FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The ball traveled over the wall in straightaway center at Fenway Park, clanged off a cameraman's leg, and came to rest on the field. That was a blessing for George Lombard, who was able to retrieve the ball he hit off Sunny Kim for his third career home run and first in Boston. He inscribed, signed, and dated the ball.
To the best grandfather ever. George Lombard. July 7, 2002.
He delivered the ball to his grandfather and namesake, then 91 years old.
"That was just a special time," said Lombard, a 29-year-old center fielder contending for the one available spot on the Red Sox bench.
That time was special because Lombard had enjoyed his childhood summers at his grandfather's home on Wings Neck in Pocasset on Cape Cod. Special because his grandfather, George Francis Fabian Lombard, was once the dean of the Harvard Business School. Special because, by his estimate, seven relatives attend or attended Harvard.
Special because Lombard's grandfather had lived the previous 17 years with the burden of being at the wheel when Lombard's mother, Posy, was killed in a car accident.
"It was very difficult for him," said Lombard, who was 10 at the time. "When my mother passed away, he set up everything so we wouldn't have to worry about any of our education. My brother got the chance to go to law school. My sister is in grad school at Harvard."
That accident robbed Lombard of a remarkable mother, a woman who graduated from Smith College in 1964 and moved to the South as the civil rights movement reached a crescendo.
"She was one of those people, from everyone I've talked to, who thought she could make a difference," Lombard said. "And I think she did."
As an activist, Posy Lombard marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom she knew personally, Lombard said. She taught art and designed silk screens that depicted people marching.
"A lot of the silk screening she did I still have," he said. "They're trying to get it into the Smithsonian. It's pretty powerful stuff. That's another thing I had no idea of, how big a deal that was for her to take a stand during her time."
While living in the South, Posy, a white woman from Weston, met a black man named Paul Williams, with whom she had three children. She raised them in south Georgia.
"She just believed everybody should be treated equal," Lombard said. "She stood up for a lot of things. That's the way we were raised. That no one was any better than anybody else, no matter what background they came from."
That influence shows in the careers her children chose. The oldest child, Matt, became a public defender. The youngest, Rosemary, went on to graduate school at Harvard, where she's studying education.
Lombard, the middle child, never did go to college.