Running Into The Fire

Aug. 01, 2019

Last week, when she bounded onto a stage at St. Joseph's University to the rousing tune of Philadelphia Freedom , the song her friend Elton John penned for her in the Seventies, there arose a cardinal dilemma that must follow her around through her ballsy, peripatetic life: How in the hell do y'all introduce Billie Jean King?

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It'southward a conundrum that goes dorsum at least l years, when, in a Sports Illustrated feature, the legendary writer Frank Deford captured the challenge: "The public-accost announcer introduced Billie Jean's opponent by cataloguing all her usual accomplishments and titles, so he brought The Attraction on, his voice suddenly more resonant, trilling, similar a nominator at a political convention: 'And now, her opponent. Ladies and gentlemen, the working symbol for equal rights in America…Mrs.!…Billie!…Jean!…Kinggg!!!!' And she ran onto the court to a wild standing ovation."

"I think nosotros need to think near women a petty differently," King said. "When a adult female leads, she'southward an example for everybody , not just girls. When people say 'the things she did for women,' that's a fault, because it cuts our marketplace in half."

So information technology was last week at St. Joe'due south, where, prior to her Liberty's World Team Tennis match, King took the phase to wild applause from roughly 100 invited guests. Holding a note bill of fare with King's voluminous bio in her mitt, moderator Karina LeBlanc tried to shout an intro over the music and the oversupply, earlier finally giving up.  Male monarch may reside on the left declension, but she's been a beloved honorary Philadelphian ever since the mid-'70s, when she brought her vision for World Team Tennis here—a populist, diverse dream for a stodgy country club sport. Back and then, she was the histrion/coach, plying her trade at the now defunct Spectrum, where she'd "hang out in Eddie Snider's superbox"; nearly days, she could exist found soaking up the exhibits at Independence Hall, feeding her love of history and her unquenchable curiosity. On the court back then, she was a ball of ferocious energy, and the audience at St. Joe's last week saw firsthand that, off-court, she's barely lost a step.

They were there to hear her in chat with lawn tennis great Venus Williams, NBA banana basketball coach Lindsey Harding, (who recently left the  Sixers for a position with the Sacramento Kings), and Valerie Camillo, president of business operations for the Flyers and the Wells Fargo Center—a powerhouse panel of female talent and accomplishment. Simply there was only one transcendent star in the room.

How do you characterize Billie Jean King? A cracking tennis player, sure, but there actually have been better. Deford chosen her "the most meaning athlete of the twentieth century," merely even that feels off, for she transcended sports then, and still does so now. That's why, in 2009, President Obama bestowed upon her the Medal of Liberty, our highest noncombatant award, and information technology'southward why, of the 100 Most Important Americans of the Twentieth Century, Life Magazine included just four athletes: Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and, of course, Rex.

Now 75, Male monarch is the only one left of that storied grouping, and she'due south withal a dynamo. The energy she released into that room on Metropolis Line Avenue last week was not different the change she unleashed on the nation decades ago. Brand no mistake: hither is someone who changed America.

How did a lilliputian girl in Long Embankment, California, the daughter of a firewoman and a homemaker, become, arguably, not but the woman of the 20th Century, but a modify agent for the ages? How did she find her authentic self?

Information technology wasn't just her destruction of the sexist quondam lawn tennis champion Bobby Riggs in the famous Battle of the Sexes match that ushered in a new style to think well-nigh gender and equality and merit in American gild. Aye, that pop culture outcome, brought recently to the big screen starring Emma Rock as King, was game-changing, but it also may accept overshadowed what continues to be a lifetime of hard piece of work in pursuit of  elementary justice: The forming of a renegade women's lawn tennis tour, dedicated to the principle of equal pay for equal work; the establishment of the Women's Sports Foundation , formed to fight challenges to Title IX—the federal civil rights law in 1972 that prohibited bigotry in education based on sex activity—and to provide equal opportunity to girls in sports, totaling $eighty million in grants to this twenty-four hour period; and the founding, merely 5 years ago, of the Billie Jean Rex Leadership Initiative , in which she seeks to "move the needle"—Billie Jean is never stationary, figuratively or literally—past taking her bulletin of gender and racial inclusion to boardrooms and C-suites around the world. That terminal goal was on her mind during last week's panel discussion.

"We desire equal pay for equal piece of work, we desire gender equity, we want racial equity, we desire equality for people who live with disabilities," she said, while her fellow panelists—fifty-fifty the esteemed Williams—paid rapt attention. "We want everyone to be included, and nosotros know it'south possible. We're trying to become CEOs to modify. I just know a CEO is not going to exercise anything when I hear this: 'I just want quality people.' I go, Oh, this person is not going to do anything when we leave this room. Information technology'southward such a dead giveaway."

Yet, Rex has never stopped challenging her state to live upwards to its founding ideals, and something in the way she narrows her optics into steely slits when talking about equality makes you think she never will. Equality isn't just some concept to her; on the other side of it there'due south some little girl, or some African-American, or some disabled child, or some combination of all iii, being denied an opportunity.

At St. Joe's, the discussion had a distinct daughter power feel running through it, with lots of talk about how women can summon their "authentic selves" in the workplace. Many of the questions seemed to focus on only how all of the woman on that stage are role models for immature women. Male monarch, though, a wily practitioner of how to leverage power into change, felt moved to sound a wise annotation of circumspection. "I call back we demand to retrieve about women a  lilliputian differently," she said. "When a woman leads, she'due south an example for everybody , not just girls. When people say 'the things she did for women,' that's a mistake, because it cuts our marketplace in half." She went on Rockne-like, to implore those in attendance to access their own voice and run into themselves equally influencers in their own right.

The energy she released into that room on City Line Artery last calendar week was non unlike the change she unleashed on the nation decades ago. Make no mistake: here is someone who changed America.

Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about that transition: How does one observe and feed that inner voice? How did a footling daughter in Long Beach, California, the daughter of a firefighter and a homemaker, get, arguably, non only the woman of the 20th Century, just a modify amanuensis for the ages? How did she find her authentic self?

"When I was 13, I realized I wanted to change things," Rex told me later the program. "I telephone call that my epiphany. When I was eleven, I told my female parent I was going to be the number one tennis actor in the world. She goes, 'That's fine, but you have homework.' Simply so, when I was 13, I was at the LA Tennis Club and merely thinking most my sport. Gosh, I idea, everybody wears white shoes, they article of clothing white socks, they wear white dress, they play with white balls. Everybody who plays is white . So I said to myself, 'Where is everybody else?' I didn't know what the word platform meant, merely if I could be practiced enough at tennis, I knew I had one. If I was good plenty, I could help make the world a improve identify. Information technology was, like, whoa ."

Whoa is correct. Where does that audacious instinct come from?

"I don't know," King said, pausing to think. "My parents were very practiced citizens. My dad was a firefighter. He'due south the guy who goes in when everybody else is running out. I used to call back virtually that. We'd have a lot of oil fires in California. When I was x and my brother [former major league pitcher] Randy was five, nosotros stood on our street and saw this big blast go off. My dad was five feet away from a guy who passed abroad that day. My parents were just practiced citizens. You know, they paid their taxes, they didn't believe in debt, they were hardworking. They tried to exercise great things for Randy and me, but they weren't the helicopter or the snowfall plough parent—they didn't endeavour to clear the way for usa to make everything easy peasy for us. The one side where they weren't good, they were very homophobic, then I went through a hard time with that. But, otherwise, for sports? I wish we could clone my parents. For every child who plays sports I wish we'd clone my parents to watch over them, because they were astonishing."

Funny, isn't it, how great, impactful lives seem to be willed into existence? That'due south the theme of King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero by David Remnick, in which we see a young pugilist imagine a life for himself and so human action it out, as though he were starring in his own movie. And it's what that other trickster of the 20th Century is getting at in Martin Scorsese's fascinating new documentary, Rolling Thunder Revue : "Life isn't about finding yourself, or finding annihilation," Bob Dylan says. "Life is virtually creating yourself, and creating things."

It'due south a very American act, the art of self-invention, and Billie Jean King stands as a sturdy testament to it. A little girl in Long Beach, California with a firefighter father intuits something, and spends the residue of her years charging into raging societal flames. To hear her tell it, it's as if she self-talked herself into existence.

"Being a girl was not the only thing I had to fight," she once told Deford. "I was brought up to believe in the well-rounded concept, doing lotsa things a piddling, merely not putting yourself on the line. It took me a while before I thought one day: who is information technology that says nosotros have to be well-rounded? Who decided that? The people who aren't special at anything, that'south who. When at final I understood that, I could actually try to be special."

That'southward a distinctly American blazon of chutzpah, no? It'southward like shooting fish in a barrel in retrospect to see in icons their inevitable ascension, simply, similar Ali, the risks King took to find her authentic cocky were in no mode rubber at the fourth dimension. So when she says today that female person leadership isn't just for girls, information technology carries weight. Because, in a style, she raised all of us.

That solar day a decade ago when Obama draped that Medal of Freedom around King's neck? He told her that watching her in the Seventies had ultimately made him a better male parent to his two girls. Many of us of a certain age remember where we were when we watched Billie Jean decimate Bobby Riggs. I was with my Dad; he was probably roughly Riggs' age at the time. Yet, there he was, on the edge of that beat-up ol' recliner, pulling for Billie Jean, living and dying with each expertly sliced down-the-line backhand. I'k quite sure he hadn't read Betty Friedan, but he nonetheless knew progress when he saw it. How different would I be today if, on that twenty-four hours, I saw my dad rooting non for the empowered, mod woman, but for the crumbling chauvinist instead?

Billie Jean Rex wakes up everyday and stays in bed a long while, reciting what she refers to every bit her "approval list." "The first thing I practice in the morning is thank everybody in my life," she says. "Information technology goes on and on, I could be in bed all 24-hour interval doing this."

How's that for irony? A whole bunch of us, subsequently all, men and women alike, should actually be waking up each morning and thanking her .

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/running-into-the-fire/