Homework homer
When Lou Gehrig helped NJ kid with class assignment
When New Jersey high-school student Thomas Templeton needed help with his homework, he didn’t get a tutor, he got baseball legend Lou Gehrig.
Back in 1938, the Hawthorne teen wrote the Yankee great for a history-class assignment in which students were told to pick a vocation they wished to pursue and contact someone in the field.
Templeton sent 10 questions to the beloved “Iron Horse,” who promptly hit them out of the park.
“In as much as I have wanted to be a professional ball player for some time, I wonder if you would favor me by answering the following questions,” Hawthorne HS student Templeton wrote in his May 8, 1938, letter.
He noted he needed answers by “next week” and enclosed a stamped return envelope.
The Manhattan-born Gehrig prefaced his responses by writing, “Dear Tom - Briefly.”
Replying to “What are the hours of work?” Gehrig wrote, “From noon till games are over.”
Income? “Start at 250 average per month and pd according to your ability.” In today’s dollars $250 would be $4,279.93. Drawbacks? “I can’t think of any.” The Yankee signed his handwritten reply with “Best Wishes Lou Gehrig.”
“Amazingly, Gehrig was nice enough to take the time to respond (in the middle of the sea- son no less) and dutifully answered each question on a blank page of Templeton’s original letter,” said Chester, NJ-based Robert Edward Auctions, which recently listed the item for auction.
The two letters in the correspondence sold last Sunday for $16,800 to a 52-year-old diehard Yankee fan from Long Island.
“Here’s a guy who’s very famous, plays for a storied franchise, and he helps a kid with his school project,” marveled Thomas Tighe, the auction winner.
Gehrig, who died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, may have had the disease when he answered the quiz. On May 2, 1939, less than a year after corresponding with Templeton, he took himself out of the Yankee lineup due to illness, ending his then-record 2,130 consecutive games streak.
Gehrig gave his heartwrenching “Luckiest Man” speech at Yankee Stadium that July 4. He died from the illness, now also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 1941 at age 37.