Earl Ingram Jr. never forgot Henry Aaron at his brother’s bedside.
Donald Ray Ingram was 11 in 1965 when doctors at Milwaukee’s Children’s Hospital discovered a cancerous tumor at his brainstem. His prognosis was terminal. Donald’s wish was to meet his hero Hank Aaron, and the Milwaukee Braves star gladly obliged. “He visited my brother quite often,” said Earl Ingram, now a radio host in Milwaukee. “But he visited a lot of children in the hospital and he didn’t make a big deal out of it because that’s who he was.”
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Over the course of several months, Hank Aaron and Donald Ingram would develop a strong bond talking baseball in between cancer treatments. Donald died in 1966. Aaron, who himself died in January at age 86, “was a hero to Milwaukee’s Black community,” Ingram said. “Boston had Bill Russell. Philadelphia had Wilt Chamberlain. Louisville had Ali. And we had Aaron.”