Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 12, 1993 TAG: 9307120076
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HOUSTON LENGTH: Medium
"I went home and told my wife, `I don't know what this woman's name is, but she's the hardest-working person in sports in the city,' " Glanville said. "I love people who work hard, and Anita outworked everybody in her field."
Martini died Saturday after a long illness. She was 54.
She was a Houston broadcaster for 25 years and a leader in the battle for equal access for male and female sports journalists.
She began her radio career in 1965 doing interviews from the Astrodome stands because women journalists were not allowed onto the field.
Seven years later, she was allowed into the Dome's pressbox. In 1974, she became the first woman reporter allowed access to a major league team's locker room when Los Angeles Dodgers manager Walt Alston allowed her into the team's clubhouse at the Astrodome.
"I don't think Walter [Alston] realized until the next day what a big deal it was," Martini said last April. "He told me: `I guess you and I have started quite a commotion here, haven't we?' "
Her struggles continued through her recent legal battle against Houston radio station KPRC, which forced her off the air in August 1991, 17 months after she underwent surgery to remove a malignant tumor from her brain.
After beginning her career with Houston radio station KTRH during the '60s, she became the nation's first woman sports anchor in the early '70s at Houston television station KPRC.
Although Martini "never was a big women's libber," she helped fight for equal access for women when the gains of the 1970s and '80s came under attack in the 1990s from such figures as Sam Wyche, then coach of the Cincinnati Bengals.
Two weeks after Wyche had barred a woman reporter from entering the Bengals' locker room after a game, Martini - although still feeling the physical impact of her 1989 cancer surgery - went into the locker room after an Oilers-Bengals game to face Wyche.
"It made me sick to see it happening all over again," she said this year. "I wasn't going to let him get away with it, not after all I had been through.
"He [Wyche] followed me all around the dressing room. Then he asked me why I was there. I told him I wanted to interview his quarterback. `You know you just want to see me with my clothes off,' he told me.
"I wanted to smack him, but I didn't. I just said: `Don't flatter yourself.' "
Former NBC broadcaster Joe Garagiola, who helped host a benefit dinner for Martini this year, began as a critic but became a supporter.
"My remembrances of that day [when Martini broke the locker-room barrier] were that I didn't think women reporters belonged," he said. "But I underestimated her. She was a good reporter. We not only became good friends, and that began just out of respect for her ability, but she knew her job and she was going to get that job done, regardless of what obstacles were placed in front of her.
"It's a shame that she was never exposed to the nation, because she should have been. She was the pioneer. . . . There was nothing token about her. Once you started talking to her, you weren't talking male to female. You were talking one sportsperson to another."
Services will be Monday night and burial Tuesday at Calvary Cemetery in Galveston.
Survivors include her mother, Catherine Martini of Las Vegas; two brothers, Sonny Martini of Galveston and Michael Martini of Houston, and a sister, Cathy Arellano of Houston.
by CNB