Willie Aikens’ film due out this month

Baseball’s rich library of films can soon add another.  It’s titled, “The Royal” and depicts the Major League career of Seneca native Willie Mays Aikens, his downfall to drugs, and his later redemption.  The movie draws on a book by Kansas City-based writer Greg Jordan, the first 11 pages of which center on Aikens’ growing up in Seneca.  Stories on Aikens’ emergence as a power hitter at Seneca High and on the local American Legion team fielded by Charles McGee Byrd Post 120 remain etched in the memories of Aikens’ Seneca friends and fans.  And 101./7 WGOG has been able to confirm another one, as told by a woman who worked alongside Aikens’ mother at a Seneca restaurant back in the 1970s.  Susie Groomes was a waitress at Land’s Restaurant; Aikens’ mother, Lucille Mickler, was a dishwasher.  Their working relationship developed into a friendship and was highlighted during a World Series when Groomes’ and her father drove Mickler to the Atlanta Airport, from which she took her first flight and was able to watch her son played in the series, tickets for which her son set aside for her.  The trip was not a stretch for the Groomes.  They were baseball fans, and today Susie Groomes’ son, Nick, is the baseball coach at West-Oak High School.  The Major League career of Willie Mays Aikens ended prematurely when he got mixed up in the drug world, served a lengthy federal prison sentence.  But later Aikens turned his life around and secured a job as hitting instructor for his former team, the Kansas City Royals.