Jethroe had always been a forgiving man. Remembering being forced to stay in separate housing from his white teammates back at the beginning, he said, “You get used to it. And you let it go.” And after his teenage grandson, known as Sam Jethroe Jr., was killed by a drunk driver, he appeared in court and asked for mercy for the driver. “I don’t hold grudges,” he said.
On June 16, 2001 Sam Jethroe died of a heart attack in Erie, while he was recovering from pacemaker surgery a couple of weeks earlier.
Elsie Jethroe died on May 17, 2013. She had been preceded in death by their daughter Gloria.
Sam Jethroe’s story is that of a solid if not stellar major leaguer whose fate was to have been born the wrong color for his time and his chosen profession . But if he came to the majors late, it was not quite too late; he was one of the handful of African-American players who followed Robinson and, less gifted than he, still proved that blacks belonged in the middle tier of major leaguers as much as whites did. Boston Globe editor Marty Nolan, in an appreciation of Jethroe written after his death, said it this way: “The lesson in equality Jethroe taught is the civil right to be less than the best.”
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