A DC AMERICAN HISTORY FACT–THE PETEY GREENE STORY!

I met Petey Greene in 1957 at the Burning Tree Golf Course in Bethesda a suburb of Maryland. On the weekends I would catch a bus from my NE DC housing project, Parkside, with my mentor Jody Waugh to caddy for the movers and shakers of American politics. They included a President, Vice-President, Senators, Congressmen, actors, and entertainers from Broadway to Hollywood.

No blacks or women were allowed membership. This was a strange phenomenon to me. The black caddies were allowed to play on Mondays, but their white wives never. It was a different World.

Petey and I carried golf bags to earn money. I was there because I was interested in helping my single-parent mother make ends meet financially. Petey came to the golf course to host and organize dice and card games deep in the woods in the evenings.

I was warned by my homeboys to avoid him by any means necessary, he was a cheat. I learned the hard way. It is often said, “Curiosity killed the cat”, one dumb evening I was the cat!

He broke me and then gave me two dollars for my bus fare and to buy 10 cents Little Tavern Hamburgers for the ride home. I thought he was being really generous until he said, “You owe me four dollars next week.” He was also a “Loan Shark.”

As I was trying to leave the golf course before my homeboys discovered I had lost all my money, the golf pro, Max Elbin called out to me to return to the caddy shack. He had two golfers who were interested in playing nine holes and he wanted me to be their caddy. It was a no-brainer, I could recoup some of the money I lost to Petey.

As I walked to the first tee, a voice yelled, “Harold are you ready for an adventure?” I turned to see who was calling out to me, and to my surprise, it was Vice-President Richard Nixon. He would change my life.

Petey and I would become great friends after I paid him his four dollars, never to gamble with him again.

My mom was born and raised in Sumpter, SC, and she was a graduate of Cardozo High School in NW DC. My father was a Dead-Beat Dad in every sense of the word.

My mother’s parents were educators in Sumpter. My father was a native Washingtonian. His parents were church founders, my great-grandfather laid the first brick to help build Mt. Airy Baptist Church in 1893.

The church is located in the shadows of the Nation’s Capitol at North Capitol and L Streets NW. Two blocks north of the church is a senior residence, The Tyler House named after my great uncle, the Rev. Earl Tyler.

When my mother graduated high school, she was hired as a clerk typist at the Water Department in downtown DC. The new job helped her to qualify for SECTION 8 Housing and move us from Grandma Bell’s house to the housing project named, Parkside. Two years later she was unemployed. It seemed to her, that there was an unwritten code in the government for blacks, the last hired would be the first fired!

She grudgingly applied for welfare, my two brothers and I needed to be fed and clothed. I felt it was my duty to help her financially. My grandmother and hero Amy Tyler Bell raised my older brother, Bobby.

In 1958 Nixon was leaving for a tour around the World, starting with the Soviet Union. I was hopefully headed to college. He made me promise I would graduate and go to college. He loved talking about sports but thought education was more important. He was right, I would learned the hard way.

I thought I was the straw that stirred the drink as a high school athlete. My attitude got me kicked off two of the three teams I played. For the third team, I was locked on the school bus at half-time as the football team won without me. I was on the way to hell in a hurry, until Coach Brown suggested I apologize to my teammates and I did.

I still got kicked to the curve on the basketball team for my selfish behavior. Mad at the World I transferred to our rival Eastern High School to finish the season, but a protest against me killed that move.

My former coach Dave Brown found me hanging out in the pool hall and convinced me to finish my senior year in Prince George’s County. In the summer of 1959, Nixon went to the Soviet Union, I went to college and Petey went to jail for armed robbery.

In 1965 Petey, singer Marvin Gaye, and I returned to DC around the same time. Marvin had joined the Air Force in 1956. He had been singing with several do-wop groups since his discharge in 1957. The three of us met by coincidence in front of a DC landmark, the Howard Theater. We spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out our next move.

It did not take Marvin long to make up his mind, He wanted out of DC fast and in a hurry. Petey and I wished him luck, kissed, hugged and he was gone.

I needed a job, and Petey introduced me to Mr. Jim Banks CEO of the United Planning Organization.  The organization was a self-help entity in the NW Shaw-Cardozo Community.

Mr. Banks hired Petey and me as Neighborhood Workers. This was my first job after dropping out of college to chase my dream of playing in the NFL.

Our job descriptions read: Work in the schools and on the playgrounds with at-risk children and youth gangs.  We spent as much time in the DC Superior Courts as we did in the schools.

In 1967 UPO gave a grant to the DC Recreation Department. The grant was to hire Roving Leaders to help fight youth violence in our schools and in the DC community. The stipulation, the department had to hire me.  Petey chose to stay behind with Mr. Banks and UPO.

In the summer of 1967, I was meeting Petey for lunch at Bens’ Chili Bowl. When I arrived, he told me that Muhammad Ali was on the campus of Howard University.  I left him immediately with my sights on Howard University to meet The Greatest.  It was the most important journey I had made since the Burning Tree Golf Course in 1957.

1967 was a good year, Petey Greene’s Washington radio talk show made its debut on WOL Radio.  He gave me 5  minutes to talk about sports every Sunday evening. Petey Greene’s Washington led to my trailblazing pioneering sports talk show, “INSIDE SPORTS.”  

Thanks to Petey and Muhammad Ali, they opened doors in sports media I never thought possible.  Inside Sports changed the way we talk and report sports in America and beyond.

In November 1967 a white fan, listener, and businessman at the Eastern Market in NE DC called Petey and donated 50 turkeys for the needy.  We could not believe our ears.

Petey gave me 10 turkeys for family and friends. He and his friend “Mego” borrowed a van from Capitol Caddilac and delivered turkeys to the needy callers on his Sunday talk show. 

Today’s media Thanksgiving turkey giveaways started with Petey Greene.  He is the footprint in the sand for Inside Sports and the turkey giveaways adopted by radio and television stations in the DMV. 

Petey and I became the Pied Pipers regarding REACH-BACK into the community. Petey Greene’s Washington and the turkey giveaways became his signature landmarks, Kids In Trouble’s annual Christmas Toy Parties for elementary school children and Inside Sports became my signature landmarks. Many have followed our lead, and our community reach-back efforts have been copied but never duplicated.

The Kids In Trouble’s first Christmas toy party December 1968. My Virginia Sailor football teammate, Linebacker George Kelly was Santa’s Helper. I am seen in the background assisting him.

Petey won two Emmy Awards for “Petey Green’s Washington.”

1972 Super Bowl in L. A. Sylvia, Jean, HB, Petey, Judy, and Hattie T,

Washington Post columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Bill Raspberry, Dewey Hughes, and Ollie Johnson join me for a Kids In Trouble basketball fundraiser at GT University against the NFL Washington Redskins.

Fatty Taylor (NBA), Larry Brown (NFL-MVP 1972 ) & Petey hanging out with me at a Hillcrest Saturday Program’s community outing.

“Talk To Me”, the Petey Greene movie was a fraud. It was the Dewey Hughes story. The story never involved Petey’s wife Judy or their two children, Petrie and Pine. The movie was shot in Canada to avoid family and friends in DC who really knew the late Petey Greene. Petey would always remind me to never trust Dewey and Cathy Hughes. He was preaching to the choir.

Dewey misled actor Don Cheadle and Hollywood that he was the know it all behind Petey’s success. He never sought out Emmy Award winner, broadway, and movie star Robert Hooks. Petey and Hooks grew up together in Foggy Bottom in Georgetown.

There was no DC premier of the movie, unless it was held underground. When the movie made its way to the Magic Johnson theater in Landover Mall, I took my wife Hattie and my mother-in-law, Mommy T to check it out. Petey, use to hang out with me at Mommy T’s house in Suitland, Maryland. He kept her laughing, she loved him.

When the lights were turned on and the movie was over, we made our way out to the parking lot, Hattie and Mommy T were very quiet. I never muttered a word. Suddenly, Mommy T often soft spoken yelled, “That was not the Petey Greene I knew!”

Hattie, looked at me and asked, “Where was Judy, Petrie and Pine, and where were you?”

Every time I see Dewey or Cathy at a DC function and try to get an update, they disappear before I can work my way across the room.

THE BIG LIE AND DEWEY HUGHES.

Meet the Thanksgiving Turkey Dewey Hughes, sometimes turkeys dress in dark glasses and Hollywood white!