'Almost a saint': Roberto Clemente is as influential as ever 50 years after his death
When Roberto Clemente Jr. woke on the morning of Dec. 31, 1972, he immediately tiptoed to his parents' bedroom to see whether his father was up.
The elder Clemente, one of baseball's biggest stars, suffered from insomnia, so Roberto Jr., then 7, was always careful not to wake him — not to mention his father had been busy organizing relief efforts for victims of a catastrophic earthquake in Nicaragua. Clemente's wife, Vera, had put in room-darkening window shades to help her husband sleep, so Roberto Jr. felt around on the bed to make sure his father wasn't there.
He found his parents at the dining room table and offered them the traditional greeting that Puerto Rican children give their parents: "Bendicion." A request for a blessing.
The elder Clemente responded as he always did: "Que Dios te bendiga." May God bless you.
For reasons Roberto Jr. still doesn't understand, he then told his father, "Dad, don't get on the plane, because it's going to crash."
"There was no way for me to know he was flying," he said. "He hadn't told me that he was flying and there was no sign in our house that he was flying.
