Foreword by Jim Wells
Editor’s Note: A Golden Gloves champ, Jim Wells was a sportswriter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press for over thirty-seven years, covering some 2,500 bouts. His body of work includes interviews with some of the greatest boxers of all time. Wells has been inducted into the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame and the Mancini’s St. Paul Hall of Fame as well as the Canterbury Park Hall of Fame.
He was widely known as Jim, but to his friends, and there were many of them, he was more affectionately known as Jimmy. By either appellation, Jim O’Hara was truly one of a kind, a man with a burly exterior, a kind heart, and a knack for getting the job done.
He was a man of the streets, St. Paul’s streets, for the majority of his seventy-six years, but he was comfortable in any city or state government building. He was a man without a higher education but with more insight into human nature than associates with doctorates. He could size up a person quickly and accurately and divine his intentions before he uttered a word.
“There was something about him. He really understood human nature,” said former St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist Don Riley, a lifelong friend of O’Hara’s. “His greatest skill was probably bringing people together, getting sides to agree.”
As another friend once put it, O’Hara could walk into a room full of cougars and antelope and have everyone in agreement and happy when he left. His appearance was one thing, gruff and tough with a commanding presence. His ability to negotiate peace between longtime rivals was nearly legendary.
“He could have been anything he wanted to be,” Riley added. “He could have been a politician or a labor negotiator. A million jobs could have used a man like him.”
O’Hara knew the intricate workings of the boxing business as well as anyone and could spot a phony the moment he saw him. “He knew the boxing business inside and out,” said longtime international referee Denny Nelson. “Nobody pulled anything on him. He dealt with nice guys and tough guys, and he could handle both.”
When boxing camps brought their fighters to town, there was Jim O’Hara to deal with, first as a commissioner with the Minnesota Boxing Board, successor to the State Boxing Commission and the State Athletic Commission, and then as the Boxing Board’s longtime executive secretary.
Although he had a secretary for a period of time, O’Hara was a one-man office much of his career. He answered his own calls, providing responses to questions from the press, rival fight camps, fighters, and others who aspired to the profession. As often as not, he served as referee between warring factions, paving the way to a meeting of the minds. There were times, too, when promoters and fighters angrily badmouthed him for bringing ethics to the game, for nixing soft-touch opponents or matches that stunk before they were made.
“Guys would come into town with fighters, and he knew what was going on from the start. He had them figured out before they got here,” Nelson added.
Nelson recalled a time when the two of them were on a downtown corner together and a fellow approached them on the street. “Jimmy, I need this or that,” Nelson recalled. “He helped the fellow out. Jim seemed to know everyone in the city, the politicians as well as the guys at the Dorothy Day Center.”
O’Hara was a salesman in the produce business and worked on beer delivery trucks at one time. Stout fellow that he was, cases of beer were like mere six-packs to him.
He had a heavyweight professional boxing career and learned how the game was conducted from first-hand experience. “He knew his boxing,” Nelson added, “and nobody got anything by him.”
O’Hara rubbed elbows with acquaintances on the streets as well as the city’s big shots, the lawyers and senators at the capitol.
“The advice he gave to people was always right on track,” Nelson added. “He’d say, ‘Forget about that, don’t worry about it, we’ll work it out.’”
There was also his sense of humor, often used to ease tensions between rivals, other times to amuse a friend or, most often, his wife, Kitty. “He used to come home at lunch and tell jokes to me every day. He made me laugh all the time. We had a good time together,” she recalled. “He was home at lunch every day, and we’d chat, and he’d tell me stories.”
She was also acutely aware of her husband’s talents. “He knew how to fix things, how to bring people together,” she said.
His boxing style perhaps left something to be desired.
“He was a big guy but a boxer,” said Riley. “He wasn’t a big hitter, and he carried his hands low, like the great fighter from Pittsburgh, Billy Conn, the way Muhammad Ali later did. We always kidded him about his Pittsburgh style.”
What Riley, about half O’Hara’s size, recalls with particular fondness was his friend’s agility. “For a big guy, he was extremely agile,” Riley said. “We used to put on a show for some of the patrons in a saloon. I’d show up, call him a name or two. Then I’d grab him, and he’d flip over on his back somehow, making it look as though I’d thrown him.” Riley would then say something like, “Next time will be worse,” leaving nearby patrons engrossed and then stunned. “Jim had a terrific sense of humor,” Riley said. “He could have been a great professional wrestler.”
Again, it was his ability to ameliorate intractable situations, to bring harmony to discord, to replace a scowl with a smile, that was O’Hara’s trademark.
“He was the only guy I ever knew who could agree with both sides and then have both agreeing when he got through with them. He could keep people off each other’s throats,” Riley said.
O’Hara kept himself aware of the world by starting the day early, wherever he went. “Whenever we traveled, I’d get up the next day and find him in a coffee shop or someplace reading the local paper before 7 a.m.,” Riley said. “He always said that the only real smart people in the world are those with street smarts, and he had them. He knew things about fighters that they didn’t know about themselves.”
Jim O’Hara, truly Mr. Boxing in Minnesota for decades, left the world in 2002, much too soon and with work still to do. Even Kitty isn’t quite sure what made him such an attraction to people around him.
“We’d walk into a room somewhere, and everyone wanted to be near him. I can’t put my finger on it. I don’t know what it was,” she said.
No one does, Kitty. For years now, we’ve been trying to define it with terms such as “big shoes to fill,” “one of a kind,” “a man of the people.”
Maybe we can drop the analysis and settle simply for Jimmy O’Hara, Mr. Boxing.
Jim Wells
January 2013
Foreword by Charley Walters
Editor’s note: After his career in professional baseball, Charley Walters became a sports journalist. His column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press is a daily must read.
What I know about Jim O’Hara pretty much is what many others had told me about him when I had the opportunity to be with him, whether it be a boxing match or Sports Hall of Fame function at Mancini’s famed restaurant.
Or watching St. Paul’s godfather in those days, Nick Mancini, and Jim O’Hara chatting at a restaurant table, delighting each other with stories about the great characters they had known, those on the way up and those on the way down.
Jim O’Hara’s many friends boasted about him because they were so proud that they could call him a friend.
What I know about Jim is that he knew a lot about life because he knew so many people and knew about their lives. I would see him at Mancini’s giving counsel to younger people with a sincerity that made them eager to listen. I would also see him empathizing with older people and their challenges because he obviously fought through a lot of the same himself.
I know Jim O’Hara was tough, a champion heavyweight boxer who knew what it took to win. He also was so gracious and humble. People who have fought their way to the top in life usually have those qualities. Jim certainly did.
Most of all, Jim O’Hara was a gentleman—respectful, classy, friendly, and understanding. He always stood tall.
Among his missions in his later years of life was to recognize the wonderful athletes that his St. Paul had produced. That still occurs annually through the Mancini’s Sports Hall of Fame. I’ve attended most of those sold-out banquets, and while they’re certainly still a tribute to Jim, his physical presence is greatly missed. But if you look in the back of the room, you can see Jim O’Hara’s spirit there, quietly smiling and nodding, because of what he could do to help others.
As a sportswriter, I would go to Jim regularly to get the truth about upcoming boxing matches. I knew he would tell me the truth about fighters, whether they were qualified or whether some promoter was throwing some guy into the ring for an easy victory. O’Hara wouldn’t allow the latter.
As executive secretary for the Minnesota Boxing Board, Jim could easily spot the phonies, and I relied on him for his scouting reports. If a fighter wasn’t legitimate, O’Hara wouldn’t allow him in the ring.
Jim O’Hara was a man of great integrity. It was an honor to know him.
Charley Walters
August 2012
Foreword by Dan Hall
Editor’s note: An attorney and past Mayor of Roseville, Dan Wall served a decade as a Minnesota boxing commissioner.
Jim O’Hara was a Minnesota boxing legend long before I came to know him. At my first pro fight as a member of the Minnesota Boxing Board in February 1992, Jim put his arm around my neck and marched me to the middle of the arena. “See that ring? That’s the only thing square about boxing.” So said Jim on the need for vigilance, and with that, he went back to his prefight duties as the executive secretary of the board, leaving me alone to ponder what I had gotten myself into.
Over the next ten years, I had the time of my life working with and learning from one of boxing’s greatest gentlemen, scholars, and tellers of tales.
Steve O’Hara, Jim’s son, gives us an insider’s look at his dad’s boxing career as well as his private life and times. It’s an account of a man who could freeze your blood with a low growl or melt your heart with a tender smile. The author writes warmly about the hardship and loss of his parents’ early years. Jim grew up fast in St. Paul’s roughest neighborhood where you had to be savvy and tough enough to earn the respect of your peers. Along the way, he rubbed shoulders with St. Paul’s movers and shakers as well its shadier citizens. Without benefit of a high school diploma, Jim established himself as a successful businessman and community leader and, with Kitty, raised a family of four children and many grandchildren.
When Jim’s dander was up, you wanted to be a million miles away. At all other times, you wanted to be close enough to bask in the glow of his gentle spirit and Irish wit. No one cared more for the safety and welfare of the fighter, and no one brought more integrity to the “sweet science” than Jim O’Hara.
This is a compelling story laced with anecdotes from an interesting and notable cast of characters, an inspiring tale of an honorable life lived to the fullest.
Dan Wall
September 2012
Next: Introduction
