Late Rounds
Round 12: Education
If Jim O’Hara didn’t stick around in school to get a formal education, he came to know boxing inside out from some of the best in the profession. He learned:
• To operate a gym from Billy Colbert and Emmett Weller;
• To train a fighter from Ray Temple, Murray McLean, and Emmett Weller;
• To be a matchmaker from Billy Colbert and Murray McLean;
• To manage a fighter from Murray McLean and Emmett Weller;
• To promote a boxing show from Billy Colbert, Jack Raleigh, Spike McCarthy, Lou Katz, and Mike Thomas;
• To ref from Ray Temple and Denny Nelson;
• To work a corner from all of the above;
• To speak publicly from Don Riley;
• To run a Golden Gloves tournament from Emmett Weller and Joe Azzone;
• To run a boxing commission from Jack Gibbons and Dick Plunkett.
As of 2014, six of these boxing aficionados have been inducted into the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame. Don Riley was inducted in 2010 as a member of its inaugural class. Emmett Weller was inducted in 2011; Denny Nelson, 2012; Jack Raleigh, 2013; and Jack Gibbons and Jim, 2014.
With a gift for numbers, Jim counted to five continuously and effortlessly, like breathing. This habit allowed him to tell time without looking at a clock. Not quite, but he could watch a freight train go by and almost tell you the sum of the numbers on the freight cars. He knew a guy from the streets who could accomplish that feat.
Don Riley, former sports columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, knew Jim for over fifty years. He called him a “gentle giant with a terrific mind.” (Riley is quoted by Terry Collins, “Jim O’Hara Dies; He Ran the State Boxing Board,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 21, 2002, page B5, column 1.)
Although he showed promise in mathematics, Jim declined to go to high school, a decision he regretted later in life when he could appreciate the value of a formal education. At the time, he turned his math skills to the family budget. He figured it was more important to try to help the family bring in at least as much money as it paid out.
Despite having skipped high school, he felt comfortable with people of all educational levels. Dick Plunkett, former chairman of the Minnesota Boxing Board, graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School. When he chaired the boxing board, he also was the president of a bank. He and Jim didn’t know each other well before Jim was appointed to the boxing board in 1976, but they became friends for life. In 2012, Dick wrote: “If you could only have one friend—Jim would be a unanimous choice.”
Jim also felt comfortable with public speaking, including on the history of boxing at the College of St. Thomas, now the University of St. Thomas. He spoke at Parents’ Weekend, or some such event, at St. Thomas on more than one occasion.
For him, boxing and history went together hand in glove or, more precisely, bare knuckle in boxing glove. Essayist A. J. Liebling said it best: “The Sweet Science is joined onto the past like a man’s arm to his shoulder.” He penned these words in the introduction to the book Sports Illustrated ranked, in 2002, the number one sports book of all time: The Sweet Science (Viking Press 1956). For his essays on boxing, Liebling was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992. He believed television would put boxing into a coma. See his comments quoted near the end of Round 13, entitled “The Businessman.”
Jim could read well. He assembled a library on boxing, which he consulted regularly, including, of course, the bible of boxing, The Ring magazine.
He communicated effectively through the spoken word. A high school education would have improved his ability to communicate with the written word, not to mention the many other benefits he would have enjoyed in and from high school.
At lunch with his buddies, he listened as they reminisced about their glory days in high school athletics. “It’s sad when you peak in high school,” Jim said with a wistful smile, wishing he had been in school with them. His area high school was St. Paul’s Mechanic Arts. He would have liked to have graduated with his pal Bert Sandberg as part of the class of 1943. Sandberg went on to give his country three years of decorated service in the navy. After World War II, Sandberg was a star athlete at Augsburg College, where he’s a member of the school‘s hall of fame for football, basketball, and track.
There’s a famous artist from the neighborhood, another contemporary of Jim’s, who also skipped high school, LeRoy Neiman. Both were born on the wrong side of the tracks, but Neiman eventually got a formal education. After World War II, Neiman passed the high school equivalency test and, with the GI Bill, graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he later taught (LeRoy Neiman, All Told: My Art and Life Among Athletes, Playboys, Bunnies and Provocateurs, Chapters 1 and 3 (Lyons Press 2012), Kindle Edition). He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2007.
Poking fun at himself, Jim said many times: “I can say big words too, like cantaloupe and watermelon.”
In addition to boxing, he worked in the produce business with his pal Jerry Hurley. See Round 13, entitled “The Businessman.” Jim wasn’t the handiest guy with a wrench, but when their company, Jerry’s Produce, moved to Payne Avenue on the east side of St. Paul, they were required to have an engineer on the premises to be in charge of the boiler. Jim studied and passed the exam with no problem. “I’m an engineer,” he joked. “Imagine that.”
He said he went through high school vicariously through his four children. He and his wife, Kitty, sacrificed to make it possible for their children to go to some good schools, including Our Lady of Peace High School, Cretin High School (whose alumni include Jack Gibbons), the College of St. Thomas, and Northwestern University.
Jim claimed to have a PhD in street smarts from the School of Hard Knocks. You learn more from your losses than your wins. He acquired a mental toughness. To survive, he knew from experience that mental toughness is more important than any physical toughness.
He defined street smarts as “common sense which ain’t too common, and judgment.”
He learned to anticipate the hustle, how to beat someone at his own game, and when to throw in the towel.
Streets smarts also includes psychology—to cool tempers, and to help people without their knowing it. See Round 15, entitled “Unselfish Purpose.”
When he was a boy, the Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym plus the nearby Harkins Recreation Pool Hall made for the Academy of Street Smarts. See Round 13, entitled “The Businessman.”
“O’Hara was revered by many who knew him as a kind but firm man whose wisdom often astonished people with superior educations,” said sportswriter Jim Wells of the St. Paul Pioneer Press (Jim Wells, “Jim O’Hara, 76, Boxing Official,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 19, 2002, Obituaries, City Edition).
With more than two fists of street smarts, Jim became an educator himself in that he not only listened and shared, he worked each day to create a lasting environment where young people could become good citizens. As Terry Collins of the Minneapolis Star Tribune said: “His goal was to recruit community leaders to help youngsters in the Golden Gloves program stay in the ring, in school and out of trouble” (Terry Collins, supra).
Round 13: The Business Man
Minnesota’s Scott LeDoux battled world heavyweight champion Larry Holmes for the title in July 1980 in Bloomington, Minnesota. LeDoux didn’t win, but he gained the continued gratitude of his many fans for the excitement of a world heavyweight championship fight.
The 6,491 spectators in attendance paid $253,000, the standing Minnesota record gate, which is about $995,338 in 2015 dollars. With the revenue from TV broadcasts, LeDoux won a big payday if not the title.
Jim was involved as executive secretary to the Boxing Board. Don King was the promoter.
Five years earlier, in September 1975 at the state fairgrounds, LeDoux put up his dukes against New York’s Brian O’Melia. LeDoux won a ten-round unanimous decision. Here Jim was the promoter. For this show, he called LeDoux the French Bomber, rather than the Fighting Frenchman, because he called O’Melia the Fighting Irishman.
Jim named his promotional business the All State Boxing Club. During this time, promoter Bob Arum, who worked with Muhammad Ali, named his firm Top Rank. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Arum discovered how much money could be made in boxing (from the millions of viewers paying to watch closed-circuit telecasts) when he investigated tax fraud for the US Justice Department (George Kimball, Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran, and the Last Great Era of Boxing, Chapter 2 (McBooks Press, Inc. 2008), Kindle Edition).
Neither Don King nor Bob Arum promoted The Fight, the historic Ali-Frazier contest that went fifteen rounds in March 1971. Through closed-circuit broadcasting, The Fight was watched by 300,000,000 (that’s eight zeros!) at arenas and theaters around the world. This match would crown the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Both Ali and Frazier were undefeated, and both had widely recognized claims to the title.
Frazier won a unanimous decision. Madison Square Garden saw a record night for the live gate. The 20,455 spectators paid $1,352,951, which is about $7,406,797 in 2015 dollars. The fighters received a then record $2,500,000 each, or about $13,685,485 each in 2015 dollars (Phil Pepe, Come Out Smokin’ Joe Frazier: The Champ Nobody Knew, Chapter entitled “The Fight” (Division Books 2012), Kindle Edition).
They say “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler’s take-home pay for his professional debut in May 1973 was $40. Imagine that (George Kimball, supra, Chapter 1). If you figure a conservative annual inflation rate of 4 percent, Hagler’s take-home pay in 2015 dollars might be about $202. (All estimates of current dollars by this writer are based on an annual inflation rate of 4 percent. If you think that rate isn’t conservative, figure in the annual increase in the cost of medical insurance among other items.)
In 1975, Jim paid Scott LeDoux $800 for fighting O’Melia, or about $3,743 in 2015 dollars. If his manager received a third, LeDoux’s take-home pay in 2015 dollars might have been about $2,495.
Jim learned he couldn’t rely on boxing as his sole source of income. He tried, over the winter of 1947-1948, traveling as far as San Francisco. When it didn’t work out, lesson learned, he sold his brand-new Chevy coupe that had brought him there and for which he had confidently paid cash at age twenty-one. The proceeds kept him afloat, and once back in St. Paul in the spring of 1948, he promised Kitty (whom he married later that year) he’d find and keep a full-time day job in addition to boxing.
Thus, in terms of supporting himself and his family, his first priority became a full-time job separate from the ups and downs of boxing. A lucrative boxing career depends on so many variables beyond anyone’s control, and he never bet the farm on it. On the other hand, he believed he had some control over a day job in terms of getting there bright and early and applying himself. There he could show initiative and maybe catch a break without having to slip deadly blows or cover for poor attendance at a show. With another job in addition to boxing, he had a backup plan and a level of independence.
Scott LeDoux had worked day jobs in addition to boxing. An article in 1982 reported:
Boxing hasn’t been the easiest to Scott LeDoux. Now he has made several successful investments with his winnings, but during his struggling years he has worked as a long-distance truck driver, bartender, bouncer, private investigator, salesman, and many other small jobs to make a living. (Terry Marsh, “Ex-Golden Glover, Scott LeDoux,” Upper Midwest Golden Gloves Year Book, 47, March 19, 1982.)
Jim worked just about every day of the year, less on Saturdays, and a couple hours on Sunday. He didn’t force himself to work. He worked naturally, resting and pacing himself as needed. He said he loved to work “when I don’t have to.” He liked staying ahead of the power curve. “Prepared is my middle name,” he said. He didn’t seem to need vacations. Upon quitting drinking for good in 1971, one of his disciplines was early to bed, early to rise. “An hour of sleep before midnight,” he advised, “is worth two after midnight.”
Intense hunger and poverty were no strangers to him as a child, and so he learned young to find work wherever he could. A poor city boy, he never learned to fish or hunt. But his childhood wasn’t all work. At Lake Phalen on St. Paul’s East Side, he learned to be graceful in the water. He could water-ski barefoot, and he could dive into a pool with hardly a splash, a skill he maintained throughout his life.
You know Jim was happy as a boy to find work downtown peddling newspapers, sweeping floors, shoveling snow, running errands, and shining shoes. Here he learned street smarts, including from older fellows such as Vic Tedesco of St. Paul’s Little Italy neighborhood (Vic Tedesco and Trudi Hahn, I Always Sang for My Father (Or Anyone Who Would Listen) 21-23 and 171 (Syren Book Company 2006)).
Jim’s family was poorer than a church mouse compared to Tedesco’s, but both boys were budding entrepreneurs, always on the lookout for opportunities to earn money for their mothers.
Part of street smarts is being able to anticipate and sidestep the hustle. Another aspect of street smarts is the ability to beat a guy at his own game. For the St. Paul street kid growing up in the 1930s, a ready Academy of Street Smarts, you might say, was the pool hall. The famous artist LeRoy Neiman, whom Jim knew as a fellow St. Paul street kid, recalled the city was sometimes referred to as “St. Pool” for its hundreds of pool halls. In his autobiography Neiman paints the scene:
Many of my first lessons in the philosophy of beating someone at their own game were learned in the billiard parlors. I was mesmerized by slick-shooting snooker sharks plying their effortless elbow-craft in shady downtown joints, surrounded by wised-up sharpies betting on corner-pocket outcomes in their pungent street argot. Many of these wagering denizens of pool halls preferred betting on the outcome of a numbered ball more than anything else, if only for the chance to outsmart someone.
Their body language while engaged in this activity was a sight to behold. I avidly studied their mannerisms—it was better than any life-drawing class. I can still go back to when I was a kid, invisible to the ferociously focused adults, watching with awe as a player, wreathed in a cloud of cigar smoke and anticipation, is circling the table, visor-shaded eyes never leaving the line of play, leaning over the table to invisibly influence the ball through mental radar, leaning nonchalantly back, and then with cool aplomb making his move. In the blink of an eye and the flash of a cue stick, he’s pocketed the yellow-striped 9-ball! Deftly circling the table again like a bird of prey, he addresses the cue ball. . . . Time is suspended, all street talk is hushed. With almost supernatural sleight of hand he sinks the ball with a nearly impossible banked shot as onlookers nod and peel off rolls of bills to pay off their debts. I soaked this stuff up like crazy. I could rerun these melodramas of clinking balls in my mind at will, and sketched it all years later from memory. (LeRoy Neiman, All Told: My Art and Life Among Athletes, Playboys, Bunnies and Provocateurs, Chapter 1 (Lyons Press 2012), Kindle Edition.)
There was the pool hall named Harkins Recreation, also known as St. Paul Recreation, in the Hamm Building downtown on St. Peter Street. When Jim wasn’t learning to sidestep schemes at Harkins, you might’ve found him learning to sidestep blows at the famous Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym, down the hall in the same building. See Round 6, entitled “The Boxer.”
A decision Jim regretted later in life was skipping high school. At the time he thought all an education should be good for is to learn how to make a living. On this score, he believed he had all the learning he needed. His uncle, John Hoban, born John O’Hara, hadn’t gone beyond the fifth grade and was able to support his family and have money left over to help his sister, Jim’s mother.
Uncle John, adopted by the Hobans as a boy, was now the credit manager at American Linen. Both he and Jim had natural intelligence with a particular gift for numbers. When playing cards, they knew, as the game developed, what cards they had and hadn’t seen, while doing the math and carrying on a conversation.
In lieu of high school, Jim worked full-time at Swift’s Packing House in south St. Paul. With money from this job, he was able to help his mother and become one of the first in the family to own a car. In 1940 or so, he bought a Willys, pronounced in the neighborhood “Will-eez.” Later in 1943, during the time he and Kitty were getting to know each other, he drove a beer truck full-time for Pabst Blue Ribbon and lived at the downtown St. Paul YMCA.
When he and Kitty married in November 1948, he was between day jobs. Earlier that year, he had returned from San Francisco, where he had spent the better part of the winter of 1947-1948 boxing. He and another fighter had driven there in Jim’s brand-new Chevy coupe.
Before marriage, Jim’s most recent day job was as an iron worker. After marriage, he soon became a milkman, a job that was more to his liking because his feet were closer to the ground and he kept in shape running up and down tenement stairs. At the time, it was common to have a milkman deliver an array of dairy products to your door five or six mornings a week.
From his milkman job, he graduated, while maintaining his boxing career, to Hamm’s Brewery in St. Paul where he drove a delivery truck and, importantly, learned how to make wholesale sales. He stayed in shape hauling cases of beer up and down and in and out of places.
At Hamm’s Brewery, Jim got to know Paul Wild, who helped on the delivery truck while going to school. They became friends for life. A 1954 graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, Dr. Wild could move with lightning speed. His turf was frozen water, on which he skated past defenders and shot pucks into nets. His stories included the 1948 Olympics. The venue was St. Moritz, Switzerland, the first Olympics after World War II, known as the V Olympic Winter Games.
Two rival United States hockey teams had arrived in St. Moritz, each claiming to be the legitimate US Olympic team. The dispute was over amateurism. Dr. Wild was on the amateur team backed by the US Olympic Committee. The other team was composed of professionals backed, ironically, by the international Amateur Hockey Association. Without blowing the whole hockey tournament, how could this in-your-hockey-face controversy be resolved?
Back in 1948, no US Olympic hockey player won. Dr. Wild’s team represented the United States in the opening ceremony parade but wasn’t allowed on the ice. The other team, the pros, represented the United States in exhibition play only and wasn’t allowed in the opening ceremony parade. Both teams were disqualified from medaling. Canada won gold, with Czechoslovakia silver and Switzerland bronze.
Jim’s retirement from boxing in 1953 didn’t set the family back too bad because he still had his job at Hamm’s brewery. But years later, he found himself unemployed when a strike was called and he and the other drivers refused to cross the picket line.
For some time, he’d been a regular at Jerry’s Produce Co., which was then on 10th and Jackson in downtown St. Paul. He liked to hang out there with his brother Ed, who was a buddy of the owner, Jerry Hurley. Jim gladly accepted the offer in the second half of the 1950s when Jerry suggested that Jim, with his wholesale sales experience, help Jerry expand from retail to wholesale.
For the rest of his life, Jim worked with Jerry, and they grew the company into a major wholesaler of pizza and spaghetti supplies as well as fruits and vegetables.
They developed so many Italian restaurant accounts that Jerry became known as the Mozzarella King. The company expanded into supplying Italian restaurants in the mid-1960s. Tad Vezner, writing for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, explained how Jerry Hurley, an Irishman, got a foothold in an Italian market: “Some in the business told him an Irishman would never make it—but Hurley had become best friends with Jim O’Hara, head of the Minnesota Boxing Commission, who started soliciting for him” (Tad Vezner, “Jerry Hurley: A Life of Hard Work Made Him St. Paul’s ‘Mozzarella King,’” St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 29, 2010).
Prior to joining Jerry’s Produce, Jim's work clothes had been a Hamm’s Brewery uniform. Now he wore a coat and tie, and he developed the routine of admiring his attire in the living room mirror in order to get a rise out of Kitty. “You look like Doctor Quack,” she responded like clockwork. Then they laughed together. They had many such routines.
Work at Jerry’s Produce wasn’t all fancy clothes. He wore them in the afternoons when he called on prospective accounts but not in the mornings.
In the mornings, he drove the company truck since he and Jerry couldn’t afford to hire anyone to make the deliveries.
In the produce business, Jim handled many a large sack of potatoes. So he could say with authority on more than one level that a knock-out punch well delivered makes you drop like a sack of potatoes—straight to the floor. Boxing essayist A. J. Liebling put it this way after Rocky Marciano knocked out Jersey Joe Walcott in 1952: “Walcott . . . flowed down like flour out of a chute. He didn’t seem to have a bone in his body.” Liebling wrote these words in the essay entitled “Big Fellows Again: New Champ” in the book Sports Illustrated ranked, in 2002, the number one sports book of all time: The Sweet Science (The Viking Press 1956).
In the first Marciano-Walcott fight, it had looked like Walcott was going to get the win. But then the Rock connected with an equalizer in the thirteenth when both men were popping right leads to the head. A twelve-inch burst before impact, the Rock’s right got to Walcott’s chin first.
Marciano is ranked number fourteen on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time. Jersey Joe Walcott is ranked number seventy-nine (Bert Randolph Sugar, Boxing’s Greatest Fighters, 43 and 267 (The Lyons Press 2006)). For his essays on boxing, A. J. Liebling was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992. Liebling believed television would put boxing into a coma. See his comments quoted below.
The second Marciano-Walcott fight, which took place in 1953, was a nonevent. The Rock won by knockout in the first round, which otherwise had little action.
At Jerry’s Produce, Jim worked long days, and Jerry worked longer. Jim worked six and a half days in a week, and Jerry worked a complete seven. Jim continued to stay involved in boxing, whereas Jerry’s sole focus was the produce business. Eventually, Jerry lost nearly all his eyesight, and he responded by working even harder each day for the rest of his life.
Because Jim’s devotion to boxing in one capacity or another didn’t allow him to focus solely on the produce business, he determined early that the honorable thing to do was to tell Jerry not to worry about who owns what. For the rest of his life, Jim refused to dilute the ownership of the company founder, the one and only Jerry Hurley—the blind, Irish, always-there-for-you working machine. They became like brothers. Jim said of Jerry: “When he hurts, I hurt.”
Jerry Hurley had always been a determined, hard-working individual. With his eyes already beginning to fail, he left his St. Paul home in 1934, at the age of twelve, stowing away in a train headed west. He decided to see what he could before his eyesight was gone. He supported himself through the Great Depression, sending money home to his parents, brother, and seven sisters. It was in Washington State that he learned to buy produce from the farmers and sell it on the road. He eventually returned to St. Paul to settle down and, in 1949, opened shop in downtown St. Paul (Tad Vezner, supra).
Both Jerry and Jim had a gift with figures and excellent memories. They didn’t use computers as we know them. Their computers were between their ears. Jim got to where he liked to run everything like a business, sticking to a budget and making every decision with a dispassionate cost-benefit analysis.
The hardest part in business can be collecting the bill. For years, this writer prepared the invoices for Jim’s accounts, and there were few collection problems. If there was a problem, Jim told the customer: “I was there for you. Now I need you to be here for me.” (A tax lawyer, this writer is still a pencil pusher.)
As a child, Jim had come face to face with hunger, while Kitty’s grandmother made sure Kitty never went to bed hungry. Food wasn’t an issue in the home that Kitty and Jim made for their four children, where a great meal in or a great meal out was a regular event.
Visiting Jim’s accounts was only natural. The JR Ranch in Hudson, Wisconsin, was always memorable, what with rodeos every year. Then there was promoter Jack Raleigh’s the River’s Edge in Somerset, Wisconsin, which included inner tube floats down the Apple River. Fine dining was enjoyed in St. Paul at Mancini’s steakhouse on West 7th and at The Coachman on the corner of Dale and Maryland and at Mangini’s on the East Side. In Stillwater, the White Pine Inn was classy, and the same goes for the Venetian Inn in Little Canada.
Then there was great pizza and more at Carboni’s, Cossetta’s, the Green Mill, Davanni’s, and Yarusso’s. With nine locations in the Twin Cities at its peak, Clark’s Submarines also was a family favorite. Subway could learn a thing or two from Clark’s in its day.
Drawing on his business in fruits and vegetables, Jim had a good metaphor for knowing your limitations. “You can’t get ten pounds in a five-pound bag,” he said often.
For a time, he tried his hand at his own beer distribution company, Oak Grove Brewing Co., and he also pursued an idea to sell “moonburgers” when all the news was about the Apollo missions to the moon.
He worked as a boxing promoter and found out how financially risky that endeavor can be.
In business as in the ring, he won more than he lost. Although he never forgot the poverty he experienced as a kid, he never became greedy. “Let it go,” he said of sums due but not forthcoming. “What can you do?” he asked when things didn’t pan out. Then he answered his own question: “Not a darn thing.”
For those who were interested, he advised how to try to become a champ in the ring and how to try to avoid becoming a chump out of the ring. He was able to make some successful real estate investments over the years. In terms of investing in marketable securities, he was very conservative. His cracker-barrel investment policy consisted of six words: “I like to sleep at night.”
Three years before the stock market crashed in 1929, Ernest Hemingway wrote the fictional short story “Fifty Grand.” It’s about an Irish American welterweight named Jack Brennan. A clever boxer, Brennan’s attempting to train for a title defense against an up-and-comer with a terrific punch. But the champ’s too exhausted because he can’t sleep. His trainer and friend, Jerry Doyle, who’s also the narrator, asks:
"What do you think about, Jack, when you can’t sleep?" I said.
"Oh, I worry,’ Jack says. ‘I worry about property I got up in the Bronx, I worry about property I got in Florida. I worry about the kids. I worry about the wife. Sometimes I think about fights. I think about . . . Ted Lewis and I get sore. I got some stocks and I worry about them." (Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women, 71 (Collier Books, First Scribner Classic/Collier Edition 1986), which includes the short story “Fifty Grand.”)
They say Hemingway was none too happy with St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald over the published version of the story. Hemingway had asked Fitzgerald for advice on the work, and Fitzgerald had persuaded him to eliminate the first three pages, including material on one of Jim’s favorites, lightweight world champion Benny Leonard. They say Hemingway, a boxing fan, always regretted making that edit.
Bert Sugar ranked Benny Leonard number six on his list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 17). Leonard made a comeback because he, like Jack Dempsey, lost all his dough in the 1929 crash. You laugh so you don’t cry. “All I lost was $240,000,” they say Groucho Marx quipped. “I would have lost more, but that was all the money I had.”
If you figure a conservative annual inflation rate of 4 percent, $240,000 in 1929 might be about $6,649,637 in 2015 dollars.
Fame and fortune weren’t big motivators for Jim. He appreciated recognition and making a dollar as much as the next guy as long as he wasn’t gaining at another’s expense. If he liked you, he’d rather that music be made about you. Yet his lines in business included “Sometimes you need to toot your own horn because nobody’s going to toot it for you” and “It’s not bragging if it’s true.”
His goal was to trade value for value. If fruits and vegetables and pizza supplies were his stock in trade for Jerry’s Produce, judgment was what he offered in boxing. He commented that if he made it to the top in anything, he enjoyed striving with its inevitable setbacks (three steps forward, two steps backward) far more than the top itself.
He joked with friends who came from money that “it must have been nice to have had a million-dollar head start.” Of those who made serious money young, he said, “The only way they have to go is down.”
In terms of preferring the struggle to the top rather than the top itself, Jack Dempsey put it this way:
I have had to come up through a very hard school where I was fighting not to win but for my existence.
***
It’s much easier, you know, and more fun fighting your way up the hill than it is standing on top and defending it. Being champion isn’t as great as it seemed before I was champion. I have more money and softer living, but there are more worries and troubles and cares than I ever dreamed of before. The glory and even the money don’t mean as much as they did in the days when you belonged only to yourself—not to the public. (Roger Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring ’20s, Chapter 10 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 1999), Kindle Edition.)
Jim cared deeply about family and friends and especially the underprivileged who he believed he had the opportunity to help in boxing. He was generous with his time and money where he thought he could make a positive difference.
If someone predicted financial success like it was already in the bank, he was known to use street lingo. “Yeah,” said he. “You’re going to shit too.” You were left to ponder what the heck he meant.
His street lingo could be more pregnant with meaning than conventional words. Sure, he meant don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. But he meant more. His street lingo was a natural part of his persona. If he saw you with a pocketknife, he called it a shiv. “What’re you doing with that shiv?”
He didn’t need to set an alarm clock before he went to bed. A news junkie, he preferred to keep talk radio on all night. Each morning he got up like clockwork and drove to Jerry’s Produce and then out into the field.
He favored sport coats over suits. One time, he brought home a Chihuahua puppy, hiding it inside his sport coat pocket to surprise everyone.
His ties were clip on. His shirt pocket was never without a pen and rarely without a checklist for follow-up. He wore a diamond ring, and his cars were American-made sport coupes. One indulgence he enjoyed was to buy himself a new car on a regular basis. He drove Chevrolet Impalas, Chevrolet Monte Carlos, Ford Thunderbirds, Ford Granadas, and the like.
He smoked cigars, and he always kept his revolver safe.
He loved all sports, none more than boxing. He and Kitty enjoyed attending the Super Bowl until instant replay and other features made the sofa in the family den the best seat for the game.
Recalling when Minnesota didn’t have the Vikings or the Twins, he believed boxing started to fade in Minnesota in the 1960s as the Vikings and Twins grew in popularity. He remembered when boxing was so big in Minnesota that fans lined up at the local gyms to get a look at the legends, such as Glen and Del Flanagan.
Back in 1956, A. J. Liebling wrote that boxing flat out took it on the chin from television:
The immediate crisis in the United States . . . has been caused by the popularization of a ridiculous gadget called television. This is utilized in the sale of beer and razor blades. The clients of the television companies, by putting on a free boxing show almost every night of the week, have knocked out of business the hundreds of small-city and neighborhood boxing clubs where youngsters had a chance to learn their trade and journeymen to mature their skills. Consequently the number of good new prospects diminishes with every year, and the peddlers’ public is already being asked to believe that a boy with perhaps ten or fifteen fights behind him is a topnotch performer. Neither advertising agencies nor brewers, and least of all the networks, give a hoot if they push the Sweet Science back into a period of genre painting. When it is in a coma they will find some other way to peddle their peanuts. (A. J. Liebling, The Sweet Science, Introduction (North Point Press 2011, originally published in 1956 by The Viking Press), Kindle Edition.)
Throughout his life Jim’s priority remained his family, including his 11 brothers and sisters and their children as well as his folks. There was so much going on at times that instead of answering the home telephone with a greeting, Jim answered with the question: “What’s wrong now?”
He and his youngest sister, Joanie, survived the rest of their brothers and sisters. They buried not only their parents but also ten siblings, with their mother’s and brother Mike’s deaths being the hardest.
At one time or another, Jim worked in every capacity of boxing. His volunteer work was particularly notable with the St. Paul Golden Gloves program. Both Jim and Jerry are gone now. They enjoyed working each day of their lives, and they left the world a better place than they found it.
Round 14: The Storyteller
Here’s a story Jim O’Hara wrote. The story was published in the Saint Paul Area Downtowner April 17, 1980:
It has been my privilege, since boyhood, to have met many of boxing’s greats. But for the purpose of this article I will confine my comments to the St. Paul boxers I have known.
An old expression among boxing people is that the quickest way to a lasting friendship is a good sock in the nose. The idea has been expressed in other ways, and might be moldy with age, but after almost 40 years in the business, I still believe it.
I’ve seen it happen in amateur and professional rings. Two kids from opposite sides of the tracks quickly forget the imagined differences between them after three rounds in the ring. After taking one of his left hooks on the chin, you gain respect for a fellow you might have viewed as different or inferior.
Even crusty old pros remember some of their toughest fights with fondness. If they didn’t lead to real friendships, they created a respect for the other fellow.
I’ve made many boxing friends and acquaintances throughout Minnesota over the years and the list seems endless even when I confine it to St. Paul. Some of them are dead now and I seldom see those still living. But I havn’t forgotten them.
I grew up watching the fights. One of the St. Paul oldtimers I remember best is Mike O’Dowd. He was the world middleweight champion, and later operated a saloon in St. Paul.
Billy Whelan is another. He was a great lightweight fighter. And Billy Miske, Jr. is another. His father fought Jack Dempsey. Whenever I think of Lee Savold I can’t help remembering that he fought Joe Louis.
And there was a fellow named Bill Hart who was called the Fighting Fireman. He later turned to professional wrestling.
The Gibbons brothers, Mike and Tommy, are two of the finest fighters in St. Paul history. Tommy lost a 15-round decision to Dempsey for the heavyweight title that bankrupted Shelby, Mont. Tommy was a Ramsey County sheriff after he quit fighting. Mike was an exceptional fighter too. His son Jack was an all-around great athlete as well as a boxer. He preceded me on the state boxing commission.
Billy Emkie and Marv Wason are old-time heavyweights. Billy Gillespie who fought Wason is another. My Sullivan was one of the top welterweights in the country but lost twice to another St. Paul fighter, Billy Light.
Of course, you can’t talk about St. Paul boxers without mentioning the Flanagans, Del and Glen who were two of the finest boxers in St. Paul’s history. Del fought and beat several world champions in nontitle fights. Many boxing people thought he should have been welterweight champ. Mike Mandell is another good heavyweight. And my brother, John O’Hara, as a middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight.
One thing that sets boxing apart from other professions, is that it cuts across racial boundaries. I’ve met fellows I might not have otherwise.
Nick Costello, Leonard Lopez, John Mercado, Pete Renteria and Emmett Yanez, all members of St. Paul’s Latin American community, have been active in boxing. Black community members, Roy Thomas, Booker T. Ellis, Mel and Buzz Brown, Early Adkinson, Gene White and George “Snooky” Price have made their mark in boxing.
Of course, there are the promoters and managers, too. Murray McLean, Jack Raleigh, Spike McCarthy, Billy Colbert, Lou Katz and Mike Thomas are fellows I knew well from that end of the game.
And there are people in the St. Paul business community I’ve met through boxing including Emmett Weller, Billy Robertson, Mike Fischer, Dick Radman, George McPartlin are a few. Others are Denny Nelson, Joe Azzone, Donny Weller, Billy Schmidt and Dick Zasada.
The list goes on and on—Don Quinn, Floyd Hagen, Warren McGill, Gene Fredrickson, Billy Flaherty, Jim Hegerle, Jim Beattie, Frank Cobb and Tom Shaugnessy fought out of St. Paul. Fred Dunkel, Bob and George Smolik, Tony Mangini, Joe Stepka and Gil Crawford did too.
Some of these fellows are dead now. Others are scattered around the country. But whenever I think of boxing in St. Paul, many of their names come to mind.
Many of them have interesting backgrounds. But, those are other stories, for another day. (Jim O’Hara, “The Sixteenth Round,” 9 (No. 24) Saint Paul Area Downtowner 15 (April 17, 1980).)
In 1980, when Jim wrote this story, larger-than-life characters kept boxing fans busy. In July, Minnesota would host its first world heavyweight title bout, champion Larry Holmes challenged by the “Fighting Frenchman” Scott LeDoux, with Muhammad Ali still in the game at ringside. See Round 11, entitled “Muhammad Ali.” Holmes would win by TKO in the seventh.
In June and again in November, Roberto Duran, the Hands of Stone, and Sugar Ray Leonard would battle for the WBC welterweight title (147 lbs. max). Duran would win by decision in June and quit with the words “No mas. No mas box!” in November.
In August, the “Hit Man” Tommy Hearns would become the WBA welterweight champ. In September, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler would become world middleweight champ (160 lbs. max.) (George Kimball, Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran, and the Last Great Era of Boxing, Chapter 3 (McBooks Press, Inc. 2008), Kindle Edition).
Larry Holmes is ranked number forty-five on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time. Muhammad Ali is ranked seven; Roberto Duran, eight; Sugar Ray Leonard, twenty-five; Tommy Hearns, fifty; and “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler, forty-seven. Ranking Roberto Duran number eight on the list, after only Sugar Ray Robinson, Henry Armstrong, Willie Pep, Joe Louis, Harry Greb, Benny Leonard, and Muhammad Ali, Bert Sugar called Duran “one of the most magnificent ring warriors of all time. And the greatest of the modern warriors” (Bert Randolph Sugar, Boxing’s Greatest Fighters 151, 20, 23, 79, 171, 159 and 29 (The Lyons Press 2006)).
Scott LeDoux was inducted into the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame in 2010 as a member of its inaugural class with the likes of the “Black Pearl” Harris Martin, Mike Gibbons, Tommy Gibbons, Glen Flanagan, Del Flanagan, Rafael Rodriguez, Will Grigsby, Bill Kaehn, Don Riley, and Dr. Sheldon Segal.
Jim’s ability to tell a story was part of his charisma. He also loved to laugh. There’s a 1986 photograph of him with hockey legend Herb Brooks and sports columnist Charley Walters. (Walters pitched for the Twins.) All are having a good time, and you can just tell that Jim is saying something humorous.
Don Boxmeyer, columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, said Jim served as “state official and storyteller” (Don Boxmeyer, “Through It All, Jimmy O’Hara Fought the Good Fight,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 22, 2002, page B1, column 2).
Boxmeyer begins with a story:
A local boxer named Jimmy O’Hara was on the card for an amateur bout at old Stem Hall in the St. Paul Auditorium one night. His opponent: a rough and tumble fighter. . . .
"We’d gotten our instructions from the ref, and I was waiting for [the guy] to come out of his corner," Jim recalled. "When the bell rang, he came at me in a headlong, mad dash, flailing his arms, trying to hit me. I sidestepped him and he went right on by me, over the ropes and landed in a heap of metal chairs outside the ring."
[The guy] was rendered senseless by his spectacular flight, he took a 20 count, and O’Hara won the bout by a knockout.
"Imagine that,’ said Jim. ‘The first and only time I ever scored a knockout without throwing a single punch."
Another of Jim’s stories in Boxmeyer’s article could be called “Sammy”:
At one of those parties [at a local restaurant], a well-known character I will simply call Sammy got blasted and couldn’t stand. Jimmy threw the guy over his shoulder, dumped him into his car and said, "All right, Sammy, where do you live?"
Sammy could barely talk, but Jimmy got an address out of him, and when they got there, Sammy finally made Jimmy understand that he lived on the top floor, so Jimmy threw Sammy over his shoulder again and trudged up the stairs carrying the unconscious Sammy.
"When we got to his floor, Sammy jumped off my shoulder, ran over to an apartment door and began banging on it. 'Come on out of there, you (blankety-blank)! I got the guy here who’s gonna pound the (blank) out of you!'"
"All of a sudden the door opens," said Jimmy, "and this monster comes out. He’s got a head like a bullet and around his throat he’s wearing a studded dog collar. I looked at him, and didn’t want to fight him. He looked at me, and wanted no part of me, so we both chased Sammy down the hall and beat the (blank) out of him."
Jim had a lot of quick stories. Some were recorded by Sean Kelly in a 1998 interview. One is about St. Paul light-heavyweight Tommy Gibbons:
Tommy was popular with the youth of St. Paul. I heard him speak when I was a young man. . . . He would always end his talks with two points: "I’m the man that Jack Dempsey went 15 rounds with," and, directed at the dads, "Take your boy hunting. It’s better to be hunting with him than be hunting for him." (Sean T. Kelly, Remembering St. Paul’s Irish Boxers, 13 Irish Gazette 4 (January-February 1998).)
If the St. Paul Irishman wasn’t a national household name before his fight with Dempsey, he was immediately afterwards. Gibbons went on tour for two months with a theatrical group. On stage, he sparred and talked about the fight (Jack Cavanaugh, Tunney: Boxing’s Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey, Chapter 12 (Ballantine Books 2007), Kindle Edition).
Tommy Gibbons was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1993. He and his brother Mike are ranked number three on the list of Boxing’s Best Brother Combinations, a list Steve Farhood put together (Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, The Ultimate Book of Boxing Lists, 78 (Running Press 2010)).
George Barton, Jim’s famous predecessor on the boxing board, was a professional writer of tales. In his December 1959 article in The Ring magazine, he reported that Tommy Gibbons by all rights could have claimed the world heavyweight title on the Fourth of July 1923:
Knowing the majority of spectators, among them several hundred gun-toting cowboys, were hostile toward Dempsey and [his manager] Kearns, I asked Tommy why he did not drop to his knees and claim the fight on a foul after Dempsey hit him low for the third time.
"Had you done so, Tommy," I said, "Referee Dougherty undoubtedly would have been coerced by those cowboys into declaring you winner on a foul."
Gibbons’ reply was typical of his character and sportsmanship.
"George,’ said Tommy, "if I could not win the championship on my merits as a fighter, I would not want it." (George A. Barton, Tommy Gibbons, Part III, The Ring, December 1959, 18-19.)
Another quick story from Jim is about St. Paul’s Billy Whelan, who boxed professionally as a featherweight (126 lbs. max.) around the same time as Tommy Gibbons:
Billy Whelan was a good fighter, but in one bout he cut an eye and walked to his corner. The ref asked him, "Are you gonna fight anymore?" Billy said, "You bet, but not tonight," and went out of the ring.
To be a storyteller, it helps to have what you might call presence. Bill Bankston, a friend for many years, wrote the following about Jim in 2000:
Presence, what is presence? His physical image filled the door. That’s it, when I first met him over seventeen years ago, he filled the door. Shoulders back, head connected to the chest with no neck, square, solid, with the reach and then the hands. The hands were huge, strong, yet gripped with just the right touch. The touch that did not bite, but conveyed strength. That was it, the strength. Solid, like a rock he stood in the door. He filled the frame and extended his hand. The kind of man that if you hit him as hard as you could, he would laugh at you as your hand cracked.
But it was not the physical presence. Many men have physical presence. It was the smile and then the voice. Like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, he cast me under his spell and ever since first meeting him, his spell has never been broken.
Round 15: Unselfish Purpose
Jazz great Lionel Hampton said: “Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.”
Jim O'Hara was always grateful for the city of his birth, St. Paul, and its diverse people. They prepared him for life, and he was grateful for the many years he was given.
In his teens he was riding in the back of a convertible through the Battle Creek area of St. Paul. The driver was going too fast and lost control, and Jim was catapulted over a steep gully. He said he should have died. Yet he landed without a scratch. He committed himself then, fully realized later, to live with unselfish purpose—to be a giver and not a taker.
In the latter 1950s, he had another scare. A growth had formed in his voice box, making it difficult for him to speak. Cancer was feared. With three young children and a wife to support, Jim vowed that if the growth was benign, he’d give thanks at mass every day for a year. He kept his vow at St. Luke’s, located at the intersection of Summit Avenue and Lexington Parkway in St. Paul.
With his youngest child born in 1964, Jim made sure all four of his children attended St. Luke’s, grades one through eight.
A theme of his life was the protection of others. On occasion those protected were aware of it. For example, as an adult he came to know a certain teenager who suffered from physical abuse at home. The kid had plenty of potential, but he was at the breaking point and confided in Jim. Before long the boy’s father showed up carrying a baseball bat other than for its intended purpose.
Jim stepped in front of the man and said: “Where do you think you’re going with that?”
The father was undeterred, so Jim spelled it out for him: “You make one move, and you’ll find that bat up your arse.”
Thereafter, the boy left home, and Jim had his back.
At times, Jim's judgment, in the protection of others, might appear arbitrary. Don Boxmeyer, columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, quotes Jim:
I was checking over some young fighters one time just before a fight, and one of them was just wild. He was lippy and arrogant and couldn’t wait to get in the ring and destroy his opponent, and that can be a dangerous attitude.
I yelled over to the doctor and said, “Doc, is this kid’s heart going a little too fast?”
And the doctor said, “I believe it is. He won’t fight tonight.” (Don Boxmeyer, Through It All, Jimmy O’Hara Fought the Good Fight, St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 22, 2002, page 1B, column 3.)
You know those guys who always seem to run into people they know? Jim was one of those guys. He seemed to know just about everyone on a first-name basis, from St. Paul’s leading citizens to the less fortunate. That’s boxing. When he was young, just about every guy participated in some level of boxing. Many of these boys went off to war, and many of those who returned went to college on the GI Bill and became successful lawyers (and, later, judges) and successful businessmen, while others of them became penniless and everything in between.
Jim treated them all the same. Throughout life, then, these men introduced Jim to more people who became new friends and acquaintances.
Knowing so many people, he had many opportunities to help both inside and outside the boxing community.
William Finney, the first black Police Chief in Minnesota history, didn’t need help getting appointed in 1992 to the office for the City of St. Paul. Nevertheless, Jim wasn’t one to take chances and did what he could to make sure the appointment occurred. (An interesting account of Chief Finney’s early life is recorded in his own words in the 2007 Saint Paul Almanac (Arcata Press 2007).)
Jim always had energy for special projects, like assisting James Griffin, St. Paul Deputy Police Chief, in honoring St. Paul police officer Mahlon “Roy” Thomas, who boxed professionally in the 1940s. When Roy died, the Deputy Chief thought it appropriate that a plaque honoring Roy be posted on the beat that Roy covered for so many years.
Walking his beat in downtown St. Paul, Thomas had the opportunity to influence street kids. No less a great than Minnesota Boxing Hall of Famer Gary Holmgren (who is white) got his start from Thomas (who was black) who insisted Holmgren give up street fighting and turn to boxing and its discipline.
In 1979, St. Paul Mayor George Latimer hired this writer as an aide. After verifying the necessary education, the mayor observed that it didn’t hurt that the new hire was the son of Jim O’Hara.
Paul Johnson, a St. Paul middleweight (160 lbs. max.) when he boxed at the pro level and currently an advocate for boxers, credited Jim for helping him learn the business of boxing. In an email dated December 2, 2012, he said:
I met Jim when I was looking at an old restaurant that was used for storing mushrooms that Jim owned. He suggested that I start boxing which I did (professionally) from 1976 to 1982. We are working to start a union for boxers and I owe so much to Jim. See www.boxers.org.
Referee Denny Nelson long credited Jim with helping him get discovered by the worldwide boxing community. In an email dated January 9, 2013, Nelson recalled:
In 1984 I asked him if he would send a letter recommending me to the International Boxing Federation.
“The president is a friend of mine,” answered Jim. “I’ll call him.”
They accepted me and Jim’s call was the beginning of 28 years of world title bouts for all of the sanctioning bodies.
Don Riley, former sports columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, remarked that Jim was “a gentle giant with a terrific mind. Jim had great character. He knew everybody. . . . He got everybody to work together. He was an ambassador of the waterfront.” (Riley is quoted by Terry Collins, Jim O’Hara Dies; He Ran the State Boxing Board, Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 21, 2002, page B5, column 1.)
Just his name could sometimes help to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. In 1992, Rich Ehrich, Jim’s nephew, was managing some residential property in the Twin Cities when he encountered a tenant who was very close to being evicted. As Rich tells the story:
I had approached him in the hallway and asked him how things were going and if he was able to get his rent caught up. He said, “No, I don’t have it yet, but if I need to I will fight you.” He gets into this stance and says, “Yeah, back in my prime I would take them all on.”
I asked if he was a boxer, and he said yes. I told him who I was and where I come from. I remember his jaw dropping and the look on his face. His rent was paid the next day, and it was never late again.
Even on his deathbed in January 2002, Jim was concerned about stopping violence and unfair fights. He could barely talk but summoned the energy, on his own initiative, to speak about the then pending manslaughter case where a father had beaten to death a youth hockey coach in an ice rink lobby. Jim was concerned the guy could kill again. From these and some of his other final words, you could still see not only his compassion but his will to protect others.
Morphine was necessary at the end. You know when you're on that stuff you're not always thinking straight. Yet who you are comes through. "There's this big guy," Jim began. "He killed a coach after a game. KILLED him! Don't you get involved! I know about fighting. I'll handle him."
In 2011, nearly a decade after Jim’s death, this writer met a fifty-four‑year‑old master craftsman from the Rice Street area of St. Paul who had relocated to Anchorage, Alaska. Asked if he’d heard of Jim O’Hara, he replied: “Everyone from Rice Street has heard of Jim O’Hara.”
Jim was naturally a showman from his days in the ring, but he never thought of himself as somebody. With an eighth-grade education and Kitty as his rock and inspiration, he was a humble and happy guy. Full of gratitude, Jim’s heart had no room for envy or insecurity. “Nobody’s looking at you,” he said many times. “Who do you think you are?”
His meaning is illustrated in a story James Cagney told in his autobiography, Cagney by Cagney. In the book the actor, who did some boxing in his day, shared the following:
During the making of a picture directed by Charlie Vidor, I noticed him come into the studio one morning looking very low and disconsolate. I asked him what the matter was.
“Ah, Jimmy, everybody hurt me, everybody hurt me.”
“How do you mean, hurt you?”
“They say things. I don’t think they mean to hurt me, but they do. They say really cruel things, and it weighs on me the whole day.”
“Do you want to get rid of that, Charlie? Well — just ask yourself one question and the hurt will disappear THAT fast. The question is this: just ask yourself, ‘Who the hell do I think I am?’ And you’ll see the hurt will disappear.”
“Ah, Jimmy, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think I’m somebody.”
And with that view, inevitably, comes insecurity and frustration and unhappiness. (James Cagney, Cagney By Cagney, 179 (Pocketbook Edition February 1977).)
Round 16: Irish Cross & Boxing Gloves
Earning a living since eighth grade, Jim O'Hara went the distance in business as well as boxing. He could have retired comfortably but chose not to. In the face of various health challenges throughout life, he was energized by work, believing to the end that he could help make a positive difference as others had for him.
After Kitty retired from Control Data in 1989, Jim enjoyed setting aside time each day for lunch with her. They shared stories and laughed a lot, feeling like no couple could ask for a better life. One of their routines had Kitty asking: “Jimmy, what do you do all day?” To which he replied: “I’m not quite sure, but if I stop, we’re in trouble.”
Throughout his final battle, a tough go with bladder cancer, Jim never complained. He fought on while accepting the hand he’d been dealt. He loved life. He loved people. They loved him.
Boxing people are sweet beyond the sweet science. Take heavyweight-title-challenger-turned-boxing-commissioner Scott LeDoux. When Jim was dying, Scott let it be known that a part of the French Bomber, as only Jim called him, was dying too. They’d been on the same team a long time.
In 1975, Jim the promoter flew in an Irish gladiator from the East Coast for LeDoux to fight. In 1980, in the presence of Muhammad Ali, Jim mediated a dispute between Larry Holmes and Don King that threatened to derail LeDoux's title shot.
Later Jim and LeDoux served eighteen years together on the Minnesota Board of Boxing. See Round 1 entitled The Boxing Board, Round 11 entitled Muhammad Ali, and Round 13 entitled The Businessman. [links] There's a great book on the life of Scott LeDoux that came out in 2016 by Paul Levy: The Fighting Frenchman: Minnesota's Boxing Legend Scott LeDoux (University of Minnesota Press 2016).
Jim departed the world peacefully in his beloved St. Paul on January 17, 2002, at the age of seventy-six. After a lifetime associated with the fight game, Boxing was his middle name. Terry Collins of the Minneapolis Star Tribune put it this way: “For more than six decades, the name Jim O’Hara was synonymous with boxing in Minnesota” (Terry Collins, Jim O’Hara Dies; He Ran the State Boxing Board, Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 21, 2002, page B5, column 1).
Jim was survived by his loving wife, Kitty, and their four children and eight grandchildren. He had a big wake and a big funeral. Many spoke of how he'd made a difference in their lives.
From the sunsetting of the boxing board on July 1, 2001, until his death, Jim continued to be consulted on all things boxing. He still had that spark, but one natural aspect of dying, he knew, is that people eventually stop listening to you. He understood it’s only human nature to count you out, indeed on a short count, once the physical effects of cancer become apparent.
On his seventy-sixth birthday, December 23, 2001, he mugged for the camera, displaying his right fist. Now possessing mental footwork only, he was confined to a wheelchair.
In his day, one of his lines was to tell troublemakers in gyms and elsewhere: “Listen. I’m going to leave and walk around the block. If you’re still here when I get back, you’re going out on your ass.”
Now at his last birthday party before his passing, he was so grateful to be wheeled around the block. He loved seeing his neighborhood of over fifty years near the intersection of St. Clair Avenue and Lexington Parkway.
To the end, ring history was a source of interest and excitement. He was interested in the Sports Illustrated magazine article that recently had been published on Max Schmeling, who then as an old man enjoyed bird watching from the window of his home in Hollenstedt, Germany.
Jim was twelve in June 1938 when his and everyone’s hero Joe Louis scored a brilliant first-round victory over Schmeling, sticking it to Adolf Hitler. Louis and Schmeling became good friends after Schmeling showed up unannounced at Louis’s home in Chicago in 1954 (Patrick Myler, Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling: Fight of the Century, Prologue: The Visit (Arcade Publishing 2012), Kindle Edition).
On the eve of his scheduled exhibition with Louis in 1949, Jim declined to go inside the ropes. See Round 10, entitled Joe Louis. [link] To the end, Jim made his own decisions, always thinking of Kitty.
"Pray" was his last word. Then he slipped into a comma, Monday evening January 14, 2002, passing three days later, Thursday morning January 17, 2002.
Jim’s funeral was at his beloved Church of the Assumption in downtown St. Paul, with Father Arthur Kennedy offering Mass. Holy Scripture readings included the following verses from Psalm 24:
Who shall go up to the mountain of Yahweh? Who shall take a stand in his holy place? The clean of hands and pure of heart, whose heart is not set on vanities, who does not swear an oath in order to deceive. Such a one will receive blessing from Yahweh, saving justice from the God of his salvation. (The New Jerusalem Bible, Doubleday Publications 1990.)
Verses from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, also were read, including the following:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me. (The New Jerusalem Bible, supra.)
Jim’s pallbearers were Clark Armstead, Joe Azzone, David Cossetta, Don Evans, Denny Nelson, Don Riley, and Bert Sandberg. Honorary pallbearers were Jerry Hurley, Nick Mancini, Dick Plunkett, and Bill Schmidt. Jim’s friends treated one and all to a meal at Mancini’s steakhouse following the graveside service.
Jim’s body is buried at Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul. Appropriately, his tombstone has an Irish Cross and, of course, a pair of boxing gloves. Kitty has shared that Jim’s in the fistic firmament with his brothers Mike and John and the rest, no doubt assisting with a boxing event.
If writing anyone’s story is an exercise in scratching the surface, it’s clear that Jim is missed. International referee Mark Nelson, Denny’s son, wrote in 2012: “There will never ever be another Jim O’Hara. Ever. I miss him dearly.”
Gary, Jim’s oldest child, delivered the eulogy at the funeral. It’s fitting to end with Gary’s words:
For Dad, what was important was clearly understood. All that he did was focused on four priorities: family, friends, business, and boxing. Although his accomplishments in business and boxing are many and were important, I know he would want me to speak today of where he found his greatest joy—his relationships with people. In fact, the successes he enjoyed in business and boxing were achieved in a very large part by the strength of his relationships and the trust he built with those he worked with.
First for Dad was his family, the foundation of which was his marriage—fifty-three years of giving and taking, learning and growing that produced a loving bond that I know was more than he had ever dreamed possible when he began his life’s journey.
Although he rarely would share his innermost feelings, we all knew that his children and grandchildren were always on his mind and in his heart. His special gift to us was that you could count on him during times of joy or need to have the wisdom and perspective to help us focus on what was right and what really mattered. This we all will miss.
Dad came from a family of twelve, survived now by his youngest sister, Joanie. As in many families their journeys took them all many directions during the course of their lives, but when it mattered, Dad was always there for his brothers, sisters, and their families.
Jim O’Hara had tremendous capacity for people and relationships. He sincerely invested himself in his relationships, and his friends knew it was the real thing. Each friendship—and there were many—was unique. He never imposed expectations or was envious, and whatever times came their way, Dad was a true-blue friend, offering whatever he could to celebrate or console and counsel. When times got difficult for someone close to him and it might have been easy to change his alliances, he never wavered. He said to me many times, “I don’t turn my old friends in for new ones.” That being said, he did make many new friends throughout his entire lifetime—friendships that transcended generations.
Dad also had an insatiable passion for learning and understanding, most of which was acquired through experience and people. More often than not, he would share his knowledge, wisdom, or perspective by telling a story.
It wasn’t long after he was diagnosed with cancer and told it was incurable that he shared one such story with me. He told me of a good friend who had died some fifteen to twenty years ago. This friend—who he described as in his prime, very handsome, strong, athletic, and always on the go—had succumbed to cancer. Dad had not seen him for a time and was shocked and saddened when he saw him in his diminished condition at the visitation. Dad went on to say that at the funeral mass the priest spoke of what a beautiful death his friend had. This he did not understand. After the service at the luncheon gathering, he found a time alone with the priest and questioned him on how he could describe his friend’s death as beautiful after all he had gone through and the condition he had diminished to. The priest then explained and offered to Dad how his friend had time to spend with his family, to find peace, and to prepare for his journey in ways he never had imagined. This is where Dad ended the story and after a pause moved on to other, lighter discussion.
We never spoke of this again, but it was clear by the style, dignity, and grace he demonstrated over the last seventeen months, he knew what he had to do.
In what was to be the toughest and final fight of his life, Jim O’Hara went the distance—beautifully.
