1960 Union Oil Patti Waggin's Husband

Sidebar......We here in the Houston area got very lucky when Hurricane Laura moved east before landfall. It came in just below Cat 5. Bad news. But here on the far east side of the county we had hardly a hint of wind all night. Wish I could say the same for the folks nearer the state line and in Louisiana. I have several college friends living in Lake Charles and I believe they all got out of harm's way yesterday.

---

Ok, so it's a Don Rudolph card. But you wouldn't have even clicked in your reading list had I used that as the post's title, right?

A little background is in order.

Sorry, not THAT sort of background.

This is what I meant....

When I came across Don Rufolph's card for my 1959 blog I flipped it over and saw that this was the cartoon.

THAT got my attention. I dug around and found that Don had married burlesque star Patti Waggin. That's her that is referenced as a 'professional dancer' in the cartoon. Down the rabbit hole I went and found that Miss Waggin (born Patricia Artae Hardwick) was a Baltimore star and, by all accounts, a peach of a lady.

Here's a bio I dug up on IMDB:

Patti was born in 1926 and was married three times. A second marriage to championship motorcycle racer Bill Brownell took place in Chico, California. She attended Chico State majoring in dance and acting. She was athletically gifted and played sports in college.

After her divorce in 1950, she took the stage name of Patti Waggin, given to her by then manager Lillian Hunt. She continued performing until 1960. She married baseball pitcher Don Rudolph in 1955 and stayed with him until his death in a truck accident in 1968. They had one child, a girl.

Patti incorporated athleticism into her act and was considered one of the friendliest girls on the burlesque circuit. She was alternately billed as The Educated Torso, The Sex Oomph Girl, and the Fresh Faced Girl Next Door. She answered all of her own fan mail and kept the letters. These were incorporated into a book, "Fan Letters To A Stripper: A Patti Waggin Tale."

She died in 1992 from an intestinal disorder.

As noted in that bio she had previously been married to a motorcycle racer and I just found this bike site that has an article and some photos (some locked except for members apparently) of Patti in her riding days.

But back to the reason for this post. As I got more familiar with Don Rudolph I picked up the rest of his Topps cards. He had cards in '58 and '59 as well as '62 through '64. The first three issued all used the same photo.

He also had several food/retail cards from his days with the Seattle Rainiers of the PCL in '59/'60. Some are quite pricey so they are off the table for me but this Union Oil issue, from a 1960 set of nine, had a small pinhole and came cheap.

Neat little reference to Don's marriage on the reverse as well. Look below for a bigger image.

 Just for reference, here is the Union Oil card scanned with his '59 Topps.

All his cards are here on the Trading Card Database site. And there is more info and plenty of pics in my post of that '59 Topps card.