, ‘Tell us something that we wouldn’t know about you, Mrs. Williams.’ And I told them that I had slept in Hank Aaron’s bedroom, and they were totally just shocked about that. ‘You slept in Hank Aaron’s bed! What?!’ … I’m not sure if that was the bed where Hank actually slept.”

But it was close enough to make a good story.

When she would go back to Mobile as a young woman, she would show her daughters where the Aaron family lived. The home has since been relocated to a baseball stadium in Mobile, where it’s something of a museum.

She remembers a room in the back being dedicated to Hank.

“There was one room in the house, one of the back bedrooms that had nothing but his trophies. There was a glass case all the way around, wall to wall, nothing but his trophies … I mean from the floor to the ceiling; each wall was just lined with trophies. And you just went in that room, oh, my gosh. And his sister, Miss Sarah, she would say, ‘That’s not all of them. There’s even more than that.’”

‘He went through a lot’

Williams is pleased to have grown up in a church that produced a man of great character.

“Hank Aaron was a very loving … he loved his family. He loved his mom. He loved his dad. He loved people in general, no matter what race, color or creed,” she said. “He loved everyone. He had no hate for anyone. … When you meet, him it’s just like you knew him all your life. He was just one of those people who never knew any strangers, a very warm-hearted person.”

But the world isn’t always a good place. Especially back then. Especially in the Deep South. Especially to a Black man who hit 40 home runs a year, just about every year for 20 years until he was knocking on the most hallowed record in American sports: the all-time home run crown.

“He went through a lot,” Williams said. “Threatening calls. Threatening letters. They were threatening his life. Seriously.

“I can remember his mom, Mama Stella, asking the church to pray a lot of times for her son because his life was being threatened like that. It was horrible to hear. It was a lot of discrimination against Hank, but he overcame it. He did.”

She’ll be telling people about her association with her babysitters’ big brother for as long as they ask.

The details will be fleeting, but the admiration will be clear.

“It was like ‘la-la-la-la,’ you know? I just loved him,” she said.

For her, and seemingly everyone else in his hometown, Hank Aaron was a source of hope. He was the biggest star in the world.  

“He was someone that we all looked up to,” she said. “If Hank made it, oh, my gosh, we could make it, too.”

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: To people who grew up with Hank Aaron in Alabama, ‘He was larger than life to all of us’