Sputnik Monroe

He was born Rocco Monroe DiGrazio in Dodge City, Kansas; his father had been killed in an airplane accident a month before his birth. His mother remarried and his stepfather adopted him, changing his name to Rock Monroe Brumbaugh. At seventeen, he was wrestling all comers at county fairs; after serving in the U.S. Navy, he went professional and soon became known as one of its best known personalities. He received the nickname "Sputnik" at a television taping in Mobile, Alabama in 1957 when a female heckler called him "a Communist, a damned sputnik". Wrestling in venues in the segregated pre-Civil Rights South such as Houston, Memphis and Mobile, Monroe was one of the first professional wrestlers to wrestle against (and later with) African Americans; he later successfully formed a tag team duo with African American wrestler Norvell Austin. Monroe was a hero to African Americans in the South, particularly in Memphis, where he insisted that he play before integrated audiences and became a hero to those African Americans restricted to the balconies and "nosebleed" seats of the stadiums, theaters, and other venues scattered throughout the South, as he was the only major wrestler who treated them with respect. Upon entering the ring, Monroe would turn to the African American patrons and acknowledge their approbation, while the white patrons booed and cursed him. He was a fixture in the black community of Memphis, and in 2002 was honored with an exhibit at the Memphis Rock n Soul Museum, as one of the first to advocate the integration of public events. Married six times, he was survived by his current wife Joanne, two sons and a daughter.