Lindsay Berra lays her hand on the glass enclosure that sits in the lobby of the museum bearing her family's name, peering down at the hardware nestled inside. The profound meaning of her beloved Grampa's Presidential Medal of Freedom settles once again upon her, a reminder of a life lived well, of a life lived long, of a life lived with love.
This is one of the few displays the founder of the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center never got to see, awarded as it was after Berra's death nearly nine months ago. It was the work of Berra's family that earned the Hall of Fame baseball player the rare and prestigious honor, a petition drive and campaign spearheaded by the granddaughter who doesn't simply share a famous last name, but a deep and abiding passion to continue the mission that meant so much to her paternal grandparents Yogi and Carmen. Both of them are gone now, Carmen having predeceased her husband by 18 months, but in Lindsay, their legacy lives on, her work as a board member of the museum filling her days as much as it once did theirs.
"My grandparents loved the museum," Lindsay said over a recent breakfast in Montclair's Watchung Plaza. "I view everything I do there as preserving their legacy. They put me on the board for a reason. I think keeping the museum open is how we teach the next generation of kids about Grampa. He was such a unique person. There are not many people like him."
Good luck finding even one. Berra might be best known for his many malapropisms or simple "it ain't over till it's over" brand of wisdom, but the depth and reach of his life's work is almost too much for even this beautiful, sprawling building to contain.
He was a tireless worker, pulling himself from his St. Louis immigrant roots to the top of the baseball world. He was a war hero, a World War II U.S. Navy veteran before he even reached the major leagues. He was a loyal friend, maintaining a 90-year bond with fellow Hall of Fame catcher Joe Garagiola, the man who lived in the house across the street on The Hill's Elizabeth Avenue. He was a devoted husband, falling in love with the breathtaking Carmen on first sight, beautifully bared in the self-taught eloquence apparent in love letters encased upon the museum walls. He was a remarkable baseball player, a three-time MVP and the anchor on 10 World Series champion teams, a number not matched before or since.
But most of all, he was a good man, a man who valued humility and fairness above all, who saw others with no prism of judgment. Those are the values included in the learning center's mandate, the reason Berra oversaw its opening in 1998. In the words of director Dave Kaplan, the museum "offers year-round sports-based programming and exhibits that instill lessons in the ideals that made Yogi an American icon: perseverance, respect, teamwork, and excellence," while adding the addition of "a newly designed curriculum in character education for K-12 students, dedicated to seeing Yogi's spirit live on in the next generation of learners and leaders."
Sitting at his desk inside the back door of the building nestled in a corner of the Montclair State University campus, Kaplan is surrounded by extra pieces of Berra memorabilia, framed photos leaning against walls, printed snapshots tacked to cubicle walls, invitations to countless events in Berra's memory awaiting reply. It was Kaplan who happily answered Yogi's phone calls when he said, "You wanna go to the game?" and responded by hopping in the car, collecting Yogi at his Montclair home or later at the assisted living facility he moved to and heading off to Yankee Stadium.
"Not a day goes by that I don't think of him," Kaplan said.
On Sunday in the Bronx, the whole baseball world remembered Yogi again, when the Yankees hosted their first Old-Timers' Day since his death, when Lindsay and other family members will be in attendance, surely wiping away a few tears in his memory. For a day, Yogi came alive again, alive in the stories told by others, alive in the memory of the days Lindsay spent by his bedside. Together they'd watch the Yankees pregame show _ "He liked to watch Michael Kay and make fun of him," she laughed _ or flip to Yogi's preferred Turner Classic Movie channel, where he'd implore Lindsay to find some obscure Marilyn Monroe movie.
"Any time I had two free hours, I went there," she said. "I didn't want to leave him alone. We were all up there, right till the end."
Lindsay rarely goes a day without hearing a story from another of her grandfather's fans, stories of kindness and friendship, details of a small moment of Yogi's life that had a huge impact on someone else's. These are the thoughts that warm her now, that inspire her too.
"I try to do things Grampa taught me to do, to treat people right," she said.
"I have to try harder than he did _ the rest of us have to work hard to be that good."
Something tells me he'd say she's doing just fine, confident from the great beyond that his life's work is safe in her hands.
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