Robert Redford signs autographs on the Brown campus. "Stop the cart," he said, when film historian Barbara Green showed him a copy of a still from a Twilight Zone episode that Redford appeared in with Gladys Cooper, called "Nothing in the Dark."

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

Robert Redford’s uncle, David Redford, could have played Major League Baseball in Saint Louis when he graduated from Brown University in 1940. He could have pursued white-collar work at Chrysler or been commissioned as a military officer.

Instead, the tall Rhode Islander chose a different fate: he enlisted in the army as a buck private and was stationed in California. There, on a street in Los Angeles, he taught baseball and football to a boy — a Red Sox fan — who would become one of the country’s most famous actors and an Academy Award-winning director.

“He made an enormous impact on me,” the film star said yesterday. “He was funny. He was kind. He was eccentric. He was witty. He was smart. He was athletic. He taught me how to play baseball. He taught me how to play football. And then he died in the war.”

Redford acknowledged that receiving an honorary degree from the Ivy League School today is a nice thing for someone who doesn’t see himself as an academic achiever. And he also appreciates the opportunity to come to Brown and talk about art and movies and the Sundance Film Festival.

But that isn’t why he’s here this Memorial Day weekend.

He spoke to about 1,300 people yesterday who had clapped and whistled when he ambled into the tent on College Hill for what a university brochure described as a forum about “the art of politics, and the politics of art.”

After he talked about the Iraq war, the changing film industry and the value of education, Redford said he wanted “to spend a second” talking about his uncle. He then told the story of David Redford’s upbringing in New England and his sacrifice in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.

Later, in an interview, he said, “Here was a guy, one family member, that really came through and came from a very harsh … background and really made something of himself only to be cut down as he was entering the prime of his life. I’m really here for him, to celebrate a family achievement that didn’t get the chance to see the light of day. I felt, ‘Well, at least … I can convert this honor to kind of point toward a family member that really deserved that.’ ”

Redford says his ancestors immigrated to the United States from Ireland and Scotland in the 1800s, making their way through Boston and settling in Westerly.

“They were a very large family,” Redford says. “They had real struggles.”

Many years later, Redford’s father, Charles Robert Redford Sr., was shipped out west to live with his aunt in Los Angeles because the family couldn’t afford to raise two boys.

He says his uncle stayed in Westerly and later moved to Connecticut when his grandfather, Charles E. Redford, took an assembly line job at Electric Boat.

While Redford’s father struggled in California, his uncle found his way to the Ivy League in 1936.

“He worked his way into Brown and he became captain of the baseball team, two years in a row,” Redford says.

“He came from nowhere and built himself into someone really special,” Redford says.

“He was a Phi Beta Kappa,” he says. “He spoke four languages fluently.”

Redford says he met his uncle when he was 4 years old.

David Redford was 6 feet, 6 inches tall, with black hair.

On leave from his army base in northern California, he became a surrogate dad for his nephew, whose own father, a milkman, was trying to put bread on the table.

His uncle taught him how to throw the football in a spiral and how to punt — and about baseball.

“He would put a rag out on the street,” Redford recalled in the interview. “He would break the base into pieces. It isn’t just one bag. There are sections of the base and corners. You have to stretch for the throw. He would throw the ball to me and make me stretch this way or that way.”

He taught the future star of The Natural how to track the trajectory of a baseball by watching it leave a pitcher’s fingertips.

Redford remembers when his uncle went off to war. Gen. George Patton’s Third Army had a role for a linguist. Redford says his uncle went on missions ahead of the main battle contingents to gather information from villagers.

“I remembered him going off to war and going to the movie theater to see these newsreels of the war going on at the front,” Redford says. “I would always say, ‘God my uncle’s in that.’ When he died, it was devastating for the family. Particularly me.”

Redford ,71, figures he was about 7 years old. His uncle was only 23.

David Redford was killed near Luxembourg. He was riding in a Jeep that came under enemy fire as it crossed an icy bridge.

“It went off the bridge and he died,” Redford says.

mreynold@projo.com