FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE B7
BY AMBER FERGUSON
Ronnie Hogue Sr.’s loved ones
say he always left a l egacy.
As t he f irst African American to
receive a full athletic scholarship
to the University of Georgia,
Hogue battled racism and set a
path that d ozens of y oung athletes
have followed.
After setting the single-game
basketball scoring record at Geor-
gia, he was drafted by the then-
Washington Bullets, though he
was not ultimately chosen for the
team. He lived in the Washington
suburbs and raised a family while
building a career as a retail man-
ager.
“Every step that I took or every
decision that I made, I talked to
him,” said his son, Ronnie Hogue
Jr. of Atlanta. “He was a really
humble guy but was known wher-
ever he went.”
Hogue Sr. died Sept. 18 at a ge 6 9
after contracting the novel coro-
navirus and pneumonia.
One of 14 s iblings, he grew up in
Georgetown and on Capitol Hill
and led the “Magnificent Seven”
basketball team at M cKinley Tech-
nical H igh School to a city champi-
onship in 1969.
He s tarted playing basketball in
junior high and was so dedicated
to the sport, his sister Rennese
Bumbray s aid, that he would shov-
el the court near his home after
snowstorms so he could practice.
The prep all-American player
was recruited by dozens of col -
leges, including Harvard and
Stanford, sports commentator
James Brown, a longtime friend
and high school basketball rival,
said at his memorial service in
Maryland.
But it was Bulldogs recruiter
John G uthrie who went to Hogue’s
home and convinced the appre-
hensive 6-foot-3 g uard of the g reat
work he could do in Athens.
Hogue Jr. said his father told
him t hat a Black man was killed b y
the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep
South shortly before he was sup-
posed to arrive on campus; his
father, then 19, was scared to go.
But he went, becoming a pioneer
in college athletics.
Hogue was a breakout and ex-
plosive star for the Bulldogs. In
only three seasons, he s cored 1 ,367
points, including a record-setting
46-point performance against
Louisiana State University in 1 971.
He was named to the Southeast-
ern Conference All-Sophomore
team after playing out of position
at forward his second year on the
squad and, the following year, was
named the team’s most valuable
player.
Yet despite his star power,
Hogue faced racism.
“The first year I played, I can
remember having spit balls and
hot pennies thrown at me during
games, but my teammates would
huddle a round to cover me up,” h e
said in a n interview the university
published in 2011. “By the second
year, after I proved I could play
basketball, people were lining up
to get my autograph.”
His family says Hogue never
complained but was honest about
his experience. He t old h is siblings
about driving down back roads in
rural Georgia and seeing someone
hanged from a tree.
Hogue Jr. said his dad had a
drive for making change. During
his freshman year of college,Hogue realized that the Confeder-
ate anthem “Dixie” was played
before home and away games. He
went to the athletic director’s of-
fice and spoke about how offen-
sive the song was and how it went
against B lack culture, his son s aid.
Georgia and the other SEC teams
stopped playing the song.
Hogue’s mother worked at
Georgetown University Hospital
as a nursing assistant. His father
was a t echnician for the U.S. Naval
Gun Factory at the Navy Yard.
Bumbray, Hogue’s sister, said her
brother was modest about his ac-
complishments but a true extro-
vert and popular with everyone.
“He was my protector.”
Hogue majored in b usiness and
resided in Virginia and Maryland
while working as a regional man-
ager for a number of 7 -Eleven loca-
tions and at Sears, his family said.
In addition to Hogue Jr., he had
two daughters and a s tepdaughter
and two grandchildren. His mar-
riage to Freda Bingham ended in
divorce. Hogue was a devout
Christian and heavily active in
East Capitol Street Church of
Christ. He most recently worked
as president of Local 287 for Secu-
rity, Police and Fire Professionals
of America (SPFPA).
“He was not only fighting for
better pay and better benefits for
the employees, but there was this
one situation where he was fight-
ing for Black security guards to
keep their dreadlocks,” Hogue Jr.
said. “ He w on b y a landslide for his
second term.”
Hogue Jr. said he last saw his
father at a family gathering on
Labor Day weekend, when Hogue
Sr. met his newborn grandson for
the first time. The elder Hogue
was hospitalized about two weeks
later, his son said. The rest of the
family tested negative for the vi-
rus.
The University of Georgia held
a moment of silence in Hogue’s
memory before the national an-
them at the men’s basketball
home opener on Nov. 29, and an
image of Hogue was placed on
both of the basket standards that
will be in place for t he season. The
school is discussing long-term
plans for honoring Hogue.
During his memorial service,
head basketball coach Tom Crean
talked about Hogue’s imprint on
collegiate sports.
“He stood for himself, he stood
for his teammates and for the
future of college basketball. And
we are all beneficiaries of that,”
Crean said. “We have 13 African
American players on full-ride
scholarships because Ronnie
paved the way.”
[email protected]THE DISTRICTD.C. basketball star
broke barriers at U-Ga.
F AMILY PHOTO
Ronnie Hogue Sr., holding his
granddaughter Luna in 2019,
died Sept. 18 at age 69 after
contracting the coronavirus
and pneumonia.BY SAMANTHA SCHMIDT
Each morning, the glass
stairwell in the stately, 10-story
Pew Charitable Trusts building
in downtown D.C. was always
spotless.
Elsi Mabelicia Campos made
sure of it, staying in the building
until 1 or 2 a.m. to check for the
tiniest of smudges with a flash-
light. As the project manager in
charge of the cleaning crew for
the building, Campos would
still be there long after the last
custodian left for the night,
checking each floor and walk-
ing through conference rooms
to make sure the chairs were all
lined up at the same height.
It was through this dedica-
tion and attention to detail that
Campos worked her way from
cleaning hotel rooms as a recent
emigrant from El Salvador in
the 1970s to supervising teams
of custodians for one of the
largest cleaning companies in
the D.C. area.
I t was what allowed her to
help her relatives flee civil war
in her home country, to raise
two children as a single mother,
to care for her elderly parents
and to build a life for her six
grandchildren.
Campos, a devout Catholic in
Alexandria who sang in her
church choir and taught cate-
chism classes to children in her
free time, died Nov. 30 of com-
plications from covid-19. She
was 60.
She was one of several family
members who contracted the
virus in the home where she
lived with 10 others, including
her sister, daughter, son-in-law,
four grandchildren a nd her 95-
year-old mother. While Campos
was the last to develop symp-
toms, “when it hit her, it hap-
pened so quick,” said her daugh-
ter, Yuri Campos, 37, who said
her mother had asthma, high
blood pressure and prediabetes.
She died about a week after
she fell ill. “I am running out of
strength,” she texted her daugh-
ter from a hospital, two days
before her death. “I don’t know
if God will give me a few more
days.”
Campos had been laid off in
April because of the pandemic
and no longer had the health
insurance she needed to afford
her blood pressure medicine
and inhaler, her daughter said.
Yuri Campos had been in the
process of applying for Medi-
care for her mother before she
contracted the virus.
Elsi Mabelicia Campos,
whom many people called Ma-
belicia or Mabel, was the bed-
rock of the family, Yuri Campos
said. She had been helping care
for her 9-month-old twin
grandchildren in addition to
her elderly mother in the
months before her death. She
provided comfort and guidance
to her daughter after she
learned she had been diagnosed
with multiple sclerosis at age
25.
“She helped me lift up myself,
she helped me get through it,”
Yuri Campos said. “She was
always my s trength, but she was
everybody’s strength.”Before the pandemic, she
took pride in hosting family
parties every Sunday, cooking
Salvadoran-style panes, playing
card games and singing “Rata
de Dos Patas” on karaoke, said
her son, Enrique Campos, 30.
And she extended the same
sense of community and gener-
osity to her colleagues, said
Christel Pineda, who had
worked with Campos for the
commercial cleaning company
USSI since the late 1980s. Cam-
pos, whom Pineda called “Mar-
bles,” loved to bring pupusas to
company meetings, just to see
the looks on her co-workers’
faces.
“You never saw her without a
smile,” Pineda said. “You could
see the tiredness in her face,
and yet she came in with a big
smile.”
Pineda recalled one winter
when Campos learned that the
employees who worked outside
her building weren’t going to
get a company shipment of hats
and gloves in time for the cold
weather to arrive. Campos went
out and bought them hats and
gloves with her own money, just
to be sure they would be warm.
“That’s stuff that nobody but
her would do,” Pineda said. “We
will never find another Elsi.”
C ampos was well known in
her community for helping fel-
low Latino immigrants find
work, recruiting them to her
cleaning company. “ She made it
her duty... to give these
chances to people who might
have not gotten a chance,” En-
rique Campos said.
She would also invite friends
and acquaintances to her house
and offer to help them apply for
U.S. citizenship, walking them
through the process and help-
ing them study for the exam,
her children recalled. She had
become a citizen herself dec-
ades earlier and was proud to
vote for President-elect Joe
Biden just weeks before her
death, posting a photo on Face-
book in her “I voted” sticker.
She would often buy thought-
ful gifts for her colleagues and
friends, and just before the pan-
demic, Pineda said, Campos
gave her a briefcase for carrying
papers to work. Campos had
seen it and thought of her, Pine-
da said. Inside the bag, Campos
had accidentally left a pair of
earrings that she had pur-
chased for her daughter. Pineda
held on to them throughout the
pandemic, waiting to give them
back to Campos the next time
she saw her. She never got the
chance.
But after Campos’s death,
Pineda stopped by the family’s
home and gave the gift to Cam-
pos’s daughter, as the mother
had intended.
“I couldn’t help but break
down and cry,” Yuri Campos
said.
The night before, Yuri Cam-
pos had been preparing an out-
fit for her mother’s small funer-
al, later in the week. She had
picked out a dress and a nice
pair of shoes. The only thing she
had been missing, she realized,
was a pair of earrings.
[email protected]VIRGINIADevoted mother k ept
Pew building spotless
FAMILY PHOTO
Elsi Mabelicia Campos, who oversaw the cleaning crew at the
Pew Charitable Trusts building in D.C., died of complications
from covid -19 on Nov. 30 at age 60.U NIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Ronnie Hogue Sr ., seen in a 1970 photo, was recruited by dozens of
col leges before becoming the first African American to receive a
full athletic scholarship to the University of Georgia.BY PAUL DUGGAN
Jerold Samet, who died this
month of covid-19, a week be-
fore his 76th birthday, was a
gregarious sort, a lifelong net-
worker, a “collector of friends,”
as one of them put it. “If there
was a physical funeral, which
there won’t be, you’d have more
than a thousand people show-
ing up,” said Doug Wolf, who
knew Samet for 40 years.
A former grand master, or
president, of all Masonic lodges
in the District, a local political
activist and owner of a haber-
dashery, he immersed himself
in youth-leadership programs
for decades, mentoring thou-
sands of teenagers.
Samet never married,
though. “He just loved being
around too many people,” an-
other friend said. “He could
never focus on any one person,”
meaning a life partner. “He was
one of those bachelors who
could never settle down.” He
never had a biological child,
never held a baby of his own in
his arms, and this troubled him
as he grew older.
So in 2008, when he was 64,
he approached his dearest ac-
quaintance, Michael Dixon,
then 45, with an unusual pro-
posal. The two had first met
when Dixon was 17 and in-
volved in one of Samet’s youth
programs, and he later worked
in Samet’s clothing store.
“One day he just said to me, ‘I
want to talk to you about some-
thing,’ ” recalled the old friend,
whose name isn’t Dixon any-
more. “A nd we sat down, and
finally he said, ‘I want to adopt
you.’ And, of course, it was a
long conversation.”
Soon, Michael Dixon legally
became Michael Samet, now a
57-year-old home inspector
who lives in Montgomery Coun-
ty. Two years later, in 2010,
Michael Samet and his wife had
a baby, Lyla Samet, giving Jerry
Samet a granddaughter to dote
on.
“I was very happy and very
proud that he felt that way
about me,” Michael Samet re-
called of the adoption. “I mean,
I was already a son to him,
anyway, so it was really just a
formality at that point.” Still,
the legality of it was important
to Jerry Samet, who had a
deeply felt conviction about
family and the end of life.
“When the time came, Jerry
wanted a son, an actual son, to
bury him,” Michael Samet said.
“That’s what he always told me.
It meant a lot to him.”
Today, with the death toll in
the coronavirus pandemic sur-
passing 10,000 in D.C., Mary-
land and Virginia, Jerry Samet’s
ashes are in an urn. He died
Dec. 2, isolated from his loved
ones in a hospital. Perhaps a
year from now, if his many
friends can gather without fear
of infection, a funeral will be
held, and his son will bury him.
A native Washingtonian, Jer-
ry Samet joined the Masons
when he was 21 and, his friends
said, devoted himself to the
group’s stated mission of pro-
moting “a way of life that binds
like-minded men in a world-
wide brotherhood that tran-
scends all religious, ethnic, cul-
tural, social and educational
differences.”
For years, he was a “chapter
dad” in DeMolay International,
a Masons-sponsored program
that seeks to build character
and leadership traits in teenage
boys and serves as a path to
Masonic membership. In 1997,
he founded a similar mentor-
ship program of his own, the
now-defunct Youth Leaders In-
ternational, which included
thousands of academic high-
achievers, boys and girls alike,
around the globe.
“He took people under his
wing,” said Neal Jarvis, 56, of
Ellicott City, who joined DeMo-
lay as a youngster and re-
mained close friends with
Samet.
“What Jerry taught me was,
you get respect by giving re-
spect,” Jarvis said. “It didn’t
matter what religion you were;
it didn’t matter what color your
skin was. He taught kids not to
fear anyone’s differences, but
embrace them. He saw the good
in people, whether or not others
did, and he brought it out ofyou.”
Friends said Samet, who
lived in the Spencerville area of
Montgomery County, bought a
decades-old D.C. haberdashery,
M. Stein & Co., in 1969 and ran
it until he retired in 2001. And
for years, he was a fixture in
Democratic politics in Mont-
gomery as a well-known fund-
raiser and organizer.
“He always had more confi-
dence in people than some-
times they had in themselves,”
said Wolf, 66, of Gaithersburg, a
fellow Mason. “He was the only
person I knew who’d go out to a
restaurant, and when he left, he
was Facebook friends with ev-
eryone there. I mean, the wait
staff, the dishwasher, the door-
man, the owner. Didn’t matter.”
Michael Samet s aid he was a
child of divorce, mostly unin-
volved with his biological father
and in need of a male role
model when he joined DeMolay
in 1981 and met Jerry Samet.
After high school, he went to
work in the clothing store and
later helped his future dad
manage Youth Leaders Interna-
tional until it closed six years
ago, having never recovered
from the 2008 financial crisis.
After Jerry Samet, a diabetic,
was diagnosed with a heart
ailment in 2016, his son, by then
divorced, moved in with him.
But in the end, he could not
hold his father’s hand.
“It’s just been devastating to
deal with, because Jerry died
alone” in Washington Adventist
Hospital, two weeks after being
admitted, Michael Samet said.
“The one time we were al-
lowed to see him, they took us
upstairs, and we had to stare at
him through a window. We
waved, and he waved back a
couple times, but he wouldn’t
really look our way, because I
think he knew he was dying.”
[email protected]MARYLAND
Mason d evoted his life
to youth leadership
F AMILY PHOTOJerold “Jerry” S amet, seen with his granddaughter, Lyla Sam et,
died of covid-19 on Dec. 2, a week before his 76th birthday.
F AMILY PHOTOJerry Samet with his son, Michael Samet. Jerry w as 64 in 2008
when he asked Michael, then 45, to become his adopted son.