There's a photo of Jim O'Hara striking a pose in his sweats and bag gloves at Weller's Gym circa 1947. He's alone in the ring, on his toes, his left foot forward. His shoulders, neck, and head suggest the slip of a right hand. His left is held low, drawing the right and setting up the counter. His right is pointed up, the arm folded at the elbow, guarding the liver.
Don Riley, the famous sportswriter, described Jim thusly:
He was a big guy but a boxer. 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. (See the Foreword by Jim Wells, supra.)
If Jim had no illusions about being a contender at the highest level, and if he wasn't concerned about getting credit in the history books for all his matchups, he had science. He was a boxer. And he was a boxer during the golden age of boxing.
Some debate whether those in the fight game today can compare with those back in the golden age of boxing. One thing is certain, back in the day, you had more competition with and proximity to the greats, like Mike Gibbons, who became teachers of boxing.
So what is boxing? Teddy Atlas has put it this way:
Boxing means using your head, using geometry, using the science of angles, the science of adjustments. And all you have to do is make it a kind of landscape where the other guy can't use what he has. You fight in a place where speed doesn't come into play. You use your reach to keep your opponent at a certain distance where you can time him. Timing can always get the better of speed when it's used properly and understood properly. You time your opponent and keep him at the end of your punches. And if you use your reach properly you are not giving him anything to counter. (Mike Silver, The Arc of Boxing: The Rise and Decline of the Sweet Science (McFarland & Company, Inc. 2008), which includes remarks by Teddy Atlas, Kindle Edition.)
“The biggest steps you’ll ever climb,” Jim cautioned many times, “are the three into the ring.” Every opponent is dangerous. The fight game takes guts but, more importantly, the ability to think on your feet.
Jim spent more than a decade thinking on his feet, 1941 through 1953. At six foot one and 200 lbs., he was a heavyweight as a professional fighter. When he was an amateur, he fought as a light‑heavy, not over 175 lbs., and he felt his timing was better with less weight.
They say you need to start young to be a good boxer. By necessity given the neighborhoods of his youth, Jim learned to defend himself at an early age. His pa and five older brothers showed him what fists can do, and there was plenty of opportunity for practice. He also had a tough younger brother to teach. At least one older brother, Johnny O'Hara, fought for pay. See Round 5, entitled “Ronald Reagan.”
A turning point was when Jim put the gloves on under adult supervision at the Ramsey County Home for Boys, now known as Boys Totem Town, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was about fifteen, and he then began to develop from a fighter into a boxer.
His career officially started in the St. Paul Golden Gloves. Throughout his life, the Golden Gloves would hold a special place in his heart for one main reason: it provides a unique opportunity for young people of all shapes and sizes to challenge themselves. He explained thusly:
Boxing's an individual sport. You're on your own. You know there's three steps up into that ring. It's very challenging to go up them three steps. And when you go up there, you're all by yourself. You got your father, you got your coach, or you got anybody else in that corner. But when that bell rings you go out into that center of the ring and you're there all alone. Any kid who does that, I admire him for it. Whether he wins or he loses, he went up those three steps and he tried it. (Recording of Jim O'Hara played at the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame Induction Banquet, October 3, 2014.)
The venue where Jim began to challenge himself was the Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym in the basement of the Hamm Building in downtown St. Paul. It was 1941, the year before George Barton was appointed by Governor Harold Stassen to head the State Athletic Commission, which then regulated boxing.
Thus Jim had the good fortune of getting into the sport when the man of integrity himself, George Barton, was about to be given the authority to look out for belters. Jim would become a successor to Barton thirty-five years later when named executive secretary of the Minnesota Boxing Board. See Round 1, entitled “The Boxing Board.” Jim would serve in the office for twenty-five years, second only to Barton's twenty-seven years of service.
Two numbers in the preceding paragraph equal Jim's sixty years in boxing—his thirty-five years immediately prior to his appointment to the Boxing Board plus his twenty-five years on the Boxing Board.
If modest, the Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym was knockdown famous. Boxers are accustomed to the smell of their own gyms, and here all the sweat had a glorious history. Indeed, you could say Jim had a boxing pedigree thanks to the Rose Room. So many interesting characters in the field of fisticuffs were associated with the place. If you had to pick a dozen representatives, you couldn’t go wrong with the following:
• Mike Gibbons, middleweight (160 lbs. max.), last recorded fight 1922, inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame 1992. Gibbons is ranked number five on the list of the top defensive fighters of all time and number ten on the list of the greatest Irish-American fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, The Ultimate Book of Boxing Lists, 162 and 143 (Running Press 2010)). Gibbons also is ranked number ninety-two on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, Boxing’s Greatest Fighters, 314 (The Lyons Press 2006)). Gibbons was never knocked out in 133 recorded professional bouts. His record is 113 wins (38 by KO), 9 losses, 9 draws, and 2 no contests, including newspaper decisions. A newspaper decision is a bout left in the hands of the sportswriters. Amid the matchmaking that is the business side of pro boxing, Gibbons never got a shot at the world title when he was in his prime. He was so great, fighters avoided him. If his management had been able to pull a Doc Kearns, you’d didn’t have to ask Jim or anyone familiar with Mike Gibbons what the likely outcome would've been. As Jack Dempsey’s manager, Jack “Doc” Kearns got Dempsey his shot. Jim advised never to underestimate the importance of management.
• Tommy Gibbons, light-heavyweight, last recorded fight 1925, inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame 1993. As famous as his brother Mike, Tommy Gibbons’ only losses were to Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Harry Greb, and Billy Miske. You read that right. His only losses were to those fellow Hall of Famers. He was never kayoed until his last fight and then by Tunney in his prime. In all, Tommy Gibbons had 106 recorded professional bouts with 96 wins (48 by KO), 5 losses, 4 draws, and 1 no contest, including newspaper decisions. Tommy and Mike Gibbons 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, supra, at 78). Nat Fleischer was the founder and longtime editor and publisher of The Ring magazine. Born in 1887, he died in 1972 and witnessed perhaps as many fights as anyone in between. He ranked Tommy Gibbons number eight on his list of the top ten all-time light-heavyweights and Mike Gibbons number nine on his list of the top ten all-time middleweights (The Ring Boxing Encyclopedia and Record Book, 10 (The Ring Book Shop 1979)).
• Billy Miske, heavyweight, last recorded fight 1923, inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame 2010. Miske had 105 recorded professional bouts with 74 wins (34 by KO), 13 losses, 16 draws, 1 no contest, and 1 no decision, including newspaper decisions. Clay Moyle’s book Billy Miske: The St. Paul Thunderbolt (Win By KO Publications 2011) is a great read. At page 54, Moyle quotes Jack Dempsey: “If I ever have to fight another tough guy like that I don’t want the championship. The premium they ask is too much effort.” Dempsey was talking about Miske after their May 1918 fight at the St. Paul Auditorium. They say a major motion picture based on Miske’s life and death is in the works. A compelling hero, Miske succumbed to kidney disease at age twenty-nine on New Year’s Day 1924, just fifty-five days after his last fight. A moving novel about Miske came out in 2013, The Final Round, by screenwriter Gary Allison. It’s available on Kindle and in paperback.
• Mike O’Dowd, middleweight champion of the world, 1917–1920, last recorded fight 1923. They say he was the only world champion to fight at the front during World War I. After the war in 1919, he successfully defended his title against none other than Mike Gibbons at the St. Paul Auditorium. It was a so-called no decision bout back then in which Gibbons needed to knockout O’Dowd in order to win. The decision of the newspaper writers of the day also gave O’Dowd the verdict. In all, O’Dowd had 117 recorded professional bouts with 94 wins (39 by KO), 17 losses, 5 draws, and 1 no contest, including newspaper decisions.
• Johnny Ertle, bantamweight champion of the world (118 lbs. max.), 1915–1918 , Minnesota’s first world champion, last recorded fight 1924. Ertle had 88 recorded professional bouts with 62 wins (15 by KO), 20 losses, and 6 draws, including newspaper decisions. At four foot eleven, Ertle could deliver the body shots of a world champion.
• Jimmy Delaney, light-heavyweight, last recorded fight 1927, a world-class fighter. Boxrec.com records 77 of Delaney’s professional fights. His record is reported as 54 wins (21 by KO), 13 losses, and 10 draws, including newspaper decisions. Of his 13 losses, 2 were to Gene Tunney and 3 to Harry Greb. Tragically, Delaney died of blood poisoning in March 1927 at age twenty-six from a cut on his elbow gotten in his recent win over Maxie Rosenbloom. Rosenbloom would go on to become world light-heavyweight king. Born in June 1900, Delaney is reported to have begun training at the Rose Room at age sixteen (The Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame website, 2013). Imagine what heights Delaney could've reached. Heavyweight champion of the world? Another St. Paul legend cut down in his prime is the undefeated welterweight Charley Kemmick, welterweight champion of America (147 lbs. max.), 1891–1895. With 24 wins and no losses, Kemmick died of tuberculosis in 1895 at the age of twenty-three. In a 1928 article, George Barton wrote that some believed Kemmick to be the greatest fighter ever to come from the Twin Cities of St. Paul-Minneapolis. Tommy Ryan, the welterweight champion of the world, refused to fight Kemmick (The Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame website, 2013).
• Jock Malone, middleweight, last recorded fight 1931, a world-class fighter. Malone had 180 recorded professional bouts with 127 wins (34 by KO), 41 losses, and 12 draws, including newspaper decisions.
• Johnny O’Hara, middleweight, last recorded fight 1934, Jim’s mentor and one of his six brothers. John was a member of the class of good, respectable sweet scientists training out of the Rose Room. He exchanged punches with Ronald Reagan. See Round 5, entitled “Ronald Reagan.” On at least one occasion, John boxed under the alias Jackie Ryan, April 10, 1930, in Mason City, Iowa. Boxrec.com records 31 of John’s professional fights—18 wins (eight by KO) and 3 draws against 11 losses, including newspaper decisions. He was fortunate to have learned to box from Mike Gibbons himself, Minnesota’s most famous pugilist. If John never became a contender for the world middleweight crown, he faced at least one in Canadian Frank Battaglia. Jim was an impressionable eight years of age when John was stopped in the second by Battaglia in February 1934 in Minneapolis. A year earlier, Battaglia had fought for the world middleweight title at the Garden (Madison Square Garden). He’d lost to Ben Jeby by TKO in the twelfth. Battaglia would fight again for the world middleweight crown in May 1937 in Seattle. He’d lose this effort to Freddie Steele, who won by knockout in the third. Retiring with a cauliflowered left ear as proof of his orthodox glory days, John had had a near-perfect record of 12 wins and only 1 loss (not to mention 3 draws) when he faced undefeated Glen Allen. They met on June 24, 1930, in Allen’s hometown of Atlantic, Iowa. Allen got the newspaper decision after this ten-round battle, and the two repeated with the same result six months later in Des Moines. Allen retired in 1932 with a 37-6-5 record, including newspaper decisions.
• Jack Gibbons, middleweight and light-heavyweight, last recorded fight 1937, son of Mike Gibbons. A masterful boxer, Jack Gibbons decisioned future middleweight world champion Tony Zale in a December 1934 ten-rounder in Chicago. Zale is ranked number seventy on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 237). Gibbons had 74 recorded professional bouts with 68 wins (20 by KO), 5 losses, and 1 draw, including newspaper decisions. His world rankings are said to have included number four as a middleweight in 1935–36 and number six as a light‑heavyweight in 1936–37. Gibbons was an all-around great athlete. “He was a natural at just about anything he tried,” said Jim. “But more than that, he was just a wonderful person” (Jim is quoted by Jim Wells, “Jack Gibbons Dies At Age 86,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, February 5, 1999).
• Ray Temple, Jim’s trainer and mentor. Jim always credited Temple with teaching him how to box—not how to fight or punch so much as how to move smoothly and box. An accomplished sweet scientist (lightweight, 135 lbs. max.), Temple became a referee as well as a trainer. His last recorded fight was in 1924. Boxrec.com records 39 of his professional fights. His record is reported as 21 wins (5 by KO), 10 losses, and 8 draws, including newspaper decisions. Temple’s birth name was Henry Thoemki.
• Murray McLean, Jim’s manager/trainer and mentor. This man of integrity knew and loved the fight game as much as anyone. He gave Jim his boxing library as well as perhaps the last remaining copy of his work entitled Boxers of St. Paul in which the names of 106 fighters from St. Paul’s past were artfully lettered by McLean. A walking encyclopedia on all things boxing, McLean could tell you the stories of these men and more like no one else. Their names are listed at the end of Round 8, entitled “Honors & Awards.” McLean always had kind words to say about Jim, like those quoted near the beginning of Round 7, entitled “Boxing Record.” “He believed in Jim,” recalled Jim's wife, Kitty, in 2013. “Murray really thought Jim could box.”
• Billy Colbert, matchmaker, promoter, and mentor to Jim. Colbert also managed the Rose Room for Mike Gibbons until the gym closed circa 1949. Recalling a good laugh, Jim credited Colbert with the line that as a promoter “he didn’t mind digging up fighters for his headliners from the Mission House but he’d be damned if he’d go into the graveyards.” In 2013, Peggy Allie, Colbert’s daughter, said she can still see her father and Jim standing together on St. Peter Street in front of the Hamm Building, the location of the gym. It was the late 1940s, and she was in high school at St. Paul’s Mechanic Arts. “They were always joking around together,” she recalled. “Don’t jump,” they said as people peered out the windows of the upper floors of the Hamm Building. From at least 1951 through 1954, Colbert wrote a monthly column entitled “Minnesota Ring News” for The Ring magazine, Colbert’s son, Bill, recalled in 2013. “When I was in the Navy I read his column every month,” said Bill. His father had taken the column over from Spike McCarthy, an equally dedicated boxing man.
Hailing from St. Paul, the renowned artist LeRoy Neiman wrote of Mike Gibbons: “He owned Gibbons Gym (formerly the Rose Room for its long-faded floral wallpaper), a dreary no-frills center of serious sweat, sparring, slugging, and other arts and bruises of the sweet science” (LeRoy Neiman, All Told: My Art and Life Among Athletes, Playboys, Bunnies and Provocateurs, Chapter 1 (Lyons Press 2012), Kindle Edition).
The Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym closed circa 1949, whereupon Jim completed his move from the longtime home of legends to Weller’s Gym. This new venue was above the Dutchman Bar on Robert Street about a block and a half north of Kellogg Boulevard in downtown St. Paul. The proprietor, Emmett Weller, had opened in 1947 or 1948, and in 1953 Jim would retire from this location. In 1954 Weller moved down the street, and then to three other locations, finally closing his last location (685 Selby Avenue) in 1968.
Weller’s Gym became famous with the likes of the Flanagan brothers and others including Don Weller and Jack Raleigh:
• Del Flanagan, welterweight and middleweight, last recorded fight 1964, inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame 2003. Del had 130 recorded professional bouts with 105 wins (38 by KO), 22 losses, 2 draws, and 1 no contest. “At 145, there wasn’t a fighter in the world who could stay with Del Flanagan,” said Jim, “but by the time he was getting his best shot he couldn’t make that weight.” (Patrick Reusse, “The Fighting Flanagan Brothers,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sunday February 13, 2000.) In June 1958, Virgil Akins became welterweight champion of the world. Three months later, Flanagan beat him, a unanimous decision in a nontitle ten-rounder at the St. Paul Auditorium. Akins weighed in at 148 lbs. to Flanagan’s 149 and 3/4 lbs. In his prime, Del Flanagan was so great that fighters avoided him just as fighters had avoided Mike Gibbons. “Del was . . . smooth,” added Jim. “He would come in, throw a combination, and move away” (Patrick Reusse, supra).
• Glen Flanagan, featherweight (126 lbs. max.), last recorded fight 1960, inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame 2005. Jim never spoke of the famous Gibbons brothers without also speaking of the pure greatness he witnessed in the gym and ringside in the Flanagan brothers, Del and Glen. Glen Flanagan had 120 recorded professional bouts with 84 wins (34 by KO), 23 losses, and 13 draws. “Every fight—everything in his career—was a war for Glen,” said Jim. “He was 5-7 and always fighting uphill, taking punches to get inside” (Patrick Reusse, supra).
• Don Weller, welterweight, last recorded fight 1962, the son of the proprietor and a member of the class of state champions who trained out of Weller’s Gym. He became the Minnesota professional welterweight champion in 1961. Don had 41 recorded professional bouts with 29 wins (9 by KO), 8 losses, and 4 draws. Emmett liked his son to work with the Flanagans, but Del was so good, it was frustrating. “You couldn’t get to him,” said Don in 2013. “I’d press inside and he’d tie me up time after time. Finally I told my dad that if he thinks working with Del is so great, go ahead but I’ve had it.” As for Glen, Don believed he had a fight plan that could get the win, but they never went beyond sparing.
• Jack Raleigh, promoter and longtime mentor to Jim. Raleigh called his promotion business the St. Paul Boxing Club, and his office was in Room 204 of the old Ryan Hotel at 6th and Robert (not far from the gym). An example of his boxing shows is the November 1955 card at the St. Paul Auditorium featuring Minneapolis’s Danny Davis, the state lightweight champ (135 lbs. max.), vs. Austin’s Jackie Graves, the state featherweight champ (126 lbs. max.). Graves won a ten-round decision. There were 4,000 seats offered at a dollar a seat, with the best seats going for four dollars. Boxrec.com reports the attendance at 1,480, with a gate of $2,877.03. So the average seat was two dollars. That was 1955. If you figure a conservative 4 percent annual inflation rate, the night’s gate in 2015 dollars might be about $29,000. The flyer advertising the fight promised all middleweights on the undercard: St. Paul’s Jim Perrault vs. Chicago’s Abie Cruze, Minneapolis’s Joe Schmolze vs. Chicago’s Rocky Volpe, St. Paul’s Terry Rindel vs. Al Johnson of Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Don Weller (fighting as a middleweight) vs. Milwaukee’s Ernie Ford (Don won this six-rounder on points). You know Jim was there that night, helping and learning from the master and man of integrity, Jack Raleigh. In the early 1960s, Raleigh tried to promote a big fight between Del Flanagan and “Hurricane” Carter. Jim was there when Flanagan demurred (Patrick Reusse, supra). There’s a good book on Carter by James S. Hirsch entitled Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter (Houghton Mifflin Company 2000). Raleigh owned the River’s Edge Restaurant on the Apple River in Somerset, Wisconsin, and became a loyal customer when Jim began selling for Jerry’s Produce. Murray McLean’s work Boxers of St. Paul includes the following note at the bottom right: “LETTERING BY MURRAY McLEAN Compliments of Jack Raleigh.” When Jim started his own boxing promotion business, he named it the All State Boxing Club, and Raleigh was his inspiration. See Round 13, entitled “The Businessman.”
In 1913, Minnesota had legalized six-rounders with eight-ounce gloves (Clay Moyle, Billy Miske: The St. Paul Thunderbolt, 13 (Win By KO Publications 2011)). If the Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym opened in the Hamm Building in 1915 (the year the building was completed), and if it closed in 1949, it operated thirty-four years. For its part, if Weller’s Gym opened in 1947 and closed in 1968, it operated twenty-one years.
Full of gratitude, Jim was close with many of the characters these gyms produced over so many years, including Jack Gibbons, Ray Temple, Murray McLean, Billy Colbert, Emmett Weller, Del Flanagan, Glen Flanagan, Don Weller, and Jack Raleigh. Some were like a father to Jim, others like brothers.
Within St. Paul, there was a rivalry in Jim’s day. There were the fighters from the Rice Street area, led by Jim, against the fighters from the West 7th Street area, led by Joe Stepka. The press played up that there was no love lost between the rivals and their fans, but the bottom line was that these fighters were from the same city and naturally became lifelong friends. In 1988, Stepka was inducted into the Mancini’s St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame, of which Jim was then chairman.
Jim turned pro in 1945, glove fighting under the names Jimmy O’Hara and “Irish” and “Handsome” Jim. He was a proponent of the St. Paul style, a technique developed by Mike Gibbons.
“You would hold your left hand low and feint, making the other guy miss, and then you’d counter,” said Jim. “It was all in balance and timing” (Sean T. Kelly, “Remembering St. Paul’s Irish Boxers,” 13 Irish Gazette 4 (January–February 1998)).
The immortal Joe Louis put it this way, recalling the scientific boxer “Jersey” Joe Walcott: “When he dropped his left hand it wasn't a mistake. It was to feint you on to a right hand that could bring the roof on your head” (Joe Louis, “How I Would Have Clobbered Clay,”The Ring, February 1967, 40). In 1947, Louis got the win over Walcott but only by split decision. Walcott floored Louis in the first and the fourth.
Jim called the St. Paul style the “School of No Get Hit,” to set up the counter, in the manner of Mike Gibbons. Light-heavyweight Billy Conn, out of Pittsburgh, applied a similar boxing style when he challenged Joe Louis, the world heavyweight champion, in New York in June 1941, Jim noted (Sean T. Kelly, supra).
Conn almost pulled off what was thought impossible. After twelve rounds he had Louis on points. All Conn had to do was stay away from Louis for the rest of the fight. But then in the thirteenth, Conn got cocky, dropped his plan and his guard, and started taking chances with his punches. Louis saw the opening and retained the crown.
After a shower and some tears, Conn famously said: “What’s the sense of being Irish if you can’t be dumb?” (Randy Roberts, Joe Louis: Hard Times Man, Chapter 7 (Yale University Press 2010), Kindle Edition). Conn’s remark is on the list of the best post-fight lines (Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, supra, at 205).
“Billy Conn was like lightning,” Louis recalled in 1967. “He learned his trade in the small clubs, from welter right through to heavyweight. He could have kept up with [Cassius] Clay because his legs knew where they were going”(Joe Louis, supra).
You’re guaranteed to enjoy the acclaimed book The Sweet Science (The Viking Press 1956) by A. J. Liebling. This book is on boxing’s list of required reading. In 2002, Sports Illustrated ranked it the number one sports book of all time. For his essays on boxing, Liebling was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992. In the book, and specifically the essay entitled “The Big Fellows: Boxing with the Naked Eye,” Liebling describes Lee Savold, St. Paul’s adopted son, who faced Joe Louis in Madison Square Garden in June 1951. Louis scored a sixth-round knockout.
Liebling wrote: “Savold had said he would walk right out and bang Louis in the temple with a right. . . . But all he did was come forward . . . with his left low.” Unfortunately Liebling also wrote that Savold wasn’t much, wasn’t good, and even called him a “third-rater” and a “clown.” Imagine that. A Minnesota Boxing Hall of Famer, Savold had 150 recorded professional bouts with 101 wins (72 by KO), 42 losses, and 6 draws, including newspaper decisions. The British Boxing Board thought so much of him, they had recognized him as heavyweight champion of the world after his TKO win in the fourth over Bruce Woodcock in London in June 1950. Boxrec.com reports that the British recognized Ezzard Charles as the champ after the Louis-Savold bout.
Joe Louis is ranked number four on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time, after only Sugar Ray Robinson, Henry Armstrong, and Willie Pep. Billy Conn is ranked number thirty-five, Ezzard Charles number twenty-four, and Jersey Joe Walcott number seventy-nine (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, 10, 116, 76, and 267).
Jim hit “on the switch,” a sideways shift designed to set up a new attack. Using this technique, he surprised himself one night when he knocked out an opponent and woke him up with one too many punches. “I hit him again on the way down and I saw his eyes come open,” he explained. “I had him out and I woke him up. The guy got up and made a real scrap of it, but I still won, despite making extra work for myself” (Sean T. Kelly, supra).
A southpaw from birth, Jim boxed orthodox (right-handed), a holdover from the orphanage and elementary school where the good nuns didn’t tolerate the unorthodox. So he had an extrastrong left jab.
Blessed with inherited physical strength, Jim had a large torso made for punching with a long reach. They say his father, Herman Ehrich, could military press a small horse. Another story in the family has Herman knocking out a horse with a single punch. Herman died in 1977 at the age of 96, and he never needed a nursing home or any other help in that area.
They say Roberto Duran knocked out a horse with a single punch in Panama before he made it big (George Kimball, Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran, and the Last Great Era of Boxing, Chapter 1 (McBooks Press, Inc. 2008), Kindle Edition).
Ranking Duran number eight on the list of the top one hundred fighters of all time, 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, supra, at 23).
With the torso to be a big puncher, Jim wasn’t a heel-to-toer. (The puncher relies on planting his feet.) Nor would you say his style was that of a fighter. (The fighter’s weapons may include head butts, shoulders, elbows, knees, you name it.) As big and as street experienced as he was, Jim was a boxer. He had science. He’s known to have used his long reach to work the jab in combination with the right hook to keep his opponent off balance: jab—jab—boom, jab—jab—boom.
The “Boston Strong Boy” John L. Sullivan's favorite punch was a right hook to the neck. In Mississippi City in 1882, the modern sports age began when he used it to acquire the title Champion of America from the “Trojan Giant” Paddy Ryan. “He had arrived in Mississippi City as John L. Sullivan,” says one author, “and departed as an American Hercules” (Christopher Klein, Strong Boy: The Life and Times of John L. Sullivan, America's First Sports Hero, Chapter 2 (Lyons Press 2013), Kindle Edition).
If a good jab is art, a good hook is power. Jim taught that punches need pop: “Don’t cock, pop.” When you cock, you leave yourself even more open. With the pop, there’s no wind up; you shorten your punches. He taught that other fundamental boxing skills—footwork, balance, feints, slipping a blow, timing, leverage, anticipating and recognizing the opening, space or distance management, clock management, clinching as necessary in tight spots—require patience. Patience in boxing means handwork, brains, and experience.
Beyond height (six foot one) and weight (200 lbs.), his physical pluses and minuses included a long face with a strong jaw, bull neck, and a large torso and arms. He had big fists, while his legs were strong but short for his torso. He had athletic-looking feet cursed with gout attacks from a young age. As a teenager, he was rejected from the United States Army, classified 4‑F, because of the gout.
He never espoused muscles for their own sake. He knew too many muscles could generate a “tell,” telegraphing what counter to apply at the vulnerable moment. He had an eye for seeing your tell. After discovering it, he told his manager: “Set the bout.” In terms of muscles, all in the fight game know, and Jim taught, that “It’s not what you got but what you can do with what you got.”
Jack Dempsey, commenting on his start as a light-heavy taking on the heavies, said: “It’s not about how much you weigh. It’s about getting your body weight in motion. That’s what a punch is, isn’t it? Body weight exploding into motion” (Roger Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring ’20s, Chapter 1 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 1999), Kindle Edition). Dempsey is ranked number nine on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 10).
Sam Langford, ranked number sixteen on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time, commented: “Many fighters, when ready to hit, tighten their lips, half close their eyes, or give a tip-off in some way as to what’s going to happen” (Clay Moyle, Sam Langford: Boxing’s Greatest Uncrowned Champion, Chapter 3 (Bennett & Hastings Publishing 2013), Kindle Edition; Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 49).
When he was twenty-two, Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) became heavyweight champion of the world by watching Sonny Liston’s eyes. “Liston’s eyes tip you when he is about to throw a heavy punch,” said Ali. “Some kind of way, they just flicker” (David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, Chapter 11 (Vintage Books 1999), Kindle Edition). Ali is ranked number seven on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time. Liston is ranked number seventy-three (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 20 and 247).
Besides road work, Jim liked to play handball at the YMCA (both in downtown St. Paul and downtown San Francisco) as part of his training. A showman, he could dish out the prefight bravado. On the day of the fight, he preferred to spend the afternoon relaxing at a movie theater. He liked a good movie, as long as it didn’t have a message. His answer was no when Kitty inquired whether he was scared or nervous before a fight. He had trained. He had a fight plan. He had Murray McLean in his corner. He had his tough pa and six tough brothers and all his street fights and the Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym as well as Weller’s Gym in his subconscious. He enjoyed the calm before the storm.
On the world-class level, “[Rocky] Graziano had a pre-fight smoke to calm his nerves” in July 1947 when he beat Tony Zale for the world middleweight title (Dave Newhouse, Before Boxing Lost Its Punch, Round 3 (ebooks 2012)). Graziano is ranked number ninety-eight to Zale’s number seventy ranking on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 336 and 237). Paul Newman played Graziano in the 1956 Oscar-winning movie Somebody Up There Likes Me.
In the glove era that saw Rocky Marciano as king of the heavyweight division, Jim was more often the hitter than the hittee, as he put it. Marciano himself provides a contrast that helps explain at least one reason why Jim had no illusions about being a contender for the world heavyweight crown. In the words of John E. Oden, “Rocky was frequently known to receive three to four punches with the hope of being able to deliver one” (John E. Oden, Life in the Ring, 123 (Hatherleight Press 2009)). Joyce Carol Oates put Marciano’s number at five: he “was willing to absorb five blows in the hope of landing one” (Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing (HarperCollins e-books 2006), Kindle Edition)). By contrast, Jim believed that “if you’re taking more punches than you’re landing, you’re in the wrong business.”
As a disciple of Mike Gibbons’s School of No Get Hit, Jim meant no disrespect to the Rock, the first world champ in boxing history to retire with a perfect record, 49 and 0 (44 by knockout). Marciano boxed professionally from 1947 to 1956 (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 44–45).
Perfection aside, in day-to-day life, Jim witnessed firsthand the downside of a career in boxing. If you were in his sphere of influence, he recommended the School of No Get Hit even if, without it, you were racking up wins on the way to the top. He also advised not to quit your day job. Later he spoke of his experience:
There were a lot of fighters around when I was young, and everyone had cauliflower ears and busted noses. I saw a lot of broken people. When they were through with boxing, there was nothing left for them. I buried some of those guys. (Jim is quoted by Mike Mosedale, The Ring Cycle, April 3, 2007.)
The author Mark Kriegel called this state “Palookaville.” He wrote:
Palookaville, that punchers’ purgatory where broken boxers live in poverty and chagrin. They all seem to get there, one way or another, traveling the pug’s path from Kid to Bum. In Palookaville, the Ali Shuffle is a palsied jig. (George Kimball and John Schulian, At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (Library of America 2011), which includes the writing of Mark Kriegel: “The Great (Almost) White Hope,” Kindle Edition.)
Despite his love of boxing and the allure of striving for the whole shooting match, Jim’s determination lay in building a future for his family, whether or not boxing penciled out. Faced with the family budget, he figured early that the best policy was to maintain a day job in addition to boxing. With this policy, born of street smarts, he found a level of independence not only in the beginning but ultimately throughout his six decades of fistiana. See Round 13, entitled “The Businessman.”
Like all boxers, Jim was taught that the gifted, like Mike Gibbons, and the overachievers, like Rocky Marciano, get to the top the same way: by training and training and training even more (Johnny Salak, Training a Full-Time Job, The Ring, August 1950, 46). The exception to the rule, like the partying Harry Greb, might never appear again.
Having done the math for himself, Jim accepted his place in the boxing equation. His regular day job meant he wasn’t set up to train full time, which meant he wasn’t training full time, which meant there’s no way he could become a contender at the highest level of the sport. No full-time training equals no contender material.
The great boxer Gene Tunney believed that “a good boxer can always lick a good fighter” (George Kimball and John Schulian, supra, which includes the writing of Gene Tunney: “My Fights with Jack Dempsey,” Kindle Edition). But Tunney wasn’t boxing when Rocky Marciano was at his peak let alone Jack Dempsey at his. On the famous Dempsey-Tunney fights of 1926 and 1927, see Round 2, entitled “Dignity and Sportsmanship.”
Muhammad Ali said of Marciano: “Rugged. . . . Could take a punch and just keep coming. . . . He beat up on opponents’ arms so they could not hold them up to defend themselves” (Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, supra, at 18).
In the 1982 film Rocky III, the storyline has Rocky Balboa learning to become a boxer, rather than a puncher or fighter, in order to defeat Mr. T who depicts a killer in the ring. (Rocky Graziano’s birth name was Thomas Rocco Barbella.)
After over ten years in the ring, Jim had no prominent tell-tale signs. He certainly never experienced any eye problems or loss of cognitive ability, and his ears weren’t cauliflowered. On his face there were scars from the street and some from the ring. His fighting experience taught him that in boxing, and indeed in any adversarial situation, it’s an advantage to be underestimated.
His known pro matches are provided in Round 7, entitled “Boxing Record.” Many of his bouts are unknown, including his matches in San Francisco.
Kitty recalls that Jim was a popular local draw and the main event on the boxing cards. She remembers the auditoriums being full. He generally didn’t want her to watch him fight, but one night she showed up anyway and was sitting high in the stands where a man seated near her was yelling less than kind words. “Hey, that’s my husband,” she said to the guy, who was a gentleman after she’d identified herself. She remembers road trips to Jim’s fights, such as to Duluth in August 1953, the night Jim fought Don Jasper. Winning an unanimous decision in this boxer-puncher matchup, Jim was unmarked. He and Kitty and Murray McLean and the others in Jim’s corner enjoyed a celebratory dinner late that night.
As the 1940s came to a close, Jim enjoyed playing football in a recreational league. It was touch only, but of course, things could get rough. One play he was down field and a defensive back just leveled him. Back in the huddle, Jim said: “Run that play again.” The next thing you know, the defensive back is out cold. Jim said the rules were then changed to bar professionals of any sport from playing in the recreational league.
Recognized as a tough heavyweight, Jim also helped pay the bills by doing some professional wrestling. This form of athleticism became popular in Minnesota in the 1950s (George Schire, Minnesota’s Golden Age of Wrestling, 12 (Minnesota Historical Society Press 2010)). Jim could grab your wrist and apply pressure that instantly made you drop to your knees. “You wouldn’t want to fight him in a closet,” he quipped when he wanted to communicate that someone had good wrestling skills. After knocking out an opponent at practice one weekend, he never went back to pro wrestling as a young man. Thirty years later, he offered an ear and counsel to the Incredible Hulk Hogan, who delighted Minnesotans with live shows beginning in 1981. In Rocky III, filmed in 1982, Hogan “fights” Rocky for an entertaining charity event. (Hulk Hogan’s birth name is Terry Gene Bollea.)
In the early 1960s, Jim was late picking up one of his sons and his son’s friends from the St. Paul Armory where the boys enjoyed a professional wrestling show. They had time to goof around, and eventually they ticked off at least one of the wrestlers. As Jim walked into the Armory, all he saw was this imposing man threatening his son. Protective to a fault, Jim told the professional grappler: “You get in my boy's face again, I’ll stick your head up your ass and throw you for a hoop.”
The line “You wouldn’t want to fight him in a closet” and variations of the same is an old one. The scientific boxer, in contrast to the fighter who relies on making contact at close range, needs a larger ring for footwork. Doc Kearns and Jack Dempsey had had a falling out by 1926–1927 when Dempsey faced and lost twice to Gene Tunney. They say if Kearns had been in Dempsey’s corner, Dempsey would’ve come out on top. Kearns commented later: “You want the small ring, the sixteen-footer, because like I always tell people, inside is where Dempsey is Dempsey. If they fight in a broom closet, Tunney don’t see the second round” (Roger Kahn, supra, Chapter 12).
In 1915, Dempsey was coerced by a sheriff in southwestern Colorado to wrestle a local strongman called Big Ed. The sheriff claimed Dempsey owed back rent but would let him off if he wrestled. The sheriff also insisted that boxing was illegal. Without use of his fists, Dempsey was pinned in under five minutes (Roger Kahn, supra, Chapter 1).
Agility was one of Jim’s gifts. In the 1950s, he stopped by his cousin Tom Hoban’s house when some of Tom’s six kids were in the front yard. To entertain them, Jim did handstands. To top things off, he did cartwheels all the way to the end of the block and back. Eye-hand coordination was another gift. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Jim regularly shot the basketball off the backboard and into the net at the downtown St. Paul YMCA—from half court. The question wasn’t could he do it. The question was how many times in a row.
If he was a good athlete, he couldn’t carry a tune. He said he never envied any man but sure would’ve liked to have known how to sing. Heavyweight champion of the world Joe Frazier, who in the 1970s won the first of three battles with Muhammad Ali, loved to belt out songs. He explained:
Music has soul. It gives you a feeling of belonging. It gets you with life. It’s power, strength, and don’t think it doesn’t take stamina. That song routine I do is like real, tough roadwork. It moves every bit of you and the audience, too. The best thing is it’s real, it makes you feel you’re going places. Singing. That’s what I want to do with the rest of my life. Singing is what it’s all about. (Phil Pepe, Come Out Smokin' Joe Frazier: The Champ Nobody Knew, Chapter entitled “My Way” (Division Books 2012), Kindle Edition.)
Frazier is ranked number thirty-seven as compared to Ali’s number seven ranking on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 124 and 20).
Three hundred million viewers watched Ali-Frazier I, broadcast closed circuit to arenas and theaters around the world. The year was 1971, Madison Square Garden the venue, two undefeated heavyweight champions facing off, Frazier the victor. Of course, Jim was one of those viewers, and 1971 also was the year he quit drinking for good.
They may not articulate it, but boxers feel a connection to the immortals, even through others, and so Jim connected—indirectly—with Rocky Marciano and Sugar Ray Robinson.
Jim was a sparring partner for St. Paul’s Lee Savold, a heavyweight contender. There was no shame in Savold’s loss to Rocky Marciano in Philadelphia in February 1952. Marciano is ranked number fourteen on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time.
Jim also was a sparring partner for Joey Maxim, light‑heavyweight champion of the world, who beat New England heavyweight “Tiger” Ted Lowry in St. Paul in March 1952. Lowry had nearly 150 fights over his career, including a draw with Savold in 1947, and they say Lowry gave one of his best performances in St. Paul against Maxim. (Lowry had gone the distance twice with Marciano for a total of twenty rounds with the Rock.)
In June 1952, three months after his fight in St. Paul, Maxim successfully defended his title against Sugar Ray Robinson at Yankee Stadium. Of welter- and middleweight fame, the Sugarman wasn't able to take the light-heavy crown from Maxim. Sugar Ray Robinson is ranked number one, pound for pound, on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 1 and 43). You know as a scientific boxer who'd recently worked as a sparring partner for Maxim, Jim naturally felt a strong connection to Robinson vs. Maxim.
Joey Maxim was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994. He’s ranked number twelve on the list of the top defensive fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, supra, at 161).
Jim became good friends with Joey Maxim, whereby Jim got to know Doc Kearns, Maxim’s manager. Kearns had managed not only heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey but also middleweight champ Mickey Walker and lightweight champ Benny Leonard. In December 1952, Archie Moore dethroned Maxim in a fifteen-round decision and thereafter Kearns managed Moore. In 1972, The Ring magazine, the Bible of Boxing, published its fiftieth anniversary issue in which it named the top ten boxing personalities of the previous fifty years. Kearns was named number three. The full list from number one to ten is Jack Dempsey, promoter Tex Rickard, Doc Kearns, Joe Louis, Max Baer, Muhammad Ali, promoter Mike Jacobs, Benny Leonard, Joe Frazier, and Primo Carnera (The Ring, June 1972, at 32–41).
Kearns was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. A lightweight (135 lbs. max.), Benny Leonard is ranked number six, pound for pound, on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time. Mickey Walker is ranked number eleven, and Archie Moore is ranked number twenty-two (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 17, 33, and 69).
The Sugar Ray Robinson-Joey Maxim bout is the subject of the essay entitled “Kearns by a Knockout” in A.J. Liebling’s The Sweet Science (The Viking Press 1956). Here’s how Liebling drew his own connection to the class of immortals in the first essay in the book:
It is through Jack O’Brien . . . that I trace my rapport with the historic past through the laying-on of hands. He hit me . . . and he had been hit by the great Bob Fitzsimmons, from whom he won the light-heavyweight title in 1906. Jack had a scar to show for it. Fitzsimmons had been hit by Corbett, Corbett by John L. Sullivan, he by Paddy Ryan, with the bare knuckles, and Ryan by Joe Goss, his predecessor, who as a young man had felt the fist of the great Jem Mace. It is a great thrill to feel that all that separates you from the early Victorians is a series of punches on the nose.
Liebling believed television would put boxing into a coma. See his comments quoted near the end of Round 13, entitled “The Businessman.”
Another of Jim’s connections to the immortals was through fellow Minnesotan Don Jasper, whom Jim decisioned in 1953. The real McCoy, Jasper went on to face Ezzard Charles in 1956. Jasper was stopped in the ninth, but after all, he was fighting an immortal. Former heavyweight champion of the world, Charles is ranked number twenty-four on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 76).
Old boxers use the fight game in their everyday speech. Jim was no exception. Here are the top five lines he was known to joke with over the years:
1. There’d be two hits. Me hitting him, and him hitting the ground.
2. I’d hit him with so many punches, he’d think he was in a boxing glove factory.
3. The guy wouldn’t recognize the truth [even] if it jumped out and hit him in the nose.
4. The guy couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag.
5. The guy couldn’t start a fight in an Irish saloon.
He also horsed around with the line that’s in every old boxer’s repertoire: “Now I want this to be a fair fight. So before we begin you need to know one of your shoes is untied. Boom!”
Old boxers always believe they have at least one good punch left. Jim felt the same, which is why he was comfortable carrying cash at all times regardless of his surroundings. There’s a story about Jack Dempsey along these lines:
In his early seventies, Dempsey was riding home one night when his taxi stopped at a light in midtown Manhattan. As it did, two young men opened the back doors on both sides of the cab, obviously bent on mugging Dempsey. Leaping out of the taxi, Dempsey hit one of the would-be muggers with a right cross from out of the past and then flattened his accomplice with his old patented left hook. (Jack Cavanaugh, Tunney: Boxing’s Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey, Chapter 23 (Ballantine Books 2007), Kindle Edition.)
Jim never had to use the punch he held in reserve, but once back when he was still jogging regularly, a would-be thief made the mistake of coming into the house in broad daylight. Kitty was shocked, and Jim happened to be sitting right there. He gave chase, catching the guy some blocks away.
If you’re big, tough looking, and walk like John Wayne, as Jim did, you stand out as a target for some unthinking younger fellow with something to prove, especially in the saloons. Lighthearted and compassionate, Jim didn’t want to hurt or embarrass you or ruin your clothes by pulling your shirt or jacket over your face. With his street smarts, Jim used double talk, if necessary, by which he began: “Where you from? You don’t say. You must know . . . Why I remember . . . ” Meanwhile, he made sure his back was covered and his feet had room. Pretty soon, more often than not, he had a new friend, or at least the guy returned whence he came without being hurt or embarrassed.
In one incident, the aggressors wouldn’t back down: two big farmers in a saloon not far from Lake Johanna (where Billy Miske used to live) and the present campus of Bethel University. Jim dropped them with two punches. He matched his right with the chin of the giant on the left and, swinging back, his left with the other big fellow’s chin, according to a witness who told the story to Jim’s son Gary.
You never heard Jim speak of his street fights. If you heard about them, you heard from witnesses who told stories after they discovered your relation. The stories illustrate nine words that are in every boxer’s DNA, certainly Jim’s: “You take a swing at me, you get popped.”
Another tale pits Jim against four in Gallivan’s Bar & Restaurant on Wabasha Street in downtown St. Paul. Suffice it to say, they were troublemakers. After leveling them, he carried them outside the rear exit, where he made it clear they weren’t to come back. A witness told this story to Jim’s son Jeff.
There’s also the story at Mickey’s Diner, the twenty-four-hour restaurant that resembles a railroad dining car in downtown St. Paul. In his early twenties, Jim and a buddy were entering the joint about two in the morning when his buddy saw two ladies around the corner. “I’ll be right back,” he said as Jim headed into the restaurant. Soon the buddy found himself on his back getting kicked pretty good by two fellows. The next thing he knows, Boom!, the assailant on his left was down and, Boom!, the assailant on his right was down, recalled the kickee to Jim’s son Gary. Over the years, Gary heard this story a dozen times if he heard it once, and each time the friend concluded with the words: “Jimmy picked me up, dusted me off, and bought me breakfast.”
The same friend learned you couldn’t accuse Jim of being an enabler. The venue for the lesson was a saloon on West 7th Avenue in St. Paul, where the friend got himself in another pickle. “Jimmy! Take care of him!” is what Jim heard, to which he replied: “I don’t know you.” Years later, his buddy grumbled he was sore at Jim for a long time over that deal, confirmed Bob Ritter, Jim’s son-in-law. For another twist where a friend set up Jim, see Round 14, entitled “The Storyteller.”
In the 1960s and 70s, Jim and his three sons belonged to the downtown St. Paul YMCA. When you entered the locker room there was the TV area to the left. Many a sport was viewed there thanks to ABC’s Saturday program the Wide World of Sports, what with its thrill-of-victory-agony-of-defeat intro. Next to the showers was the pool, where you swam nude except on Thursday’s family night. The basketball court was one floor up, next to the room with the rowing machines. The boxing ring was on a lower level.
Now there was a regular at the Y, a Golden Gloves middleweight champ in his day, who hounded Jim about getting in the ring. He was a close friend really. After a while, Jim figured the only way he was going to shut his buddy up was to get in the ring and make it just unpleasant enough that the fellow would never bring the subject up again. So that’s what Jim did, it worked, and they remained the same friends they were before they'd mixed with their fists.
If you played some baseball, you’ve taken your old mitt, put it up to your nose, and closed your eyes. You know the smell of that leather brings back memories like an old song. The Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym and Weller’s Gym are gone, as are many of their patrons. But if you put some old boxing gloves up to your nose and close your eyes, you never know, images of the old days might just come alive.
It felt like one hundred degrees ringside in Duluth the night of August 27, 1953. Approaching his twenty-eighth birthday, Jim O'Hara was putting on a boxing clinic against a hometown favorite four years his junior. His opponent was none other than TNT-in-both-fists Don Jasper. Jasper could sock you to tomorrow.
Earlier the Duluth Herald had suggested that the victor of the evening’s main event would reign supreme in Minnesota, if only for a night:
Big Jim O’Hara, St. Paul, considers himself the No. 1 heavyweight fighter in Minnesota and has staged a claim on the championship.
Tall, handsome, hard-punching Don Jasper, Duluth, has his own ideas on the subject but prefers to do his talking with his fists.
These two knockout artists meet tonight in the national guard armory to settle what difference of opinion there is between them on the heavyweight title, and it promises to be a rugged argument.
Preliminaries will start at 8:30.
Members of the state boxing commission think enough of the scrap to be here en masse, having changed their regular meeting to Duluth. They will have dinner tonight in the Gitchi Gammi club.
O’Hara will have a decided edge over Jasper in ring experience but nothing on the Morgan Park scrapper when it comes to dishing out punishment.
Jasper has dynamite in both fists and proved to the satisfaction of local railbirds that he can take a punch as well as deliver one. He has worked harder for this bout than any of his previous ring appearances.
Their scrap is scheduled for six rounds but it’s a good bet it will end before that. (“Jasper, O’Hara Battle,” Duluth Herald, August 27, 1953, page 25.)
Perhaps more than any other fight, certainly from the vantage point of these many years later, the Jasper-O’Hara bout put a lasting shine on Jim’s reputation as a boxer. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported the outcome thusly:
St. Paul’s Jimmy O’Hara, starting what he hopes will be one of his finest years, whipped Don Jasper of Duluth here Thursday night in the main event of a boxing card at the Armory.
O’Hara’s verdict was unanimous. The St. Paulite boxed well and displayed a good left jab that went in combination with a right hook that kept Jasper off balance throughout the test. (“O’Hara Beats Jasper in Duluth Test,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 28, 1953.)
If a unanimous decision means impressing the judges with your clean punches, your aggression, and your ring generalship, as they say, along with your defense, it was Jim’s night.
Per the lineal making of a champion, the boxing historian may note:
• August 27, 1953: Jim defeats Don Jasper in a six-round contest.
• October 27, 1953: Jack Wagner defeats Jim in a six-round meeting.
• January 10, 1957: Gene “Rock” White defeats Jack Wagner in a ten-rounder. White crowned the Minnesota heavyweight champion.
• October 29, 1957: Don Jasper defeats Gene “Rock” White in a ten-rounder. Jasper crowned the Minnesota heavyweight champion.
If Jim was never crowned the de jure heavyweight champion, there were plenty around who recognized him as having held the de facto Minnesota title. One was Don Riley, sports journalist and historian. He 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, Scott LeDoux, Will Grigsby, Bill Kaehn, and Dr. Sheldon Segal.
Back in 1976 Riley wrote as only he could:
Finally, the state athletic commission has got a real boxing man on the panel. In the past they’ve leaned towards shoe salesmen, plumbers, stock brokers, sign painters and Avon drivers. True, Jim O’Hara qualifies as a produce executive. But he’s all boxing man. He’s a former state heavyweight pro champ who whipped Don Jasper in Duluth for the crown although there was a dispute that it was only a six-rounder and should have gone 10. But that’s not the point. Listen to his manager, venerable Murray McLean, look back:
"It was 100 degrees in the arena and Jasper could hit. But Jimmy out-hustled him all the way, jabbing and moving and fighting his way out of inside battles. Jim never asked who the foe was—only what time was the fight and what was the payoff. I handled Lee Savold against Jack Gibbons and the famous Lee was scared stiff for three rounds. He lost, too, because he was too cautious and tentative. O’Hara’s guts in Savold’s body would have made a super machine."
Jim, who has given hundreds of hours a year to the Golden Glove program, brings a fresh, honest integrity to the commission. As Murray McLean says, he won’t ask how tough is the problem, only say, "Let’s get at it."(“Don Riley’s Eye Opener,” St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press, June 13, 1976.)
In all, Jim spent over a decade as a serious boxer, 1941 through 1953. He summed up his career in the ring by saying he won more than he lost.
In the winter of 1943–1944, Jim boxed in the Golden Gloves, winning the St. Paul tournament to become the light‑heavyweight champ (175 lbs. max.). He was the runner-up at what was then known as the Northwest Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions, which included Minnesota, and going into the semi-finals and finals of the tournament he showed promise. Louis H. Gollop wrote at the time:
In O’Hara’s case it is a question of whether the St. Paul boy can stand the gaff of fighting two tough fights in one night.
***
If he can weather the storm he appears as an almost certainty to win the title. (Louis H. Gollop, “Stepka, Lentsch, O’Hara Rated ‘Even Chance’ in Golden Gloves Finals,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, February 13, 1944, page 1 (Sports).)
If it was humiliating to be found unfit for military duty (classified 4-F) because of gout attacks, there was some consolation for eighteen-year-old Jimmy O’Hara in helping ten thousand fans of the sport of boxing take their minds off the war. The venue was the Minneapolis Auditorium, and in the semis and finals there were thirty-two remaining fighters in eight divisions, one representing the US Navy, three representing St. Paul, thirteen representing Minneapolis, and fifteen from outside the Twin Cities area of St. Paul-Minneapolis (“10,000 Expected for Golden Glove Windup,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, February 14, 1944).
Jim turned pro in 1945. If you Google “Boxrec.com” and “Jim O’Hara Minnesota,” you’ll find a summary of at least eleven of his professional contests. Unfortunately, at this writing entire years are missing from his record, including 1946, 1947, 1949, 1951, and 1952. It wasn’t him to save newspaper clippings or worry about whether he was getting credit for a fight in the history books. Back in the day, when The Ring magazine was at its zenith, you mailed in your verified boxing result to the editor, the famous Nat Fleischer. Neither Jim nor his manager mailed in any information.
Thankfully Boxrec.com provides at least a sampling of Jim’s record. The dates given also suggest that back then every day of the week was a good day for a boxing show.
Jim’s opponent in the first contest listed is heavyweight Jack Taylor, whose residence is given as Fort Snelling. So he must have been a soldier; no other information on Taylor is provided. They faced each other in Duluth on Friday May 18, 1945, and Jim got the win by knockout in the second.
Next he fought Earl Adkinson of St. Paul. His alias is reported as Erie; Jim knew him as “Early.” The contest occurred Friday June 8, 1945, at the St. Paul Auditorium. No weight is given for either man, but Adkinson is known as a light-heavyweight. As a welcome to the pro ranks, Jim was stopped in the first round.
He was nineteen at the time of the first bout listed. The ages of his opponents (other than Don Jasper and Jack Wagner) are unknown at this time. His bouts with Taylor and Adkinson are the only ones listed for 1945, and nothing is listed for 1946 and 1947.
Adkinson is reported to have retired in 1946 with a record of 8 wins, 4 losses, and 1 draw. He knocked out three others besides Jim. In October 1946, he decisioned middleweight veteran Don Espensen in a four-rounder at the St. Paul Auditorium. From Minneapolis, Espensen would retire in 1949 with 82 professional fights and a record of 42 wins, 30 losses, and 10 draws, including newspaper decisions. A newspaper decision is a bout left in the hands of the sportswriters. A draw, of course, is a bout neither fighter deserves to lose.
In the universal struggle known as making ends meet, Jim tried full-time fighting. It was the winter of 1947–1948. He’d arrived in San Francisco on a high horse, his brand new Chevy coupe for which he’d paid cash at the age of twenty-one. He made the trip with another boxer, believed to be a heavyweight, whom Jim helped manage while in California. Basically they managed themselves, taking on all comers.
Financial success from full-time boxing wasn’t to be. Jim saved money living at the San Francisco YMCA while training, only to be kicked out for fighting on the outdoor handball court. Eventually he sold the Chevy and found another way home. Back in St. Paul by the spring of 1948, he vowed anew to find and keep a full-time day job in addition to boxing. See Round 13, entitled “The Businessman.”
The details of Jim’s matches in San Francisco are unknown. His opponents are believed to have included tough sailors.
Jim next stepped into the ring, as recorded by Boxrec.com, when he was 22. His opponent was Willie Dee Jones, also of St. Paul, with the alias Piper. Standing six foot three and weighing in at 210 lbs., Jones boxed professionally from 1947 to 1956, including in California, Idaho, Utah, Iowa, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Florida. Jones would retire with a losing record (7–11–2) but when Jim faced him, he was on the positive side of the ledger. With only one W by KO, Jones was no doubt a scientific boxer who taught Jim a thing or two.
Jim faced Jones twice in 1948 and got decisioned in both of these four-rounders. The first occurred Sunday April 4, 1948, at the Minneapolis Auditorium. The second occurred five months later, on Tuesday September 7, 1948, at the St. Paul Auditorium.
Jim’s bouts with Willie Dee Jones are the only ones listed for 1948, and nothing is listed for 1949.
The next opponent listed on Boxrec.com is “Big Jack” Herman, who called Chicago his home. Born in Romania, his alias was Big Boy. Herman was six foot three and boxed professionally from 1949 to 1952, including in Florida as well as Illinois and Wisconsin. He has a 13–7 record. He must’ve been a terrific puncher. Of his 13 recorded wins, 11 are knockouts. But if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. All 7 of his recorded losses are knockouts.
Jim was twenty-four and faced Big Jack twice in a span of fourteen days in 1950. Jim took the first meeting, Thursday June 1, 1950, at the St. Paul Auditorium, knocking out Big Jack in four.
Big Jack didn't stay licked for long. He redeemed himself on Wednesday June 14, 1950, at the Hippodrome in Eveleth. (Today the US Hockey Hall of Fame Museum is in Eveleth.) The record suggests Big Jack scored a knockout, but there’s a note that the facts haven’t been confirmed. In this second meeting, Big Jack is listed at 215 lbs., while Jim is listed at 200. (Information on any rubber match has not been found.)
The next bout reported at Boxrec.com has Jim against Tony Gallus of Drummond, Wisconsin. Gallus boxed professionally in 1950 and 1951. The match occurred Wednesday September 27, 1950, at the Armory in Duluth when Jim was twenty-four. Jim outpointed Gallus in this six-rounder. Gallus is listed at 173 lbs., while Jim is listed at 180 even, though three months earlier he’s listed at 200 in his second match against “Big Jack” Herman. Gallus’s record is reported as 4–3, with 3 of his 4 wins by knockout.
Nothing is listed for 1951 or 1952.
For 1953, when Jim was twenty-seven, there are four matches listed at Boxrec.com. His opponent on Tuesday March 3, 1953, is Tom Tierney of St. Paul. The bout occurred at the St. Paul Auditorium. Jim won by technical knockout, and there’s a note that the round hasn’t been confirmed. Tierney is reported to have entered the roped square for pay in 1953 through 1955, with the outcome of a 0–4 record, all by KO.
According to Boxrec.com, Jim’s next opponent was Don Jasper of Duluth. They crossed gloves in Jasper’s hometown on Thursday August 27, 1953. Jasper was twenty-three years of age. As noted, Jim prevailed with a unanimous decision after six hard rounds.
Jasper boxed professionally from 1950 to 1959, including in Canada, Washington, Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He’s listed at six foot one and about 200 lbs. After Jim was able to get the best of him, Jasper went on a run of 11 wins and a draw. He was the real McCoy. In 1956, you know all of Minnesota was rooting for him when he faced Ezzard Charles, the successor to Joe Louis. Charles, who stopped Jasper in the ninth, is ranked number twenty-four on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, Boxing’s Greatest Fighters 76 (The Lyons Press 2006)).
Jasper retired in 1959 after 39 pro fights, 27 wins and a draw against 11 losses. Sixteen of his wins were by knockout.
Jasper had become the undisputed Minnesota heavyweight champ on October 29, 1957, winning a ten-round unanimous decision over Gene White at the Ascension Club in Minneapolis. Known as the Rock, White is listed at Boxrec.com as six foot two and also about 200 lbs. Calling St. Paul his home, he boxed professionally from 1951 to 1958, including in Canada, Texas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In 1993, White was inducted into the Mancini’s St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame, of which Jim was then chairman.
On Tuesday October 27, 1953, Jim faced Jack Wagner of Battle Lake. Both are listed at 190 lbs. With the alias Timberjack, Wagner was six foot three and twenty-three years of age. The match occurred at the St. Paul Auditorium. There’s a note that Jack Gibbons was the referee. He awarded Wagner a technical knockout at one minute and thirty seconds into the sixth round.
According to Boxrec.com, Wagner boxed professionally from 1953 to 1961, including a January 1956 fight in St. Paul against Ray Smude in which Jack Dempsey was the third man. Wagner has a 5–5–1 record, with all his wins by KO.
The O’Hara-Wagner bout is believed to have been Wagner’s first professional fight. ‘Twas a heck of a debut, before Jim’s hometown no less, especially considering that Jim had outboxed Don Jasper just two months prior.
Wagner never fought Don Jasper, but Wagner challenged twice for the Minnesota heavyweight title. He lost both efforts. In 1957, he battled Gene “Rock” White for the crown, losing by unanimous decision. In 1961, Wagner took on Don Quinn for the title, losing by KO in the second.
If Jim underestimated Wagner, no one else made that mistake. Don Riley wrote in 1976: “Jim O’Hara cautions boxers about carrying foes. ‘I carried Timberjack Wagner and they carried me out of the ring’” (“Don Riley’s Eye Opener,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 7, 1976).
According to Boxrec.com, White retired in 1958 with a 18–14 record. Eleven of his wins were inside the distance. Quinn retired in 1964 with a 23–10 record. Sixteen of his wins were short-route victories.
The final contest listed on Boxrec.com for Jim occurred Sunday November 1, 1953. His opponent was Joe Thomas, who’s listed at 186 lbs. No weight is given for Jim. The match occurred in St. Paul. Jim stopped Thomas in three, and there’s no record of any other Thomas fight.
Thus from the Boxrec.com information as reported in 2013, it appears Jim’s efforts produced a better than .500 record: 6 wins and 5 losses, about the same record as “Timberjack” Wagner’s. Of Jim’s 5 registered wins, 3 are booked as knockouts. By the same token, his inside gambles didn’t always pay off—it was lights out in 3 of his 5 recorded losses.
As mentioned, sportswriter Don Riley always called Jim state heavyweight champ for having whipped Don Jasper in Duluth in August 1953. If Jasper had had five fights under his belt when he faced Jim, “Timberjack” Wagner had had six fights under his belt when he faced Gene “Rock” White for the state heavyweight crown.
Leon Spinks had had only seven pro fights when he took the heavyweight title away from Muhammad Ali in February 1978. One of those, just four months earlier, was a draw with Minnesota Boxing Hall of Famer Scott LeDoux. (In September 1978, Ali regained the title from Spinks and a year later retired for the first time.)
It’s of course a time-honored tradition in boxing to lay claim to a crown, as is debate about who should have won this or that decision or who deserves to be on the list of the greatest.
St. Paul’s Mike Gibbons had a claim to the middleweight title after the death of Stanley Ketchel, the Michigan Assassin, in 1910 (The Ring Boxing Encyclopedia and Record Book 19 (The Ring Book Shop 1979)).
In his day, Ketchel was as famous as his heavyweight contemporary Jack Johnson. Elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990, Ketchel is ranked number nineteen on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time. Gibbons was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992. He’s ranked number ninety-two out of the top one hundred (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 60, 314, and 316).
Mike Gibbons is ranked number five on the list of the top defensive fighters of all time and number ten on the list of the greatest Irish-American fighters of all time. Bert Sugar put these last two lists together with Teddy Atlas (Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, The Ultimate Book of Boxing Lists, 162 and 143 (Running Press 2010)).
In the early 1940s, Jim gave boxing lessons to his cousin Tom Hoban in the Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym in the basement of the Hamm Building in downtown St. Paul. Having followed Jim’s career in the ring, Hoban in 2013 recalled two, and perhaps more, main events at the St. Paul Auditorium over the years between Jim and another St. Paul heavyweight, who he believed was Joe Stepka.
With the alias Bill Zaire, Stepka is listed at Boxrec.com as big as 215 lbs. He boxed professionally from 1944 to 1953, including in Nebraska, Illinois, and Michigan. You have to give Stepka credit for one-upping Jim in June of 1945. Whereas Earl Adkinson knocked out Jim in the first round at the St. Paul Auditorium on June 8, 1945, Stepka knocked out Adkinson in the first round in the same venue nineteen days later.
Jim and Stepka started out together in the St. Paul Golden Gloves, Jim then a light-heavyweight and Stepka a middleweight, where they became lifelong friends. In 1988, Stepka was inducted into the Mancini’s St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame, of which Jim was then Chairman.
Boxrec.com reports that Stepka retired in 1953 with a 24–10–2 record, including 13 wins by knockout.
Hoban said that the two bouts he remembers for certain between Jim and another St. Paul heavyweight, believed to be Stepka, were in the ring set up on the stage in the theater section of the St. Paul Auditorium, the same location where Hoban’s high school commencement was held. When asked the outcome of the rivalry, he said they were split. “They were pretty evenly matched,” said Hoban.
There’s nothing like a bout where the contestants are skilled boxers evenly matched. Boxing essayist A. J. Liebling describes a hard-fought eight-round draw he witnessed in New York City in the early 1950s featuring a couple of experienced welterweights (147 lbs. max.). Earl Dennis and Ernie Roberts were their names. Here Liebling gives us a glimpse of the regimented lives of professional boxers who hold day jobs:
I knew from talking with their managers that both Dennis and Roberts were married men and fathers, and that they both held down full-time jobs. Roberts, a clerk in a hardware store, got to work at eight each morning and left at seven. His employer let him have three hours off in the middle of the day, during which he trained at Stillman’s and had his lunch. After work, he went home to his wife and child, in Harlem, and at five the next morning he was in Central Park, doing his roadwork—five miles in about forty-five minutes every day before breakfast. He was twenty-five. Dennis, who was only twenty-two, although he had been married for five years and had two children, lived in Brooklyn and worked normal hours for a firm on the fringes of the garment center, making women’s belt buckles. After work, he went up to the Broadway Gym, a small place near City College, to train, and a couple of hours later headed for Brooklyn. He, too, did his roadwork in the mornings. Roberts had had about forty fights and Dennis about thirty-five. Their daytime bosses were at ringside.
A. J. Liebling wrote these words in the essay entitled “The Neutral Corner Art Group” in the book that Sports Illustrated ranked, in 2002, the number one sports book of all time: The Sweet Science (The 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.”
In the same essay, Liebling mentions how much these fighters, who like Jim maintained day jobs, were paid for their night’s work. He says they each received $300, less $100 for their managers. They fought in the early 1950s, as did Jim. So if you figure a conservative 4 percent annual inflation rate, their night’s pay in 2015 dollars might be about $3,028 gross before management fees.
If it weren’t for the drinking, Jim acknowledged, he’d have trained more. He said he never was Olympic material, for example, because of the late nights. Growing up around legends, he knew intellectually that with few exceptions, like Harry Greb, you don’t become a great fighter let alone a Mike Gibbons without dedicated training and training and more training. Applying that knowledge to yourself is the hard part, what with a life outside the ring.
Jim’s aim was to have a regular day job, marry Kitty (which he did in 1948), become a father (their first child arrived in 1951), and be the all-around family man (maintaining the family home and car, etc.) that he saw in his uncle, John Hoban. See Round 4, entitled “The O’Hara Name & St. Paul.” Needless to say, Jim also aimed to keep all his friends, including his drinking buddies. Consequently, he had plenty of excuses to cut his training short.
Insufficient training has long been a problem among gloved combatants (Johnny Salak, “Training a Full-Time Job,” The Ring, August 1950, 46).
A middleweight, Harry Greb is ranked number five pound for pound on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time after only Sugar Ray Robinson, Henry Armstrong, Willie Pep, and Joe Louis (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 14).
A city boy, Jim appreciated the outdoors, at least as a spectator, not only in Minnesota but also in Alaska where he and Kitty visited family many times over twenty years beginning in the early 1980s. In Alaska, the vehicle of choice for getting to fishing holes and the rest is the small aircraft. But pilots often give up their wings if they don’t have the time to put in the hours necessary to stay sharp and on top of their game. In flying small aircraft, you need to see not only where you are but to anticipate miles ahead—as in boxing—what you can’t yet see, lest you get into a mountain pass where clouds can descend and sock everything in.
As of this writing, Boxrec.com has a record of 11 of Jim’s fights from June 1945 through November 1953. If he never trained like a contender, he’s believed to have had more than 11 professional contests. You don’t box at the professional level at least eight and a half years and have just 11 fights unless you’re Jack Dempsey. Jim had a family to support, and the heavyweights he faced were formidable, including the world-class puncher Don Jasper and a troika of six foot three-ers in Willie Dee Jones, “Big Jack” Herman, and “Timberjack” Wagner.
Having just 11 pro fights spread over eight-and-a-half years would be as risky as calling yourself a pilot on top of your game but having only 11 flights over about as many years. There’s no substitute for experience.
An intriguing clue suggesting Jim took on all comers is a remark by his manager, Murray McLean, who after all wasn’t making a living unless his men were fighting. “Jim never asked who the foe was, only what time was the fight and what was the payoff,” said McLean (“Don Riley’s Eye Opener,” St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press, June 13, 1976).
Put it this way: in fistiana, you rest, you rust. Jim turned pro in 1945. As late as 1953, he didn’t show any rust when he whipped the great Don Jasper. So it’s likely understated to say Jim’s pro record consists of 11 performances.
Understatement is perhaps fitting. Sure on a trip to Duluth he’d mentioned to his son Jeff that it was hot in August 1953 when he fought in the Armory there. But that comment was about as close as he got to tooting his own horn about his boxing career. “Don’t use the word ‘I’ too much,” he advised. “It’s not about you.”
Talk about other athletes, those who were good like himself as well as the greats, now that’s when he got energized.
How did Jim, at six foot one and 200 lbs. in his prime, stack up sizewise with some of the heavyweight champs of the golden age of boxing? According to Boxrec.com:
• The great boxer Jack Johnson was six foot and a half and 192 lbs. when he won the title in 1908;
• The great puncher Jack Dempsey, six foot one and 187 lbs. in 1919;
• The great boxer Gene Tunney, six foot and 190 lbs. in 1926;
• The great puncher/boxer Joe Louis, six foot two and 198 lbs. in 1937; and
• The great puncher Rocky Marciano, five foot eleven and 185 lbs. in 1952.
Jack Johnson is ranked number ten on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time. Dempsey is ranked nine; Tunney, thirteen; Louis, four; and Marciano, fourteen (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 10, 26, 29, 40, and 43).
Preferring the boxing name Handsome Jim and claiming to have a “pretty face,” Jim said he could fight without messing his hair. Such was one of the benefits of the St. Paul School of No Get Hit, of which Mike Gibbons’ was the father.
A student of boxing history, Jim was a big fan of Benny Leonard who as a lightweight (135 lbs. max.) became world champion in May 1917. In the 1950s, Jim became friends with Leonard’s manager, Jack “Doc” Kearns, through another of Kearns’ men, world light-heavyweight champ Joey Maxim. See Round 6, entitled “The Boxer: Part II.” Bert Sugar wrote of Leonard:
Practicing what he called the "Art of Self-Defense," the master technician put into words his strategy: "Hit and not be hit." And he was to prove it when, after each fight, he would proudly run his hand through his hair and announce, "I never even got my hair mussed." (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 18.)
Ranking Benny Leonard number six on the list of the top one hundred fighters of all time, Bert Sugar explained:
Leonard was the nearest thing to a perfect fighter boxing has ever seen. He combined the boxing ingenuity of Young Griffo, the masterful technique of James J. Corbert, the pinpoint accuracy of Joe Gans, the punching power of Jack Dempsey, the alertness of Gene Tunney, and the speed of Mike Gibbons. (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 17.)
Mike Gibbons was Jim’s biggest inspiration in the prize ring, and Jim wasn’t alone. Gene Tunney called Mike Gibbons his “model.” A boxer in the United States Marines during World War I, Tunney believed that if he could become “a big Mike Gibbons,” he could beat Jack Dempsey and become the world heavyweight champ (George Kimball and John Schulian, At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (Library of America 2011), which includes the writing of Gene Tunney: “My Fights with Jack Dempsey,” Kindle Edition). Tunney also learned ring strategy from his good pal Benny Leonard.
On the famous Dempsey-Tunney fights of 1926 and 1927, see Round 2, entitled “Dignity and Sportsmanship.”
Gene Tunney’s parents, Mike Gibbons’ parents, and Jim’s maternal grandparents all came to the United States from Ireland’s County Mayo. See Round 4, entitled “The O’Hara Name & St. Paul.”
Jim O'Hara's gift was friendship. His single greatest accomplishment, indeed honor, was the capacity to be a true-blue friend to so many people in so many walks of life.
His friends in the fight game called him Mr. Boxing and inducted him into the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame in October 2014.
Hats off to the dedicated men and women who tirelessly operate the Hall of Fame. If you want to keep up on boxing history, read all the stories on the Hall’s website: www.mnbhof.org.
You also can order DVDs of induction banquets. You can sense that the spirits of so many greats, both inducted and yet to be inducted, are there adding to the kindnesses of the boxing community. You’ll see Minnesota Nice with a jab—jab—boom.
During his six decades in the field of fisticuffs, Jim naturally received his share of awards. Far and away his greatest honor was to know and work alongside those in or who covered Minnesota boxing in whatever capacity. The names literally go from A to Z and then back again, and that would only be the beginning. From Joe Azzone to Dick Zasada, from Dave Bloomberg to Emmett Yenez, and so on.
Many were instrumental to Jim’s effectiveness. Richard H. Plunkett was Chairman of the Boxing Board when Jim was appointed in 1976. An accomplished lawyer and banker, Plunkett taught Jim (who hadn’t gone beyond the eighth grade) how to run a board meeting fairly but efficiently as well as how to keep Minutes in terms of what’s important and what’s not important.
The other boxing commissioners Jim had the honor of working with over his twenty-five years as executive secretary of the Boxing Board include:
Fred Allen, Joe Azzone, Howard Bennett, Dave Bloomberg, Nick Castillo, Jerry Coughlin, Erwin Dauphin, Danny Davis, Harry Davis, Robert Dolan, Gary Erikson, Donny Evans, James Farelli, Pete Filippi, Patrick Foslien, Val Goodman, Wally Holm, Gary Holmgren, Arthur Holstein, John Kelly, Judy Klammer, Stan Kowalski, Scott LeDoux, Vern Landreville, Robert Mack, JoAnn McCauley, Tom Mosby, Robert Powers, George Reiter, Richard Schaak, Billy Schmidt, Les Sellnow, Robert Thompson, James Trembley, Clem Tucker, and Dan Wall.
Any omission is this writer’s mistake.
Jim also had the honor of working with assistant attorneys general of the State of Minnesota who provided invaluable legal counsel, including Peder Hong, Esq.
You know Jim loved swapping tales with the commissioners. One was Les Sellnow who served on the Boxing Board in the early 1980s. A journalist, he naturally had an eye and ear for the story.
In 2013, Sellnow completed a book about the Upper Midwest Golden Gloves. A treasure, this work captures the essence of the Golden Gloves that Jim loved so much. Physical fitness and discipline. Selfless volunteerism and teamwork. Sportsmanship. Humility. Young people discovering their athleticism and heart. Athletes facing their fear and becoming adults and changing the trajectory of their lives. Lessons learned from underestimation. Jim could attest to these things in the Golden Gloves.
In his book, Sellnow describes his first encounter with a young man named Francis Bellanger:
On a personal note, I remember seeing Francis for the first time [in the 1960s] on a boxing card in Wadena. Ken Hegarty, Wadena’s coach and promoter had staged a card that featured visiting fighters from the Iron Range and asked me to be one of the judges.
***
Prior to the bouts, I walked through the staging area for boxers, which was in the wrestling room at Wadena High School. Wrestling mats were rolled up against the wall on one end. Perched on top of one of the rolls was a scrawny Native American boy wearing thick-lensed glasses that gave him an owlish look.
I made inquiry of Hegarty as to the lad’s identify. He said that was Francis Bellanger and that he was matched against a young man from the Range who was older and had a background of Upper Midwest experience. I was aghast. I told Hegarty I couldn’t believe that he would match that little kid, no more than 16, against an older, experienced fighter. I was so indignant that I threatened to refuse to judge any of the bouts. Hegarty asked me if I had ever seen the kid fight. I said I had not. Hegarty said he had, and the young Francis would take care of himself, thank you very much.
I decided to trust him and took my seat at the judge’s table. When Francis’ bout rolled around, he and Oscar [his coach] climbed into the ring. Francis was wearing a white terrycloth robe that was well-worn. Oscar reached up and removed his glasses. I prepared for the worst. The kid stood there blinking, trying to get his eyes in focus. Then the bell rang. Francis reminded me of a wolf closing in on its prey. He was on his opponent in a flash and opened up with a two-fisted barrage that had the other fighter shaken in the first seconds. He never let up and in the second round, the referee took pity on the Iron Ranger and stopped the contest. (Les Sellnow, They Came to Fight: The Story of Upper Midwest Golden Gloves, 60–61 (Bang Printing 2013).)
Like Less Sellnow, Jim was a volunteer for the Golden Gloves. If there was a tournament in St. Paul or Minneapolis involving a St. Paul Golden Glover, the odds are Jim was there. There’s no question he saw Bellanger in action. Bellanger was denied the verdict in 1967 when he faced St. Paul’s equally game Simon Maestras at the Minneapolis Auditorium, both earning a standing ovation. “It was the greatest Golden Gloves match I ever saw,” said referee Denny Nelson as reported in Sellnow’s book.
In 1966, Bellanger had become the Upper Midwest Golden Gloves bantamweight champion (118 lbs. max.), and if Maestras knocked him out of contention in 1967, Bellanger beat Maestras in 1968 to claim the featherweight crown (126 lbs. max.).
This chapter is about honors and awards. It’s true Jim received many awards, but people were the honors. Jim credited others, like Francis Bellanger and Simon Maestras, two young men giving everything they got.
Jim had to pinch himself when he was elected to the same office that had long been held by educated bigwigs, including George Barton and Jack Gibbons. After Jim’s death, his successors include boxing great Scott LeDoux. Jim was a fan of these guys.
As a featherweight (126 lbs. max.), George Barton decisioned “Terrible” Terry McGovern in a six-round battle in St. Paul in 1904. McGovern is ranked number thirty, pound for pound, on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar, Boxing’s Greatest Fighters, 95 (The Lyons Press 2006)).
They say Barton still holds the world record for having refereed over 12,000 amateur and professional bouts. He was the third man in the 1925 bout in St. Paul between Gene Tunney and Harry Greb. See Round 2, entitled “Dignity & Sportsmanship.”
In 1942, Barton was appointed to the Minnesota State Athletic Commission, which then regulated boxing, and served on the commission for twenty-seven years. He was the commission’s Executive Secretary until 1968 when Jack Gibbons succeeded him.
In 1952, Barton received the James J. Walker Award from the Boxing Writers’ Association of New York. Other recipients of that award include Gene Tunney (awarded to him in 1941), Jim Braddock (1954), Jack Dempsey (1957), Joe Louis (1967), Muhammad Ali (1984), Willie Pep (1994), Floyd Patterson (1995), and Angelo Dundee (1996).
A sports journalist for over fifty years, Barton published his autobiography in 1957, My Lifetime in Sports, which is in the Minnesota Historical Society book collection. It was just another day at the office for him to publish an article in The Ring magazine.
The son of the legendary Mike Gibbons, Jack Gibbons was a world-class boxer in his own right. His record is discussed in Round 6, entitled “The Boxer.” In 1956, Gibbons was appointed to the Minnesota State Athletic Commission and served for nineteen years, including as Executive Secretary from 1968 to 1975.
Jack Gibbons is counted among the best athletes to come out of St. Paul’s Cretin High School, along with National Baseball Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, Heisman Trophy winner Chris Weinke, and Twins catcher Joe Mauer, among others.
Everyone remembers Scott LeDoux as a heavyweight contender who earned a title fight with Larry Holmes. See Round 11, entitled “Muhammad Ali.” In 2009, LeDoux was inducted into the University of Minnesota–Duluth Hall of Fame for football. He lettered three years there, including 1968 when he was a starter on the line both ways.
Jim considered it an honor to be a boxer from Minnesota, particularly St. Paul. He knew that Minnesota produces some of the toughest guys and best boxers in the world.
On May 3, 1918, Jack Dempsey faced St. Paul native Billy Miske at the St. Paul Auditorium. Although he got the win, Dempsey said later that night: “If I ever have to fight another tough guy like that I don’t want the championship. The premium they ask is too much effort” (Clay Moyle, Billy Miske: The St. Paul Thunderbolt, 54 (Win By KO Publications 2011)). George Barton was the referee of this ten-round affair.
The records of some of St. Paul’s boxing legends, including Mike Gibbons, Tommy Gibbons, Billy Miske, and Mike O’Dowd, are discussed in Round 6, entitled “The Boxer.”
Another world champion from St. Paul is Will Grigsby. Was Jim proud in 1998 when “Steel” Will brought home the International Boxing Federation title in the light-flyweight division (108 lbs. max.). Grigsby would become a three-time world title holder before retiring in 2007. His record? A compact 18–4–1, making his three world title wins all the more impressive.
In 1994, Jim saw greatness in Grigsby, comparing him to Willie Pep in a conversation with St. Paul’s world-class trainer Dennis Presley. “Dennis, he reminds me of Will-O’-the-Wisp,” said Jim (2007 Saint Paul Almanac at 259 (Arcata Press 2007), which includes the writing of Mark Connor: “World Champion”).
Pep is ranked number three, pound for pound, on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time, after only Sugar Ray Robinson and Henry Armstrong (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 7).
Then there’s Mike Evgen, St. Paul’s Rice Street Rocker. A Rice Streeter himself, Jim reserved a special place in his heart for Golden Glovers, win or lose. But lose was not in Evgen’s vocabulary. He’d won a fistful of Upper Midwest tourneys, 1983–1987. So no one was surprised in 1992 when he was crowned light-welterweight world champion (140 lbs. max.) by the International Boxing Organization. Indeed, the IBO came knocking on his door, choosing St. Paul for its inaugural title fight for this weight division. The twelve-rounder was held in the Roy Wilkins Auditorium on April 9, 1992. Evgen decisioned Louie Lomeli of Illinois, who had had only two losses in thirty-four pro fights.
Evgen retired in 1997 with a 31–6 professional record, including 13 wins by KO, and a guaranteed ticket to his own chapter in Minnesota boxing history.
In the 1980s, Brian Brunette, the Saintly City Slugger, had nearly achieved perfection. His only loss in twenty-five fights occurred in 1986 in Campania, Italy, where he challenged Patrizio Oliva for the world light-welterweight crown. With 18 of his 24 wins by knockout, Brunette retired after one more fight. In 1984, he successfully challenged fellow St. Paulite Gary Holmgren for his Minnesota light-middleweight title. If beyond his prime, Holmgren gave it all he had, losing the ten-rounder and handing over the title by majority decision. Holmgren, a St. Paul fireman, then retired officially, having earned a national championship in the Golden Gloves and a 22–5 professional record with 12 wins inside the distance.
St. Paul is such a boxing town that it’s fun to consider that its namesake, the Apostle Paul, was familiar with the fight game. In the First Letter of Paul to the Church at Corinth (chapter 9, verses 24–26), he wrote:
Run like that — to win. Every athlete concentrates completely on training, and this is to win a wreath that will wither, whereas ours will never wither. So that is how I run, not without a clear goal; and how I box, not wasting blows on air. (The New Jerusalem Bible, Doubleday Publications 1990.)
If Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes, perhaps Paul, with a good jab, ought to be the patron saint of boxers. You just know George Foreman must have preached a sermon entitled “Jabs for Jesus.”
Growing up poor near the State Capitol in St. Paul, Jim knew LeRoy Neiman, who also was from the neighborhood. Neiman left Minnesota by way of the army, landing in Normandy on June 12, 1944, and helping free France. He later went to great heights as an artist, never forgetting St. Paul where, like Jim, he acquired his street smarts and devotion to boxing. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2007. He appears in the films Rocky III (as an artist sketching Balboa and as the ring announcer) and Rocky IV (as the ring announcer). His artwork appears on the screen during the credits at the end of Rocky III.
Imagine walking the same streets as Mike Gibbons and seeing him regularly at the Mike Gibbons Rose Room Gym. Neiman, in his 2012 autobiography, provides a glimpse of the pride that St. Paul street kids, like himself and Jim, got from any encounter with Gibbons:
Gibbons came up rough and ruthless to become the Blarney king of Rice Street by provoking tough guys into making bloody-knuckled dopes of themselves. His gimmick was to stand on an open handkerchief against a brick wall and bet big bruisers they couldn’t knock off his derby hat. “Aw, c’mon, give it a shot, ya big jerk. I can’t even move me feet now, can I? Fifty cents says you’re not man enough!” And he’d just stand there without budging off the handkerchief and slip, duck, and dodge punches until his challenger’s fists were broken and bloodied from hitting the bricks. He was a hell of a guy, like a character out of an American tall tale — Mike Fink or Paul Bunyan to us kids — so when Mike Gibbons kicked you out of his gym for sparring in the ring or pounding the heavy bag without paying a locker fee, you’d boast to your friends about it. (LeRoy Neiman, All Told: My Art and Life Among Athletes, Playboys, Bunnies and Provocateurs, Chapter 1 (Lyons Press 2012), Kindle Edition.)
The Ring encyclopedia lists Mike Gibbons at five foot nine and 147 pounds. It records that upon retiring in 1922, Gibbons devoted himself full-time to boxing instruction, later becoming a boxing commissioner (as a member of the State Athletic Commission, predecessor to the Boxing Board) (The Ring Boxing Encyclopedia and Record Book at 56 (The Ring Book Shop 1979)).
Reflecting on Gibbons’ career, the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame says it straight: “Mike Gibbons, ‘The Saint Paul Phanton,’ is regarded by boxing historians as the greatest fighter ever to live from the state of Minnesota, and one of the greatest fighters of all time” (“Mike Gibbons ‘The St. Paul Phantom,’” The Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame Inaugural Collector’s Issue 2010 Induction Banquet Program).
Also imagine being able to visit on a regular basis with Mike O’Dowd, former middleweight champion of the world (1917–1920), including at the saloon that O’Dowd owned and operated from 1936 to 1955 on St. Peter Street in downtown St. Paul. O’Dowd was known as the Fighting Harp (Clay Moyle, supra, at 18).
O’Dowd may have told the saloonkeeper joke that Jim picked up somewhere along the line. There’s this saloon keeper who’s paying his bartender the going wage yet discovers the guy is pocketing half the receipts. What can you do? Soon the bartender begins pocketing nearly all the receipts. So the proprietor says to his bartender: “Aren’t we partners no more?”
It was no joke when International Boxing Hall of Famer Tommy Gibbons, Mike’s brother, was elected sheriff of Ramsey County, which includes St. Paul. George Barton wrote how Gibbons informed his buddies that there was indeed a new sheriff in town:
Tavern owners, gamblers and the like, among them several former boxers, were elated when Tommy was elected to the sheriff’s office in 1934. They had visions of running wild under his administration. Gibbons announced that he intended to enforce the law to the letter with fines, jail sentences and revocation of licenses for violators.
"It is up to you to respect the law or pay the penalty," Tommy informed all and sundry. They quickly learned Tommy meant business after he arrested several tavern and pool-room operators for keeping open after hours and maintaining slot-machines in violation of the law.
Tommy chuckles when telling the story of a topnotch St. Paul pugilist who thought he was kidding when he ordered his former boxing pal to get rid of slot-machines in his tavern. Tommy had warned the boxer that unless he removed the slot-machines, he would raid the place with his deputies and seize and destroy the machines.
The boxer ignored the warning. True to his word, Gibbons and his deputies raided the tavern, confiscated the machines and smashed them into smithereens.
As Tommy was serving a subpoena on his one-time sparmate, the fellow growled:
"Well, Gibbie, what a fine s.o.b. you turned out to be." (George A. Barton, “Tommy Gibbons, Part III,” The Ring, December 1959, 18, 19.)
Neiman was a little rough on Tommy Gibbons, whom he describes thusly:
Tommy flunked the championship, but after he fought he became mayor or sheriff or something—parlayed boxing into a political career for himself. But Mike was the real thing, a dandy. He’d walk out, take out his training handkerchief, strut around. (LeRoy Neiman, supra.)
Rather than flunking the championship, Tommy proved his character by going the full fifteen rounds with Jack Dempsey on the Fourth of July 1923. Vince Lombardi taught his players that “character is the will in action” (David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, Chapter 15 (Simon & Schuster 1999), Kindle Edition). George Barton, who witnessed Dempsey vs. Gibbons, could attest to Tommy’s character:
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, supra.)
Tommy Gibbons and others of his character helped form Jim.
You know St. Paul still produces some of the best referees in the world, like the father-son team Denny and Mark Nelson. Both are world class.
Of course, boxing was everywhere in St. Paul when Jim was growing up. Take a look at Vic Tedesco’s autobiography, I Always Sang for My Father, an endearing window into history.
A longtime St. Paul city councilman and businessman, Tedesco was born in St. Paul in 1922. From 1931 to 1936, he sold newspapers downtown and at some point joined the St. Paul Daily News boxing team. The main rival team was sponsored by the St. Paul Dispatch. Also during this period, he and Jim became friends. At age fourteen, a veteran of five years as a newspaper boy, Tedesco moved on from newspapers and boxing. His record in the ring was 5 wins and 7 losses (Vic Tedesco and Trudi Hahn, I Always Sang for My Father (Or Anyone Who Would Listen), 21–23, 28, and 171 (Syren Book Company 2006)).
Discovered in Jim’s desk after his passing is a championship belt made out of pewter. The face is roughly three inches wide by two inches tall, inscribed in capital letters with the words “DIAMOND CHAMPION BELT 1934 ST. PAUL.” It features a boxing glove in the center, surrounded by a wreath. Two boxers, one on each side, bookend the wreath. There’s an eagle with outstretched wings at the top.
If Vic Tedesco was a member of a St. Paul boxing team as young as nine, it’s possible Jim was boxing at the same age. Jim turned nine in 1934. Another theory is that Jim’s older brother Mike, a big guy and over a year older, won the championship belt, which may have been given to Jim after Mike’s death. At twenty-seven, Mike died by the gun following a bar fight, and Jim rarely spoke of that night. See Round 3, entitled “The Unspeakable.” He also never spoke of this championship belt. But he kept it safe. At the time of his passing in 2002, the belt, if a mystery, was sixty-eight years old.
A past vice president of the US Boxing Association (USBA), Jim was honored by the International Boxing Federation/US Boxing Association (IBF/USBA) for his work in boxing. This organization issued an Appreciation Award to him in 1998. He said this gesture came as a big surprise. He was attending the awards banquet as part of the annual IBF/USBA convention, and the speaker at the podium is giving the background on an unnamed man. Jim thinks to himself that he had had the same experiences. The next thing he knows, he's on stage receiving a plaque inscribed with the words “A Special Thanks from the IBF/USBA Executive Committee.”
Two decades earlier, in 1978, he received the Golden Gloves Achievement Award, the top award of the Upper Midwest organization. Bill Jaffa, then the First Vice President of the organization, wrote about Jim’s contribution after retiring from the ring in the 1950s:
He and his good friend, Joe Azzone, began judging amateur bouts in their spare time. In 1967 he joined the St. Paul Golden Gloves Association’s Board of Directors and spent countless hours keeping the fledgling St. Paul Golden Gloves Program alive. In 1971 he once again left the world of boxing to tend to the needs of his family and business. Upon his departure, the St. Paul program once again began experiencing setbacks. Finally, in 1973, at a restaurant, he ran into his old friend Joe Azzone. The topic of discussion? Why, boxing of course! It seems that Jim had heard the St. Paul program had almost ceased to exist and there may not even be a Tournament that year. Joe said, "Well, nobody bothers to even thank us for all the hard work and countless hours people like you and me put into the program." Jim’s Irish blood boiled and he shouted, "I’m not looking for anything like that!" A few days later, O’Hara was back at it again . . . this time reorganizing the St. Paul Golden Gloves Program.
***
This year [1978], St. Paul promises to be a leading contender for Upper-Midwest Golden Gloves team honors—thanks to men like Jim O’Hara. (Bill Jaffa, “Achievement Award goes to ‘Dedicated Boxing Man’—Jim O’Hara,” Upper Midwest Golden Gloves Year Book, March 12, 1978.)
On April 20, 1976, the St. Paul Golden Gloves hosted its second annual boxing show dinner at the downtown St. Paul Radisson Hotel. The event was a sold-out fundraiser for amateur boxing. At the event, Jim received a large boxing trophy inscribed with the words “Mr. K.O. Jimmy O’Hara For His devotion and dedication to the Great Game of Amateur Boxing From His Admirers in the St. Paul Haymakers Club Radisson Hotel April 20, 1976.”
In the May 21, 1976, issue of St. Paul’s The Downtowner, Jim was awarded the Fight Promoter Award. The Downtowner said he “has done more than anyone to promote Golden Gloves boxing in St. Paul.”
Jim was honored to serve as President of the St. Paul Golden Gloves program, where his experience as a promoter was valued. He’s credited with putting on eighteen amateur boxing shows in the eighteen months before his 1976 election to the office of executive secretary of the Minnesota Boxing Board. Over the years, he received many awards from the St. Paul Golden Gloves.
On June 14, 1976, the City of St. Paul issued an award to Jim that includes the following words:
To Jim O’Hara: For His Unfailing Devotion to the Cause of Youth. . . . For His Irrepressible Optimism and Dedication to the Ancient Art of Pugilism. . . . For His Countless Contributions to Making This, Our Fair City of Saint Paul, a Better Place to Live.
In 1978, the City of St. Paul nominated him for the Fifth Annual Roberto Clemente Humanitarian Award of the City of Hialeah, Florida, which solicited nominations from throughout the United States. The solicitation stated that the award would be presented to “the individual who best exhibits the humanitarian qualities of the late baseball star who was killed while on a relief flight to Managua, Nicaragua, Hialeah’s Sister City which was devastated by an earthquake in December, 1972.”
Jim was later informed that he had been ranked as one of the finalists with United States senator Hubert Humphrey, who had died in January 1978. Part of Jim’s humanitarian work was his efforts at Stillwater State Prison, where he supervised boxing events (Article entitled “Man of the Year,” 6 (No. 2) The Grapevine, 1–2 (April 1978) (a newsletter of the State of Minnesota Department of Commerce)).
Decorated with many of his awards, Jim’s den included a Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame plaque which read in part: “Inducted: December, 1996. Established 1996—Willie Carter.” This organization is not connected to the new, as of 2010, Hall of Fame into which Jim was inducted in 2014 (www.mnbhof.org).
In 1985, Jim became a founder and the Chairman of the Mancini’s St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame, in which he was inducted in 1986. A list of the boxing inductees appears near the end of this Round.
Jim was honored to know the sportswriters in town, including Don Riley, Jim Wells, and Charley Walters, who called regularly. From his contacts on the street, including his brothers Ed and Bobby who drove taxicabs and limousines for a living, Jim seemed always in the know about the goings on in St. Paul, particularly in the sports department. Take the whereabouts of the legendary Sandy Koufax on Yom Kippur in October 1965, the day Koufax refused to pitch the first game of the World Series, go to the ballpark, or even listen to the game on the radio.
The Dodgers were staying downtown at the Saint Paul Hotel, and there was speculation that Koufax attended the Temple of Aaron that morning. As it turns out Koufax, never left his hotel room. Hall of Famer Don Drysdale started in his place, but the Twins had the Big D’s number. Behind seven runs to one, Dodger Manager Walter Alston walked to the mound, whereupon Drysdale said: “Hey, skip, bet you wish I was Jewish today, too” (Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, Chapter 17 (HarperCollins e-books 2002), Kindle Edition).
The Dodgers won the Series four games to three with Koufax taking MVP honors after throwing two shutouts, including game seven at the Twins’ ballpark on only two days’ rest.
If Jim couldn’t provide accurate intelligence on the whereabouts of Sandy Koufax, he could tell you firsthand accounts of Billy Martin and Mickey Mantle. Martin managed the Twins in 1969, and Mantle came to town to hang out with his best friend.
The truth is Jim felt privileged and humbled to have crossed paths with so many legends in sports, particularly boxing. In the 1980s, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler was kind enough to present him with boxing gloves, a pair of red Wear-Hards. Other boxing greats far and near with whom Jim crossed paths include Muhammad Ali, Jim Beattie, Duane Bobick, Brian Brunette, Danny Davis, Doug Demmings, John DeOtis, Mike Evgen, Del Flanagan, Glen Flanagan, George Foreman, Jack Gibbons, Mike Gibbons, Tommy Gibbons, Jackie Graves, Will Grigsby, Larry Holmes, Don Jasper, Jake LaMotta, Scott LeDoux, Sugar Ray Leonard, Joe Louis, Joey Maxim, Ken Norton, Pat O’Connor, Mike O’Dowd, Willie Pep, Rafael Rodriguez, Lee Savold, Dan Schommer, Jerry Slavin, and Ray Temple who taught Jim how to box. He also had the honor of knowing the boxing greats listed below per the Mancini’s St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame and many of those listed below per Murray McLean’s work Boxers of St. Paul. Many names are highlighted by Jim in his writing reproduced in Round 14, entitled “The Storyteller.”
For 1993, the Willie L. Carter Youth Foundation presented Jim with the Joe Louis Award.
Jim was honored posthumously in 2002 by the Mancini’s St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame. His wife, Kitty, accepted a plaque which reads:
Lifetime Achievement Award presented to James J. O’Hara. In recognition of over 50 years promoting boxing in the great State of Minnesota. Including 25 years as Executive Secretary of the Minnesota State Boxing Board. Chairman of the Mancini’s Saint Paul Sports Hall of Fame Committee from its inception in 1985 until his death, January 2002.
In 2014, Jim was remembered by Les Sellnow. He included a chapter on Jim in his book on the Golden Gloves. Quoting Jim, Sellnow entitled the chapter: “Jim O’Hara: ‘Half Irish and Half Smart’” (Les Sellnow, supra). You can purchase this book from the Upper Midwest Golden Gloves.
As a continuing honor, Jim’s name is included among the greats in the Mancini’s St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame. The sweet scientists inducted in the 1980s are: Jack Gibbons, 1985; Jim O'Hara, 1986; Emmett Yenez, 1987; Joe Stepka, 1988; and Joe Azzone, 1989.
The fighters inducted in the first half of the 1990s are: Bill Schmidt, 1990; Don Weller, 1991; Denny Nelson, 1992; Gene “Rock” White, 1993; Manuel Melendez, 1994; and Dick Delaney, 1995.
Practitioners of the art of self-defense inducted after 1995 and before 2001 are: John Matthews, 1996; Bob Campion, 1997; Frank Cobb, 1998; Jay Pelzer, 1999; and Dick Zasada, 2000.
The pugilists inducted in the 21st century but before 2007 are: Chuck Mitch, 2001; Tom Campion, 2002; Gary Holmgren, 2003; Del Bravo, 2004; Jim Beattie, 2005; and Joe Abbott, 2006.
Boxers inducted in 2006 through 2013 are: Dale Jackson, 2007; Gary Struss, 2008; Mike Evgen, 2009; Nick Castillo, 2010; Phil “Skip” Skarda, 2011; Paul Dotty, 2012; and Marco Morelli, 2013.
A fighting man inducted in 2014 was none other than Brian Brunette.
Joe Frazier helped make Muhammad Ali. Guys like Scott LeDoux also helped make Ali. Lee Savold helped make Rocky Marciano, and guys like Jim helped make Savold.
Murray McLean, Jim’s manager, recorded the names of 106 men in St. Paul’s storied boxing history, including Lee Savold. An artist, McLean celebrated them in his work from the 1970s entitled Boxers of St. Paul. Here they are (in alphabetical order), men Jim’s honored to be among:
* Mickey Andert * Carl Augustine * Joe Azzone *
* Tommy Barrone * Jim Beattie * Earl Blue *
* Buzz Brown * Mel Brown *
* Jackie Cameron * Jimmy Cashill *
* Johnny Cashill * Jack Clifford * Harley Coleman *
* Larry Coleman * Mel Coleman *
* Tommy Comiskey * Honeyboy Conroy *
* Bates Cunningham *
* Donnie Dean * Eddie Debeau * Billy Defoe *
* Jimmy Delaney *
* Billy Emke * Kewpie Ertle * Mike Ertle *
* Del Flanagan * Glen Flanagan * Red Fry *
* Dago Joe Gans * Jack Gibbons *
* Jim Gibbons * Mike Gibbons * Tommy Gibbons *
* Floyd Hagen * Tommy Hannon * Bill Hart *
* Jimmy Hegerle * Doc Holly * Clyde Hull *
* Flea Huston *
* Rudy Ille *
* Rusty Jones *
* Johnny Kearns * Sherald Kennard *
* Irish Kennedy * Steve Koran *
* Harry Labarre * Johnny Larkin *
* Freddie Lenhart * Jack Libgott * Billy Light *
* Farmer Lodge *
* Billy McCabe * Jack McCann *
* Buddy MacDonald * Mickey McDonough *
* Eddie McFadden * Saph McKenna *
* Stewart McLean * Porky McPartlin *
* Jock Malone * Mike Mandell * Myles Martinez *
* Wildcat Mason * Guy Mauro * Benny Mertens *
* Paul Milnar * Billy Miske * Billy Miske, Jr. *
* Phil Morrow * Frank Muskie *
* Johnny Nichols * Jack Nitti * Al Norton *
* Johnny Noye *
* Johnny O’Donnell * Mike O’Dowd *
* Jimmy O’Hara * Johnny O’Hara *
* Jim Perrault * Earl Peterson *
* Benny Ray * Charley Retzlaff *
* Mickey Rose *
* Johnny Salvator * Mike Sauro *
* Lee Savold * Stan Savold * Johnny Schauers *
* Len Schwabel * Buff Seidl * Artie Sheire *
* Wayne Short * Billy Showers * Kid Silk *
* My Sullivan *
* Ray Temple * Sammy Terrin *
* Al Van Ryan *
* Bobby Ward * Marv Wason * Dick Watzl *
* Emmett Weller * Billy Whelan * Harvey Woods *
* Dick Zasada *
"Love is not the stuff of songs, but life and living, rights and wrongs." (T. L. O'Hara, Metaphors 64 (Lens & Pens Publications 2014.)
With his father’s blessing, Jim changed his name legally from Ehrich to O’Hara in 1948 when he married the love of his life, Kathleen Muriel Ann Weimer. While most call her Kitty, Jim called her Kathleen.
When they married, he asked her which family name she wanted. She said O’Hara, because that was the name she was used to. See Round 4, entitled "The O’Hara Name & St. Paul."
Now there’s no two ways about it: Jim was known to swear with the best of them. You weren’t quite sure how to react when he claimed to live in a constant state of grace. But one thing for sure was the rule he strictly enforced that no one is to swear in the presence of a lady—their daughters, their daughters-in-law, their granddaughters, and particularly Kitty. He must have acquired this rule when his Ma, as he called her, was alive.
One evening at a boxing show, an out-of-towner crossed the line. He was in charge of the television crew working the fight in St. Paul. Kitty heard the foul-mouthed confrontation after there was a delay to the start of the fight due to safety reasons the guy didn’t appreciate. Later that night, Jim spotted the gentleman alone in the hotel bar. Near sixty and ready for anything, Jim delivered seven words to the younger man: “The job is too big for you.”
Jim treasured his marriage. He and Kitty laughed a lot. She was his rock and inspiration. With her help, he began in the early 1970s his thirty years of sobriety.
Cheerful and invigorated, he always credited Kitty for what he considered his best years.
He lived around death his entire life, and he was a romantic. He said many times that if Kitty passed on before him, he wasn’t sure he’d survive for long.
He was sentimental. After his Aunt Ethel Hoban died on April 17, 1982, he sat alone a long time at the wake. She and her husband, John Hoban (O’Hara by birth), had taken Jim in from the orphanage. See Round 4, entitled "The O’Hara Name & St. Paul."
Jim had a quick and ferocious temper. When he was boy, a well-intentioned nun warned him that with his temper, he could someday kill someone. With the support of his faith, Alcoholics Anonymous, and his family and friends, Jim mellowed. He became so mellow that he regularly flashed the peace sign in traffic even if the other guy made another sign. He thought just about everything in life is timing, like boxing, and he drove in the slow lane in order to hit every green light and not touch the brakes.
If alcohol is a common problem area for athletes, Jim sidestepped another potential problem area: money management. Murray McLean, Jim’s manager, accounted for every penny. Thus Jim had the good fortune of witnessing that accountability is the key to good, lasting management.
Here it was not only accountability. It was Midwestern accountability Jim banked on. In the process, Murray became family, and he appreciated that Jim, a child of the Great Depression, was instinctively conservative and modest when money came his way. It was important to Jim to be a good provider, and he was. See Round 13, entitled "The Businessman."
Kitty and Jim adored each other. She worked a spell as a dance instructor at the Prom Ballroom in St. Paul, teaching the Jitterbug, the Lindy, the Tango, and the Waltz. No one was more surprised than Kitty when Jim first displayed his Samba footwork one evening on the dance floor at The Saint Paul Hotel. She and Jim could cut a rug in their day, dancing the Samba as well as the Jitterbug and the Lindy.
Their song was “Sentimental Journey.” Their second favorite was “It Had to Be You.”
If Jim could dance, he sure couldn’t sing, which frustrated the heck out of him. He sang “Mona Lisa.” That’s it, just the name. “That’s enough,” laughed Kitty, covering her ears. He also routinely took stabs at “It Had to Be You.”
If he liked poetry, you weren’t aware of it. If he appreciated art, he never bought any. He never had a tattoo, but you know what it would have said if he had one: “Kathleen.”
You could say he was a coin collector of sorts. He enjoyed saving coins, including Buffalo Nickels, Roosevelt Dimes, and Kennedy Half Dollars. He liked their feel and the dates paralleling boxing history. Also known as the Indian Head Nickel, the Buffalo Nickel was introduced in 1913, the same year Minnesota legalized six-rounders with eight-ounce gloves. Alas, he handled his collection bare handed and kept them one on top of the other in an old cigar box.
Kitty didn’t know him before his boxing days. They met in 1942 on a double date—not with each other. She was eighteen, the older woman with a fifteen-month head start on Jim. He was nearly seventeen and a Golden Gloves boxer living at the downtown St. Paul YMCA.
They both had hazel eyes. She had black hair, beginning to gray; he, brown hair.
To support himself he drove a beer truck for Pabst Blue Ribbon. She was a high school graduate. He never went beyond the eighth grade, but he had a confidence and wit that interested her.
Beautiful, intelligent, and fun, Kitty had more than a few suitors. But Jim was able to capture her heart as she had captured his. He courted her for the next six years, and their romance never ended.
Vic Tedesco mentions in his autobiography, which is an interesting window into St. Paul’s history, that at age fifteen he had a crush on Kitty. (Vic Tedesco and Trudi Hahn, I Always Sang For My Father (Or Anyone Who Would Listen) 171 (Syren Book Company 2006).)
On some of their dates, Kitty and Jim were out late at Mickey’s Diner, the twenty-four-hour joint that resembles a railroad dining car located in downtown St. Paul. Some evenings, Kitty, a great cook, wowed Jim in her kitchen at home. Steak was always his favorite, banana cream pie his favorite dessert.
Kitty’s parents were Walter Weimer, of German descent, and Ellen Loretta Urguard, of equal French and Irish descent. Walter's nickname was Stubs, a reference to his five-foot frame. His twin sister was Bernice, whose married name was Bernice Kirby. She had two sons, Harry and Jack.
Stubs had black hair, which grayed. Ellen, Kitty's mom, had brown hair before it all turned white in her 20s. Her eyes were brown.
Stubs and Ellen had five children, George (known as Stubby), Bob, Walter Howard (known as Howie), Kitty, and John (known as Jack).
Ellen died in 1927 at the age of thirty-three; Kitty was three and Jack was an infant. Not feeling well, Ellen lay down to rest and died then and there of a brain aneurism.
Her death meant the family was broken up, with Kitty going to live with her maternal grandmother, Catherine Manahan, who was then sixty-four and twice widowed.
Catherine was born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1863, and was five-foot-even. Her profession was midwifery, the stuff of life. Kitty said her grandmother was always happy, taking things as they came. She was never crabby a day in her life.
When Kitty’s brother George first began to talk, his little tongue came up with “Gagee” in place of Granny, or some such reference, and so Catherine Manahan came to be called Gagee.
Kitty’s infant brother, Jack, was taken in by Gagee’s good friend, Mrs. Pakel, who owned a farm out of town along the Mississippi River. Mrs. Pakel died about eight years later, and Gagee, now seventy-two, welcomed Jack into her home.
The older boys initially lived with their father, but Gagee eventually took them all in too. She was a saint.
Kitty’s father was a good man with a heck of a mind. He’d worked as a milkman and, at one time, he’d managed a coffee company. Eventually, he started bartending. Most recently, he’d had his own apartment on Daly Street, around the corner from Rothmeir’s Saloon on West 7th Avenue where he worked. When Kitty was sixteen, her father was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He’d battled alcoholism for years.
Rothmeir’s was next to the Garden Movie Theater, which Kitty frequented after getting candy from her dad at Rothmeir’s.
Now he was dying and needed a home with care. What was Gagee to do? Why she welcomed her son-in-law into her home to live his remaining days with dignity. Under Gagee and Kitty’s care, he lived another two years, dying at age fifty-five in December 1942 when Kitty was eighteen.
It was a sad Christmas. But Jim was grateful he’d at least gotten to meet Stubs. When Stubs found out he was a boxer, Stubs told the story of how in his day he’d won a go with Billy Whelan. That story made an impression on Jim, and they had a nice chat. Jim informed Kitty that Whelan was a good boxer, fighting professionally out of St. Paul as a featherweight (126 lbs. max.).
Small in stature, Kitty’s four brothers were capable of amazing physical feats. Her brother George, known as Stubby, could hit the ball so well that he was known as Little Poison. Back in the day, he played under the lights at St. Paul’s Dunning Field, the home of his semi-pro fast-pitch softball team.
Jim was amazed when Stubby said he could actually see the ball as it came blazing in from the seemingly close pitcher’s mound.
In 2012, Kitty’s brother Bob turned ninety-six while still golfing regularly.
Roman Catholic, Kitty and Jim were married in the Church on November 6, 1948; Kitty was twenty-four years of age, five-foot-two and a half and 98 lbs.; Jim a month shy of twenty-three, six-foot-one and 200 lbs.
The wedding was in St. Paul’s West 7th Street area at St. Francis de Sales, where Kitty had gone to daily Mass for years. She also had attended the parish grade school.
A central figure at the wedding was Gagee, now eighty-five. Kitty had told Jim that Ma, as Kitty also called her, was part of the deal. She was going to live with them or, rather, them with her to begin with. Just as Gagee had taken Kitty in at age three and raised her, so Kitty was committed to care for Gagee for the rest of her life. Jim loved Gagee too. She was full of Irish wit and wisdom that continually delighted everyone.
For their honeymoon, Jim and Kitty spent a couple days in Wisconsin and then returned home to care for Gagee. The newlyweds lived in Gagee’s home near the intersection of St. Clair and Pleasant Avenues in St. Paul. Then in the summer of 1951, they bought their own home a mile or so west, near the intersection of St. Clair Avenue and Lexington Parkway, and of course, Gagee moved in with them.
Gagee spent her last years using a wheelchair to get around due to diabetes. Jim could make the tough calls. Thus it was that, unbeknownst to Kitty as she was in St. Paul’s Miller Hospital in January 1955 with their newborn daughter, he took Gagee to St. Paul’s Anchor Hospital for temporary care. Kitty was shocked when she came home and Gagee wasn’t there. Jim gave an account of all that had been set up for Gagee and the great care she was receiving. Kitty soon moved Gagee to a nursing home not far from home. Gagee died not long after, in September 1955, at the age of ninety-two.
A 1942 graduate of Monroe High in St. Paul, Kitty was no wallflower. When Jim spoke of his days in the orphanage, she told him to “put away the violin.” Everyone knew her childhood was no bed of roses. She was only three when her mother had died, and she had never lived with her father until she was sixteen and he came to Gagee’s to die.
Kitty had fight in her, and Jim got the biggest kick out of her independent spirit. Work was her middle name. When Jim wanted to hire someone to paint the house, Kitty said she could do a better job for less money. She painted the entire outside of the two-story house three times, not to mention the inside.
Kitty got her work ethic from Gagee. “No rest for the wicked,” Gagge said mischievously. She showed Kitty how to embrace work, teaching her it feels good to get things done. As a child, Kitty made money babysitting and later, as a teenager, cleaning house for a neighbor on Pleasant Avenue. When the kids got home from school, she was there to greet them with a snack and then cleaned until their mom got home from work.
Upon graduation in 1942, Kitty went to work in the accounting department of Montgomery Ward Department Store on University Avenue near Snelling. She took the electric streetcar up St. Clair Avenue to Snelling, where she transferred to get to University. Soon she moved down the street to Brown & Bigelow, also on University, where she made playing cards and calendars.
When she needed to downshift into part-time employment so she could be home to care for Gagee, she landed as a sales clerk at Grant’s, a dime store downtown. When she met Jim, he started visiting her regularly at Grant’s. She took the electric streetcar down St. Clair and then on to West 7th to work, and Jim often drove her home when she was done.
Later in 1943, Kitty went to work full-time at the downtown St. Paul location of Western Electric, then a big electrical engineering and manufacturing firm. She worked the swing shift, caring for Gagee during the day. Kitty wired all kinds of things at Western Electric, including public telephones, the ones housed in the phone booths that were a common sight on street corners. Jim’s sister Lorraine also worked there. Most nights, Jim was waiting for Kitty when her shift ended around 11:30 p.m.
The photo hasn’t been found, but Western Electric used Kitty’s image in one of its advertisements.
With eight years at Western Electric, Kitty landed her next full-time job at 3M on St. Paul’s East Side. Again working the swing shift, Kitty continued to use the streetcar as her primary means of transportation. She transferred streetcars downtown at Seven Corners. The job didn’t last long, however, because Kitty was soon pregnant with their first child. She and Jim decided she should be home with the baby. So she quit her new job. Gary was born in April 1951.
After Gary was born, Kitty worked evenings as a hostess at the Town House Restaurant on University Avenue. A local teenager kept an eye on Gary. To get to work, Kitty bought her first automobile, a boxy looking used Chevy, for $300 from a lot on Grand Avenue. She hadn’t consulted Jim on the purchase.
If you figure a conservative 4 percent annual inflation rate, $300 in 1951 might be about $3,553 in 2015 dollars. So you can imagine the car wasn’t necessarily the most reliable. Jim didn’t think much of her purchase, and two weeks later he saw his opening. They were driving by a lot on University Avenue and Kitty pointed at a German-made convertible known as an Opel. “Look, Jimmy, isn’t that cute.” Was she surprised the next day when she saw the Opel in front of the house. Through 2013, Kitty still drove a convertible. Her license plate? Why “KITTY O” of course.
Lynn was born in 1955, whereupon Kitty started a day care in their home. After Jeff was born in 1964, she started working part-time at Lerner’s Women’s Clothing Store in the Midway Center at the intersection of University and Snelling Avenues.
In January 1968, after seventeen years more or less at home with the kids, Kitty rejoined the workforce full-time. She was hired at the Arden Hills location of Control Data, then a supercomputer firm. There she soldered computer components. Working 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Kitty didn’t like the early mornings at first but in twenty years with the company, she was never late.
She loved her Control Data job. There was a good spirit among the workers. She used to ask them: “You know why we’re all here?” They then answered: “Because we’re not all there.” Some of her fondest work-related memories are her trips to England and Germany to work on supercomputers. Every party has to have a pooper, so Jim didn’t come along on her three overseas trips. He sure missed her, but he wasn’t one for sightseeing, and he always had work that needed to get done in St. Paul.
In her free time, Kitty was an excellent bowler and golfer. Despite being athletic, Kitty never learned to swim. There were no lakes or pools in her neighborhood, and the nearby Mississippi was too dangerous. Jim could swim like a fish. One summer in the 1970s, the family was enjoying a hot day poolside at a friend’s apartment building. Kitty was cooling off in the shallow area when suddenly she hit the drop-off and was quickly approaching the bottom of the deep end. “Jimmy!” was the last thing anyone heard. Like a flash, Jim dove low, wrapped his arms around her legs, and returned her to the shallow area.
She lost her father to cirrhosis of the liver, and Kitty was determined Jim wasn’t going to share the same fate. When things got intolerable, she communicated loud and clear that he was to shape up. There was no ambiguity in her message, which was accompanied by definitive action, and no weakness in her resolve.
After being on the receiving end of sustained tough love, Jim could see no fancy footwork was going to allow him not to change. So he threw in the towel, the only rational option available to him.
Indeed, he became somewhat of a marriage counselor. He said there’s only one word a husband needs to learn for a good marriage: yield. He suggested you do the math: “Wouldn’t you rather yield and get your family back than be right all the time and alone?” He knew what he was talking about. His epiphany was on his forty-sixth birthday, December 23, 1971, at Gallivan’s Bar & Restaurant on Wabasha Street in downtown St. Paul. One of the spots where Jim got to know the lawyers and judges and politicians and reporters so well, the wood-paneled Gallivan’s was famous. The proprietor, Bob Gallivan, had a good location near both the Court House/City Hall and the St. Paul Pioneer Press Building.
On that day, Jim put down the bottle for good, saying to himself: “What the – – – – am I doing here?” He joined AA and recruited his buddies. AA is supposed to be anonymous, but the group Jim put together for weekly meetings was full of local celebrities. They talked sports and supported one another, making their wives very happy.
Later in life, Jim accompanied middleweight champ Jake LaMotta when the Raging Bull made an appearance in St. Paul at Mancini’s steakhouse on West 7th Avenue. In 1985, LaMotta was married in Las Vegas when everyone was there for the Hagler-Hearns fight. As the story goes:
Two days before The Fight, Jake LaMotta was married for the sixth time, around the corner from Caesars at the Maxim’s wedding chapel. Sugar Ray Robinson, who had in his heyday engaged the Raging Bull in six brutal fights (and won five of them), was the best man.
Midway through the ceremony a telephone rang. Hearing the bell, LaMotta asked, "What round is it?"
"Sixth," somebody replied. (George Kimball, Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran, and the Last Great Era of Boxing, Chapter 7 (McBooks Press, Inc. 2008), Kindle Edition.)
Robinson is ranked number one, pound for pound, on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time, while LaMotta is ranked number twenty-seven to Hagler’s number forty-seven and Hearns’ number fifty. (Bert Randolph Sugar, Boxing’s Greatest Fighters 1, 86, 159, and 171 (The Lyons Press 2006).)
Over the years, Kitty followed the many colorful people in Minnesota boxing. Scott LeDoux and Gary Holmgren were two of her favorites. Others, in all facets of boxing, include Joe Azzone, Tommy Barrone, Jim Beattie, Duane Bobick, Buzz Brown, Johnny Cashill, Honeyboy Conroy, Billy Emke, Del Flanagan, Glen Flanagan, Jack Gibbons, Floyd Hagen, Jimmy Hegerle, Johnny Larkin, Billy Light, Mike Mandell, Myles Martinez, Billy McCabe, Murray McClean, Porky McPartlin, Billy Miske, Jr., Frank Muskie, Johnny O’Donnell, Mike O’Dowd, Jack Raleigh, Tiger Jack Rosenbloom, Johnny Salvator, Lee Savold, My Sullivan, Joe Stepka, Ray Temple, Emmett Weller, Billy Whelan, and Dick Zasada.
Beyond Minnesota’s borders, Jim introduced Kitty to the likes of Joe Louis and George Foreman. She got a kick out of meeting the actor Tony Danza, who they say was discovered in a boxing gym.
George Foreman had bodyguards watching as Kitty approached him at a boxing convention circa 1995. “Hey, George Foreman. I’m Kitty, Jim O’Hara’s wife, ” she said as she grabbed his arm. “Come with me. Jim’s over here.” Foreman was kind enough to go with her. Then the oldest reigning world heavyweight champ in history, Foreman had owned a home in Minneapolis and Jim knew him from those days.
Kitty remembers shaking hands with Sugar Ray Robinson. It was the early 1950s. Robinson was in Minnesota staying at the Saint Paul Hotel when Jim and Kitty had occasion to use the elevator there. Who should be on the elevator? Why the Sugarman himself, looking like a million bucks, along with a member of his entourage. Jim introduced Kitty. "Sugar Ray Robinson was so polite and handsome," said Kitty of the chance meeting. "Of course everyone in boxing was polite."
Kitty said that one thing about boxing is that all the people, top to bottom, were nice. “They were cordial, funny, and fun to be with," she added. “They may have been big shots in their various fields, but there were no snobs among them.”
One Sunday evening in the fall of 1998, Jim and Kitty rented out Mancini’s steakhouse to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. As you went from table to table saying hello, you were struck by how many personal relationships Jim had. Seating was limited, but each friend there was in a sense his best friend, not to mention the many friends who had already passed on. Each had made a difference in his life. Boxing blessed him.
Of course Kitty became close with many boxers’ wives, including Del Flanagan’s wife, Barb, and Joe Azzone’s wife, Gloria. Another close friend was Dottie Riley, the beautiful wife of sports columnist Don Riley.
Jim was worshiped by his four children, Gary, Lynn, Steve, and Jeff.
They say family is a patchwork of love. With Gary born in the early 1950s and Jeff born in the mid-1960s, the kids had markedly different home-life experiences. When Gary was little, Jim was still in training, Kitty took care of Gagee at home, and the family had minimal disposable income. When Jeff was little, his siblings kept an eye on him beginning in 1968 when Kitty went back to work, pizza places and Clark’s Submarine sandwiches were becoming popular, and Jim (by now a successful salesman for Jerry’s Produce) was on the verge of financial security. See Round 13, entitled "The Businessman."
By the time Jeff was a teenager, Gary had long moved out and the family, if not on easy street, was a member of the University Club on Summit Avenue in St. Paul.
Born in 1951, seven months before his Uncle Mike was killed, Gary is the most like Jim. Back then as Jim struggled with the illusion of revenge, Gary’s very existence helped keep Jim’s head on straight. Kitty forcefully reminded him that he now had a child. More than a responsibility, Gary was hope for the future. Kitty and Gary helped Jim keep to the high road. If Mike’s killing was a turning point in the development of Jim’s mental toughness and integrity, much of the credit must go to Kitty and Gary. See Round 3, entitled "The Unspeakable."
Gary resides in St. Paul and is married with three children. He makes a living as an executive with Xcel Energy. His hobbies include spending time at his lake home in northern Minnesota.
Born in 1955, Lynn was Jim’s only daughter. With the help of an incubator at St. Paul’s Miller Hospital, she grew from four pounds, eleven ounces to six pounds a couple months later when she was allowed to be taken home. Jim and Kitty naturally visited her every day during this critical period. Growing up, she delighted her parents with piano recitals and may have been the best athlete in the bunch. She resided in St. Paul.
Lynn died of cancer in 2017, leaving a spouse and two children. She made her living as a real estate agent. Her hobbies included reading a good book at her lake home in Wisconsin. This writer's eulogy of Lynn is included on the Afterword page of this website.
Born in 1957, Steve, this writer, resides in Anchorage, Alaska, and is married with three children. He makes a living practicing law. His hobbies include football and sport fishing. This writer hung on his father's every word. Thus Jim’s story, as presented in this website, www.60yearsofboxing.org, is written in the same style as Jim spoke and wrote. Compare this writing with Jim’s at the beginning of Round 14, entitled "The Storyteller."
Born in 1964, Jeff is the most accomplished athlete. He resides in White Bear Lake. He makes a living as a mortgage broker. Golf is his game as an adult, and he has two holes-in-one in the books. His boxing experiences include getting to spend time with Muhammad Ali. See Round 11, entitled "Muhammad Ali."
Throughout their life together, Kitty and Jim developed an attachment to the family home as the place where their four children ran and played and grew up. A detail guy, especially when it came to numbers, Jim always pointed at the evergreen he planted in the backyard when this writer was one year, one month, one week, and one day old.
When he put his trigger finger and thumb to his mouth and whistled, you could hear it a block away on Osceola Avenue. You knew to hightail it home.
If he threatened the belt when you had it coming, the exception was his daughter. He never spanked her.
If you become good at what you have the patience to practice, Jim wasn’t good with a tangled fishing line or a home painting project. He had no patience there. Somewhere along the line he developed a skill for getting people to work together. Here he had patience.
There were dark days in the 1960s in the O’Hara household, none darker than the winter of 1967–1968 during Kitty’s scare with cancer. But with her strength and optimism and Jim’s quitting drinking for good in 1971, Kitty and Jim enjoyed each day together the next thirty years.
As mentioned, Jim was sentimental. Even after you reached adulthood, he asked for a kiss on the cheek each time you left the house. When your latest girlfriend finally dumped you, he let you know he cared.
You never saw Jim cry, except Kitty said he cried when Ray Temple died in October 1972. She said Jim took it hard. Temple had taught him to box. Jim also cried after seeing the 1992 film A River Runs Though It, remembering his brother Mike. (See Round 3, entitled "The Unspeakable.")
A child of the Great Depression, Jim always lived modestly. Physical possessions never became important to him, but he got a kick out of and enjoyed relaxing at his children’s homes.
“They got their brains from their mother,” said Jim of his children. In 2014, Kitty was still doing crossword puzzles while tying her shoes and carrying on a conversation.
Kitty and Jim never bought a cabin or second home. “Too much work,” he said, as if he had had time to enjoy a place away from St. Paul. He never developed any hobbies outside of the sporting world. There was no need. His idea of a day off was a few hours at Jerry’s Produce, where he was a salesman since the 1950s, then a couple hours at the state Boxing Board office. Later at home, he cut grass or shoveled snow as the season dictated while mulling over the latest sporting news.
Meeting his pals at Cossetta’s restaurant on Saturday mornings and Mancini’s steakhouse late afternoons was something he looked forward to. They’d chew the fat for hours.
Kitty and Jim never became interested in a time-share or other investment along those lines. Each February for several years in the 1990s, they rented a condo in Naples, Florida. One year, they drove there but never again. Jim didn’t like competing for space with semi-trailer trucks. A boxer rather than a puncher or fighter, he instinctively needed space. See Round 6, entitled "The Boxer."
There was no cell phone or email for Jim. Old school in terms of gathering information, he never searched the World Wide Web.
Kitty and Jim also considered as part of the family this writer’s friends James Bealka, David Breckman, Gene Quicksell, Bill Hren, and Tom Gartland. These guys were regulars, delighting Kitty and Jim, beginning in about fifth grade through their college years.
Gartland was captain of the 1974 Cretin High football team, while Hren was captain of the 1979 College of St. Thomas football team. Both would become successful in business. In 2018 Gartland was invited back to Cretin to give an inspirational talk, which is on YouTube.
Mel Gartland, Tom’s father, was a great guy and a good boxer in his day. Another thing he had in common with Jim was being found unfit for military duty (classified 4-F) during World War II.
Gene Quicksell’s father, Don Quicksell, was the real hero. During the War he somehow survived in shark-infested waters in the Pacific. After the war, he and his wife, Honora “Honi” Quicksell, had ten children and sacrificed to put them all through Catholic grade school and high school.
There’s nothing like a coach to instill discipline and model good citizenship. Jim was grateful his children had had the benefit of great coaches in St. Paul, including Mark Dienhart at St. Thomas College. Dienhart would go to great heights after his first college coaching assignment, the 1975 junior-varsity football team at St. Thomas. Bill Hren and this writer were on JV while Tom Gartland made varsity that year.
Twenty years later, in 1995, Dienhart became the Athletic Director at the University of Minnesota. While Athletic Director, he gave a talk at Hafner’s Restaurant on White Bear Avenue in St. Paul where Jim saw him. “The AD of the U of M asks me if I’m Steve’s dad,” recalled Jim. “Imagine that.”
If he didn’t know the coaches well, Jim knew the refs. One Friday night in Burnsville during the 1974 high school football season, this writer was getting killed. Jim was walking the sidelines, as was his custom. The head referee, Jim’s good friend James Griffin, spoke with him before talking to the coaching staff. Griffin was then the St. Paul Deputy Police Chief.
Especially compared to the childhoods of their parents, the children of Kitty and Jim had a sheltered childhood. Their parents wanted them to have a better life than they had had. As an intentional part of parenting, Jim steered his children away from entering the ring.
Emmett Yenez taught Gary how to box at the downtown St. Paul YMCA. “As soon as I saw Gary was good,” said Jim, “I shut it down. Boxing’s a way out, not a way up.”
Sure, he encouraged you to punch his buddy Dick Zasada’s big open hand at Friday night’s boxing show at the St. Paul Armory, but street fighting was frowned upon and any type of boxing career out of the question. Nobody was going to work with you without Jim’s blessing.
As a person, Jim was all a friend is made of, loyal, understanding, generous, and he didn’t seem to have time for jealousy or rivalry. While keeping up with old friends he had a large capacity to make new friends of all ages.
If he thought you a blowhard or if he had a gut feeling against you, he didn’t give you the time of day, at least in a social setting. He didn’t acknowledge your presence even if you asked a direct question. He looked straight through you. If you were a blowhard, he couldn’t care less what you thought.
He loved to chew the fat, telling and listening to stories. Sundays and holidays were the days he used the least amount of words. On many of those afternoons and evenings, he looked irritable and spent. When he said he felt sick, you knew to leave him alone. He read and watched TV and read some more. If he was looking back or to the future, he kept it to himself.
He was known to blow his top if you gave him lip or showed disrespect to another family member, such as in a debate over politics or religion.
At Jim’s side Kitty and their children saw a lot of live boxing over the years at many venues. The boxing shows included exhibitions at the HarMar mall in Roseville, Friday Night Fights at the St. Paul Armory, evenings at the St. Paul Auditorium, and dinner shows at the Radisson Riverfront Hotel in St. Paul as well as events at the St. Paul Prom Ballroom, the Minneapolis Auditorium, and the Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington.
Asked by his children if boxing gloves soften the blow for the hittee, as Jim called that person, Jim confirmed, no way.
Kitty and Jim both loved everything about a live boxing show. Besides the fighters, there were characters everywhere. Former Boxing Commissioner Dan Wall recalled in 2012 that Jim used to say: “Kitty doesn’t like the fights, she likes the people.”
Fans made the experience complete, especially those who were not just cheering the fighters. Boxing essayist A.J. Liebling, who believed television would put boxing in a coma, observed:
Addressing yourself to the fighter when you want somebody else to hear you is a parliamentary devise, like "Mr. Chairman. . . ." Before television, a prize-fight was to a New Yorker the nearest equivalent to the New England town meeting. It taught a man to think on his seat.
These words of A.J. Liebling appear in the essay entitled “The Big Fellows: Boxing with the Naked Eye” in the book Sports Illustrated ranked, in 2002, the number one sports book of all time: The Sweet Science (The Viking Press 1956). For his essays on boxing, he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992. For his view on television putting boxing into a coma, see his comments quoted near the end of Round 13, entitled "The Businessman."
You could count on Jim to tell corny jokes like the one about his balding head. “I’ve discovered how to save my hair,” he said with a smile. “In a cigar box.”
Driving by Calvary Cemetery on Front Street in St. Paul, he asked: “You know why there’s a fence around there? Because people are dying to get in.”
A practical investor, he owned as many as five burial plots in Calvary. Some boxing legends are buried there, including Billy Miske (1924), Mike Gibbons (1956), and Tommy Gibbons (1960).
A one-hundred-percent city boy, Jim appreciated the beauty of the great outdoors in Alaska as well as in Minnesota. He and Kitty travelled to Alaska to visit family there many times over twenty years, beginning in the early 1980s.
Wherever he travelled, just about any name could trigger a boxing story. The northernmost city in the U.S. is Barrow, Alaska. In boxing history, Joseph Louis Barrow was born May 13, 1914, in LaFayette, Alabama. On the eve of his scheduled exhibition with Louis in 1949, Jim declined to go inside the ropes. See Round 10, entitled "Joe Louis."
They say that both promoter Tex Rickard and manager Jack “Doc” Kearns had been fortune seekers in the Yukon. In 1952, Jim and Kearns became friends. In 1972, The Ring magazine, the Bible of Boxing, published its fiftieth anniversary issue in which it named the top ten boxing personalities of the previous fifty years. Rickard and Kearns were named numbers two and three.
The full list from number one to ten is Jack Dempsey, Tex Rickard, Doc Kearns, Joe Louis, Max Baer, Muhammad Ali, promoter Mike Jacobs, Benny Leonard, Joe Frazier, and Primo Carnera (The Ring, June 1972, at 32-41).
In the early 1950s, Jim did some pro wrestling. During that time, Yukon Eric, a pro wrestler from Fairbanks, Alaska, was popular in Minnesota (George Schire, Minnesota’s Golden Age of Wrestling 12-13 (Minnesota Historical Society Press 2010)).
As mentioned, Jim was friends with George Foreman, dating from the 1970s when Foreman owned a home in Minneapolis. In 1988, Foreman included Anchorage, Alaska, as part of his comeback trail. There Foreman knocked out Frank Lux, aliases Frank Williams and Frank Albert, in the third.
In 1994 at age forty-five, Foreman, with the legendary trainer Angelo Dundee in his corner, became the oldest world heavyweight champion in history with a right to the chin of Michael Moorer in the tenth.
Jim knew the medical doctors in St. Paul-Minneapolis and was always on the lookout for volunteers to help with the fights. He worked a lot with St. Paul’s Dr. Leroy Fox. A graduate of Northwestern University School of Medicine, Dr. Fox was always generous with his time.
From gout and hernia attacks to a scare with his voice box (the growth was benign) to hip replacements to prostate cancer to high blood pressure to open heart surgery to bladder cancer, Jim had faith in the medical profession.
All the doctors and nurses seemed to have a good bedside manner and liked to talk boxing. They also had done a good job in Kitty’s bout with cancer in the 1960s. Jim wasn’t a complainer, but he said the waiting room of the oncology department at the University of Minnesota was tough. He felt powerless to help the young cancer victims staying at the Ronald McDonald House across the street while at the same time their bravery and joy encouraged him.
Adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, the Serenity Prayer was one of Jim’s favorites: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
As a husband and father, Jim expressed his love often. He told you he loved you. Here’s a random collection of other things he said over the years:
• "Listen."
• "Hold your horses, Mister."
• "Something wrong with your hearing?"
• "You shouldn’t a oughta done that."
• "I know how to read people."
• "I can tell when someone’s lying."
• "Sometimes you just know things. You may not be able to prove it, but you file it away because you know it."
• "Oh, I’m pretty."
• "Don’t I have a pretty face?"
• "Oh, I’m handsome."
• "I’d avoid getting in the ring with someone who’d give me trouble—not because I couldn’t beat him, but because I didn’t like to mess my hair."
• "I’m busier than most people I see with cell phones. What the hell do they need them for?"
• "I get more done by 10:00 a.m. than most people get done in a week."
• "I’ve never considered suicide, but I’ve considered [and rejected harming others]."
• "I’ve never been greedy."
• "What do you think of them apples?"
• "Are you nuts?"
• "You can’t shit the shitter."
• "You can say that again."
• "You got that right."
• "You don’t have to tell me."
• "Just give him some double-talk."
• "If it’s not one thing, it’s another."
• "It’s murder."
• "Give him the old dipsy-doodle."
• "You got to use kid gloves with that one."
• Kitty, when the kids were young: “Jimmy, where’re you going?” Jim: “Chicago.”
• Kitty: “Jimmy, where’re you going?” Jim: “Hollywood. They want me for a screen test in the nude.”
• Jim’s response when you told him you avoided a street fight: “You’re smart.”
• "Don’t bank on how tough you are. There’s always someone tougher. You can bank on that."
• "Don’t say the word 'I' too much."
• "If you want a big funeral, die young."
• "Tag him squarely on the point of the chin. It works like a light switch."
• "You know you’re going to fight with them. You might as well get it over."
• "I never heard of such a thing."
• Someone asks: “What’s the [telephone] number?” Jim replies: “281-Appl [Two Ate One Apple].”
• "When you have them sold, shut up. That’s the number one rule in sales."
• "Lawyers screw things up. Do the deal. Then bring it to your lawyer to make it legal."
• "If you read about a stock in the paper, it’s too late to buy."
• "I didn’t come down with the last rainfall."
• "Do you think I came in on the last boat?"
• "I wasn’t born yesterday."
• "I got cold-called by a stockbroker today. I told him my problem is I have too much cash. I wish I could’ve seen the look on his face."
• "Everyone’s trying to sell something."
• "What’s his angle?"
• "I know a fool and his money are soon parted, but what I want to know is how the fool got the money in the first place?"
• "You want businesses you deal with to make a profit—so they’re there when you need them. But if someone screws me, I won’t give him another chance."
• "Don’t ask your customers for a discount. You don’t give them a discount when you sell to them."
• "You think the grass is greener on the other side?"
• "A sucker is born every day."
• "It’s no wonder he doesn’t have two nickels to rub together."
• "It doesn’t bother me when an account complains about a bill. What worries me is when they don’t complain. Then I know they’re not going to pay."
• Jerry Hurley: “I sure don’t want to cut that account off because he never complains about how much we charge.” Jim: “It doesn’t matter what we charge. He doesn’t care because he’s not going to pay.”
• "You don’t like paying taxes? Give me the money, and I’ll pay the taxes for you."
• "The best time to buy is when you’re not shopping."
• "When you buy quality, you only complain once."
• "If you like something, buy two."
• "Spend less than you bring in."
• "We need to run this like a business."
• Someone says: “Wow.” Jim replies: “Wow is right.”
• "If you know it takes two trips, don’t try to do it in one."
• "If you ever need five, ten, fifteen minutes of my time, just let me know."
• "You think money grows on trees?"
• "When poverty comes in the door, love jumps out the window."
• "No money, no honey."
• Someone predicts: “I’ll get over 10 percent on my investments each year.” Jim responds: “You’re going to shit too.”
• Jim’s response to your spending money on certain things: “It’s cheaper than a shrink.”
• "How do you catch a squirrel? Climb up a tree and act like a nut."
• "How do you say 'cut the grass' in French? Mow de lawn."
• "He says he loses a nickel on every sale but he’ll make it up in volume."
• "Some people aren’t too bright."
• "What a deal."
• "It’s a crap shoot."
• Jim greeting Kitty as she arrives home (usually in a blizzard): “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?!”
• Jim greeting you as you come in the house: “What’s up?”
• Jim greeting you on the telephone: “Where you at?”
• Jim as you're leaving the house: “Tell’m who you are.”
• "The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree."
• "He’s NG. You know what NG means? No Good."
• "He’s crooked."
• "He’s so crooked, he doesn’t know any more that he’s crooked."
• "I know him better than he knows himself."
• "I know what he’s going to say before he opens his mouth."
• "He doesn’t know what the truth is."
• "He couldn’t tell the truth if his life depended on it."
• "When you sober up a nut, you still got a nut."
• "He doesn’t have the brains that God gave a goose."
• "He doesn’t know to come in out of the rain."
• "He doesn’t know if he’s on foot or horseback."
• "He doesn’t know which end’s up."
• "He’s no more that than the man in the moon."
• "He couldn’t catch a ball if his life depended on it."
• "He’s a pain in the arse."
• "He’s a bad apple."
• "He’s a bad hombre."
• "He’s in left field."
• "He’s cuckoo."
• Someone tells Jim something and then asks if he has it. Jim points to his head and replies, “I got it in the computer.”
• "He was talking deez, dem, an’ doze."
• "Pop some popcorn."
• "When I’m tired, I go to bed."
• "An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after."
• "Everything is timing."
• "No news is good news."
• "Don’t look at things too closely."
• "What are you, a numbskull?"
• "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy."
• "I would’ve liked to be a professional singer."
• "I was young in my fifties."
• After Kitty tells him where to stuff it, Jim replies, “What ever happened to that sweet girl I married?”
• After learning that someone has knifed you in the back, Jim asks, “What I want to know is why you showed him your back.”
• "'How much is two plus two?' The prospective new hire answers: 'How much you want it to be?'”
• "Figures don’t lie, but liars figure."
• "Unbelievable."
• "He’s a pencil pusher."
• "Ask a simple question, get a simple answer."
• "You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink."
• "That’s enough."
Nobody lives forever this side of heaven. Jim arrived there in 2002, first class. See Round 16, entitled "Irish Cross & Boxing Gloves." On the second anniversary of his death, Kitty published the following in the St. Paul Pioneer Press along with a photo of Jim wearing one his many Irish flat caps:
JIM O’HARA JAN 17, 2002. Remembering you with love. 2 years have passed since you left, but your smiles and laughter are still with me. I will always cherish the memories of you. My heart aches with sadness & my eyes shed many tears. God only knows how much I miss you at the end of 2 long years. Loving wife, children & grandchildren. Missed by all.
Jim and Kitty's wedding day
Who’s your favorite heavyweight?
That’s the question you grew up asking back in the day. Here the question was asked by future Minnesota welterweight champion Don Weller, a third-generation boxing man, to his father, Emmett Weller, himself a former Minnesota champ.
It was the 1950s, recalled Don in 2013, so he was expecting to hear the name Rocky Marciano. Instead, he heard a tale he’d never forget.
As a boxing promoter, Emmett Weller had brought Joe Louis to Minnesota in the late 1940s for an exhibition tour. The final show was good, featuring Joe in a six-rounder with Hubert Hood out of Chicago. The trouble was attendance. Later Emmett was driving Joe and his seconds to the airport.
“How much did you lose on the gate?” asked Joe.
“$2,200,” answered Emmett.
“Write him a check,” Joe said to his man. “Nobody loses money on Joe Louis.”
If you figure a conservative 4 percent annual inflation rate, $2,200 in 1949 might be about $28,178 in 2015 dollars.
An amazing amount of money passed through the champ’s hands. In 1949 alone, Joe grossed $304,000 from his exhibition work, including his South American and East Asia exhibition tours (The Ring Boxing Encyclopedia and Record Book 87 (The Ring Book Shop 1979)).
In 2015, $304,000 1949 dollars might be about $3,893,710.
Born May 13, 1914, in LaFayette, Alabama, Joseph Louis Barrow was as complete a boxer as the world has ever known. Consider the following observations:
Joe was a master of distance and deception. Louis used his footwork to put subtle pressure on his opponents and then would take small steps back to draw his opponents into him. By pressing forward he would close the distance and then by stepping back Louis would appear vulnerable, but when his opponents moved in they were setting themselves up for his lethal counterpunches. Joe Louis hit you twice as hard as you were coming in. (Monte Cox, “Understanding Boxing Skill,” www.coxscorner.tripod.com/boxingskill.html.)
Biographer Randy Roberts describes some of the Detroit Brown Bomber’s final days as a boxer: “He officially abdicated his crown on March 1, 1949, after eleven years and eight months as heavyweight champion and twenty-five title defenses. His life, however, did not change dramatically. He continued to box exhibitions.” (Randy Roberts, Joe Louis: Hard Times Man, Chapter 9 (Yale University Press 2010), Kindle Edition).
Louis is ranked number four on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time, after only Sugar Ray Robinson, Henry Armstrong, and Willie Pep (Bert Randolph Sugar, Boxing’s Greatest Fighters, 10 (The Lyons Press 2006)).
So it was an honor for Jim O’Hara in 1949 when he was matched with Louis in a four-round exhibition at Fort Snelling. Jim said he never feared any man. His manager, Murray McLean, commented that Jim would fight anyone anywhere. “Jim never asked who the foe was, only what time was the fight and what was the payoff,” said McLean. (McLean is quoted by Don Riley, “Don Riley’s Eye Opener,” St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press, June 13, 1976.)
McLean, who managed Minnesota’s heavyweight contender Lee Savold, also is quoted in the same column as saying: “O’Hara’s guts and Savold’s body would have made a super machine.”
Along with guts, Jim had street smarts and ultimately made his own decisions. After meeting Louis at the weigh‑in the night before the bout, Jim realized there was no way he was going to out-think the champ. He told the promoter, “Find another Palooka. There’s nothing going to be accomplished in that ring.” At the time, Joe Palooka was a lovable, if not sharp-witted, heavyweight boxer depicted in the then popular comics of the same name.
Emmett Weller, the promoter of the exhibition, was a nice man, recalled Kitty in 2013. Back in 1949, she and Jim were still newlyweds. Emmett and Jim were close, confirmed Don Weller in 2013, and Emmett and Murray McLean were close. McLean had managed McLean too.
So there wasn’t any arguing. Everyone knew Emmett cared more about his fighters than himself. After Jim bowed out, Emmett went to work finding another heavyweight. After some phone calls, a gladiator was driven up from Milwaukee.
If street smarts are the ability to beat a guy at his own game, they are also the ability to size up a situation and walk away when it’s prudent to do so. Everything is timing. You might first look everyone in the eye, then walk away. There’s no shame. In fact, Jim taught there’s dignity in walking away. The shame is risking what can happen, such as in boxing. “One should know,” wrote Joyce Carol Oates, “that a well-aimed punch with a heavyweight’s full weight behind it can have the equivalent force of ten thousand pounds” (Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing (HarperCollins e-books 2006), Kindle Edition)).
“His chest was this thick,” Jim recounted, placing his hands sufficiently apart to suggest you’d have to be a numbskull to mix it up with Joe Louis. Indeed, in 1949, Louis scored at least five knockouts in recorded exhibition matches (The Ring Boxing Encyclopedia and Record Book, supra, at 199–200).
A couple years later, Jim would mix it up with a world champ all right, but one with less of a punch. In 1952, he was hired as a sparring partner by then world light-heavyweight champion Joey Maxim, who naturally retaliated when Jim got in a good shot. Maxim was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994. He’s ranked number twelve on the list of the top defensive fighters of all time (Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, The Ultimate Book of Boxing Lists, 161 (Running Press 2010)).
“Don’t try to play someone else’s road game,” Jim said often. His advice included boxing the puncher, as Gene Tunney did when he took the crown away from Jack Dempsey in 1926, as well as sidestepping the over-match. See Round 2, entitled “Dignity & Sportsmanship.”
Back in 1949, Louis wasn’t done boxing. Two years later, in June 1951, he knocked out Lee Savold in the sixth at Madison Square Garden, demonstrating he could still put together effective combinations. Two old pros giving all they got, this main event holds the distinction of being the subject of the essay entitled “The Big Fellows: Boxing with the Naked Eye” in A. J. Liebling’s book The Sweet Science (The Viking Press 1956). In 2002, Sports Illustrated ranked this book the number one sports book of all time. 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.”
Unfortunately, Liebling found it necessary to write that Savold wasn’t much, wasn’t good, and even called him a “third-rater” and a “clown.” Liebling’s job was to call it as he saw it. Fair enough. But consider that Savold, a Minnesota Boxing Hall of Famer, had 150 recorded professional bouts with 101 wins (72 by KO), 42 losses, and 6 draws, including newspaper decisions. (A newspaper decision is a bout left in the hands of the sportswriters.) The British Boxing Board thought so much of him that they recognized him as heavyweight champion of the world after his TKO win in the fourth over Bruce Woodcock in London in June 1950. Boxrec.com reports that the British recognized Ezzard Charles as the champ after the Louis-Savold bout.
Jim fought in an era when there were many boxers but few who could support their families long-term with their boxing earnings. He advised boxers to get and keep a day job, not only to augment their boxing income but to give them something to fall back on. He didn’t believe in winning at all costs. “If you’re taking more punches than you’re landing,” said Jim, “you’re in the wrong business”—and here he meant even if you’re winning the fights. Along these lines he said:
There were a lot of fighters around when I was young, and everyone had cauliflower ears and busted noses. I saw a lot of broken people. When they were through with boxing, there was nothing left for them. I buried some of those guys. (Jim is quoted by Mike Mosedale, The Ring Cycle, April 3, 2007 (www.citypages.com)).
An exhibition can get as rough as any match, especially if the fighters have not boxed each other before. Sparring is flat-out dangerous, as demonstrated by some famous rounds that may never have occurred if it weren’t for St. Paul’s Billy Miske. In September 1920, Jack Dempsey, known as the Manassa Mauler, was training to defend the heavyweight title against Miske when Dempsey’s manager invited middleweight Harry Greb, known as the Pittsburgh Windmill, to spar with the champ. As the story goes:
The Pittsburgh Windmill was in Benton Harbor, Michigan, for a fight with a fairly good light‑heavyweight named Chuck Wiggins. . . . The bout was to be on the undercard of Jack Dempsey’s first title defense, against Billy Miske, on Labor Day.
Dempsey was already in training in Benton Harbor, and his manager, Jack Kearns, got the idea of asking Greb to spar with Dempsey. Kearns’s reasoning was that Greb—like Miske more of a boxer than a puncher—would provide the Manassa Mauler with a good workout. With scores of sportswriters among the spectators looking on, Greb gave Dempsey more than a good workout. For three rounds, Greb darted in and out, peppering Dempsey with punches and eluding whatever blows Dempsey threw at him. If anyone had kept score, Greb would have won all three rounds handily. When it was over, Dempsey was left embarrassed and also angry at Kearns for inviting Greb to spar with him. As for the sportswriters who witnessed the session, they had a field day reporting how Greb—five inches shorter and thirty-five pounds lighter—had boxed the ears off the great Dempsey.
Upset over the newspaper accounts of the sparring session, Dempsey asked Kearns to try to get Greb back in the ring with him. . . . Kearns did not think much of the idea, fearing that Greb would embarrass Dempsey again. But Dempsey insisted and Kearns . . . found Greb eager to box with Dempsey again the next afternoon. Kearns was right; it was a mistake. Dempsey, trying desperately for a knockout, found nothing but air with most of his punches. Meanwhile, Greb . . . peppered the champion at one juncture with about fifteen unanswered punches. Kearns . . . let the round go for almost five minutes, feeling that the Manassa Mauler inevitably would land a haymaker that would knock out Greb. Dempsey never even came close. . . .
Dempsey’s embarrassment was palpable as he left the ring. And when Greb sought a fight with Dempsey several years later, Kearns said, "The hell with that seven-year itch. We don’t want any part of him." (Jack Cavanaugh, Tunney: Boxing’s Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey, Chapter 8 (Ballantine Books 2007), Kindle Edition.)
Jack Dempsey is ranked number nine on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time; Harry Greb is ranked number five out of the top one hundred (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 14 and 26). Miske was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2010.
If an independent thinker, the newly married Jim may have been too cautious in sidestepping the Louis vs. O’Hara exhibition. “Joe would’ve taken it easy on him,” said Don Weller in 2013. “Joe was that kind of guy.” Maybe so. But then again, for 1949, the record books show Louis scoring five knockouts in exhibition matches (The Ring Boxing Encyclopedia and Record Book, supra, at 199–200).
On April 12, 1981, Joe Louis died a month shy of his sixty-seventh birthday. President Ronald Reagan made sure Louis was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery (John E. Oden, Life in the Ring, 156 (Hatherleight Press 2009)).
The champ’s son, Joe Louis Barrow, Jr., has summed up his father’s contribution thusly: "During World War Two, my father had volunteered for the Army, conducted ninety-six exhibitions, and entertained two million troops, not to mention donating purses from two championship fights to the United States Army Relief Fund" (Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, Chapter 5 (First eBook Publication 2012 (Initially Published in 1991), Kindle Edition).
Arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time, Joseph Louis Barrow reigned over boxing with dignity, never letting fame go to his head. Muhammad Ali observed: “Everybody loved Joe. From black folks to redneck Mississippi crackers, they loved him. They’re all crying. That shows you. Howard Hughes dies, with all his billions, not a tear. Joe Louis, everybody cried” (Patrick Myler, Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling: Fight of the Century, Chapter 19 (Arcade Publishing 2012), Kindle Edition).
Minnesota’s rich boxing history includes heavyweight contenders Billy Miske, Tommy Gibbons, Lee Savold, and Scott LeDoux. Miske and Gibbons had title fights with Jack Dempsey in the 1920s. Savold took on Rocky Marciano in 1952. And LeDoux faced Larry Holmes for the title in 1980.
Whereas Miske, Gibbons, and Savold traveled out of state for their shots, LeDoux delighted Minnesota fans by bringing the title fight to them.
Jack Dempsey is ranked number nine on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time. Rocky Marciano is ranked number fourteen, and Larry Holmes is ranked number forty-five (Bert Randolph Sugar, Boxing’s Greatest Fighters, 26, 43 and 151 (The Lyons Press 2006)). Tommy Gibbons was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1993, as was Billy Miske in 2010.
Before winning the title, Dempsey had fought Billy Miske at the St. Paul Auditorium in May 1918. Dempsey won but said later that night: “If I ever have to fight another tough guy like that I don’t want the championship. The premium they ask is too much effort” (Clay Moyle, Billy Miske: The St. Paul Thunderbolt, 54 (Win By KO Publications 2011)).
LeDoux also was as tough as they come, and his scheduled title fight with Holmes was the biggest of his career. Holmes vs. LeDoux was booked for July 7, 1980, at the Metropolitan Sports Center, which was in Bloomington, the same venue where LeDoux had fought Ken Norton to a ten-round draw a year earlier.
Don King was the promoter, and Muhammad Ali was there, providing ballyhoo for the event as well as a possible future contest with Holmes.
Ali was thirty-eight years of age and would indeed have two more paydays: Larry Holmes (October 1980) and Trevor Berbick (December 1981).
Ali is ranked number seven on the Bert Sugar list of the top one hundred fighters of all time, after Sugar Ray Robinson, Henry Armstrong, Willie Pep, Joe Louis, Harry Greb, and Benny Leonard (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 20).
Holmes wasn’t going to take LeDoux for granted. He’d already been defeated by a Minnesota boy on a big stage. As Bert Sugar put it, Minnesota heavyweight Duane Bobick “had forced Holmes to throw up his hands in surrender at the 1972 Olympic Box-Offs” (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 152).
LeDoux was the real deal, a contender during arguably the greatest era of the heavyweight division, including when Muhammad Ali was leading the discussion. Not only had LeDoux proven himself a match for Ken Norton (from whom Holmes won the WBC title by split decision), LeDoux drew with Leon Spinks in 1977 just four months before Spinks dethroned Ali. In September 1978, Ali avenged the loss, regaining the WBA title, and retired a year later (for the first time). Back in 1973, Norton also had beaten Ali, losing to him six months later.
On July 6, 1980, the day of the weigh-in for the Holmes-LeDoux match, things were going well. Just the usual hiccups, like finding an eighteen-foot ring to replace the seventeen-foot-four squared circle that had been set up. Holmes’s management insisted upon the larger ring as Holmes, the scientific boxer, wanted more room for his footwork. Muhammad Ali was there. Jim had brought his youngest child, Jeff, age fifteen, and Ali was gracious in showing him card tricks.
The weigh-in was at the Registry Hotel, which was near the MET Center. Later that evening, just as Jim was getting ready to put down his guard, he was approached by someone from Holmes’s camp. They spoke privately, and Jim learned that the main event may be off and that he was needed upstairs in Holmes’s suite. Jim looked concerned; he knew as well as anyone that boxing cards don’t go off as planned, but this was a world title bout. He told Jeff to follow him.
When they arrived at Holmes’s room, there were bodyguards outside the door. When they entered the large suite, there were only three other men present: Larry Holmes, Don King, and Muhammad Ali.
Ali would fight Holmes three months later, but he wasn’t going to interfere tonight. He offered to show Jeff more card tricks across the room at a coffee table, which he did for the next thirty minutes. He also threw some magic tricks into the mix.
Larry Holmes, Don King, and Jim remained standing on the other side of the room. They never sat down. If Holmes was walking in Ali’s shadow in public, he certainly wasn’t in private. Carrying his infant child, Holmes insisted that his view of the contract terms be followed. Don King argued his view of the deal. Jim served as mediator.
Holmes and King were able to work out their differences. The next day, LeDoux got a crack at the title. He'd earned his shot.
Holmes won by TKO in the seventh, and after LeDoux, Holmes’s next title defense was against Muhammad Ali himself. In October 1980, Holmes was awarded a technical knockout against Ali in the tenth round in Las Vegas. Holmes would later say that this victory freed him “from walking in Ali’s shadow” (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 153).
At thirty-eight, Ali was no longer the greatest in the ring, but he was still great as demonstrated by the kindness he’d shown Jeff back in Minnesota. Relatively few have had one-on-one time with Muhammad Ali. Jeff will tell you that it was unforgettable but also that the best part of the day was being able to see his dad in action among some of the big names in boxing.
Jim laughed when asked if he could see punches coming at him in the ring. Although everything happens in a flash in the professional ranks, experience can provide time and space, allowing you to think on your feet. When Jim walked into that hotel room and the only other men there were Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes and Don King, all Jim knew was that the title fight was in jeopardy. Things were heated, and the parties were at an impasse. He was able to slow things down and help Holmes and King see eye to eye. Gary, Jim’s oldest child, said of Jim:
He had an innate sense of fairness, and he could say more in a few words than most. He got straight to the root of the problem and tried solving it. He didn’t step on anybody’s toes doing it, either. (Gary 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.)
Years later, Muhammad Ali was asked to name his picks for the list of the top ten heavyweight champs of all time. He didn’t name himself, offering that the editors could insert him wherever they want. Here’s Ali’s list in chronological order with some of his comments:
• Jack Johnson, “Scientific boxer”;
• Jack Dempsey, “He hit hard”;
• Gene Tunney, “Accurate left jab and right cross”;
• Joe Louis, “Knockout punching”;
• Ezzard Charles, “Scientific boxer”;
• Jersey Joe Walcott, “He would come in, then move out”;
• Rocky Marciano, “Could take a punch and just keep coming”;
• Joe Frazier, “Just kept coming, moving forward, no matter how hard you hit him”;
• George Foreman, “Knockout puncher”; and
• Larry Holmes, “Hard hitter.”
(Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, The Ultimate Book of Boxing Lists, 18–19 (Running Press 2010).)
A hulk of a man, Scott LeDoux’s plan with Larry Holmes appeared to be to win with body shots. A technical boxer, Holmes was too smart to get close. As he worked the jab, he made sure that this title bout was exciting only before it began. Consistent with his performance against LeDoux, Holmes’s place in history has been assessed by the author Carlo Rotella thusly:
He has always been a businesslike worker, rather than a crowd-pleasing showman, in the ring. His pragmatic boxing style, founded on the left jab and good defense and the timeless premise of hitting without being hit, never made much concession to popular taste. Posterity unfairly tends to reduce him, perhaps the finest technical boxer on the short list of heavyweight all-timers, to the champion who, in one writer’s words, "made boxing seem strictly an act of commerce." Bracketed in history by the two premier celebrity boxers of the television age—Ali, who made boxing seem like political theater, and Tyson, who makes boxing seem like nonconsensual sex—Holmes has been partially eclipsed. (George Kimball and John Schulian, At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (Library of America 2011), which includes the writing of Carlo Rotella, “Champion at Twilight,” Kindle Edition.)
If not heavyweight champion of the world, Scott LeDoux was a character loved by everyone. In 1977, he was a contestant in the United States Boxing Championships, a scheduled year-long professional tournament. He was happy to be in the tournament but soon heard rumors suggesting his upcoming February bout was fixed. He heard he couldn’t win if the matter was left to a decision. LeDoux ignored the rumors, but sure enough, the eight-rounder went to his opponent when it should’ve gone to him.
After the verdict was announced, Johnny Boudreaux, the winner, was being interviewed ringside on live national TV by Howard Cosell, the tournament’s host. Still in the ring, LeDoux yelled down at Cosell to call it as it is. Words were exchanged between the fighters and LeDoux kicked at Boudreaux’s face after something was said about LeDoux's mother. The kick missed but lead to Cosell’s toupee being knocked off on live TV. The story became big news, as the author George Kimball explains:
LeDoux, with the ABC cameras rolling, unleashed a barrage of accusations of fixed fights and rigged ratings. The loss remained on LeDoux’s record, but it did result in the convocation of a grand jury in Maryland, and the FBI was shortly looking into the proceedings.
ABC didn’t cancel the tournament until April 16.
***
[A] . . . whistle-blower, Scott LeDoux, became a boxing commissioner in his native Minnesota. (George Kimball, Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran, and the Last Great Era of Boxing, Chapter 1 (McBooks Press, Inc. 2008), Kindle Edition.)
Another extraordinary heavyweight is Duane Bobick, who as mentioned beat Holmes on his way to the 1972 Olympics. One of twelve sons from Bowlus, Minnesota, Bobick was favored to take gold in Munich but lost in the quarterfinals after the shock of witnessing from his dorm window events related to the Israeli team massacre (Mike Hayes, “‘Watch Bobick Closely,’ Says Angelo Dundee,” The Ring, August 1974, 10, 32).
As a professional, Bobick beat LeDoux twice and retired in 1979 with 52 recorded pro bouts: 48 wins (42 by KO) and only 4 losses.
Bert Sugar ranked Sugar Ray Robinson the greatest pound-for-pound boxer in history. Jim said the same. What about the heavies? Within the top ten boxers of all time, Bert Sugar listed four heavyweights. He booked Joe Louis at number four, Muhammad Ali at number seven, Jack Dempsey at number nine, and Jack Johnson at number ten (Bert Randolph Sugar, supra, at 1, 10, 20, 26, and 29).
They say Ali always wanted to be a big Sugar Ray Robinson. Jim considered Ali the greatest heavyweight of all time, indeed the greatest overall fighter behind only Robinson.
Ali had started boxing at age twelve, eventually becoming known in some quarters as the “fifth Beatle” because no one had ever seen anything like him. He became a star in 1964, the same year the Beatles became stars. If he’d been snubbed by big shots when he was a no-name kid, Ali wasn’t about to do the same to Jim’s son Jeff. Ali treated Jeff the way Ali would’ve wanted to be treated.
“And I remember,” Ali said later as part of an authorized biography, “how bad I felt one time when I met Sugar Ray Robinson and asked for his autograph, and he told me, ‘I’m busy, kid’” (Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, Chapter 17 (First eBook Publication 2012 (Initially Published in 1991), Kindle Edition).
Ali loved to entertain. In 1965, Edwin Pope of The Miami Herald travelled with Ali from Miami to Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, where Ali was to train for his rematch with Sonny Liston. Said Pope:
I have to admit that before that bus ride I didn’t understand Ali even though I’d been around him quite a bit in Miami. He seemed hostile and strange to me. But on that bus I got a sense of how complicated and how sweet he could be and how funny he was, always funny. (David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, Chapter 14 (Vintage Books 1999), Kindle Edition).
If Ali the showman didn’t necessary believe his own prefight bravado, he was full of surprises in the ring and eventually made just about everyone smile if not laugh.
More than an entertainer, Ali had heart in and out of the ring. There’s a story about a twelve-year-old dying of leukemia who wanted to meet Ali. Although the kid’s father didn’t care for Ali, he got his son released from the hospital whereupon they drove unannounced and uninvited to Ali’s training camp in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania. The dad found he could drive right into the place—there were no guards—and the dad explained the situation to the first person he saw. Ali then spent the whole afternoon with the boy. The father later said:
Mister, I never liked Ali. I’ve hated him ever since I knew about him. I was always hoping someone would beat him, and beat him badly. But I’ll never forget what he did for my son. He’s a good man, and I’m sorry for the way I felt about him. (Thomas Hauser, supra, at Chapter 9.)
When asked about his legacy, Ali said in part: “I’ll tell you how I’d like to be remembered: as a black man who won the heavyweight title and who was humorous and who treated everyone right” (David Remnick, supra, Epilogue).
In 1980, before the Holmes-LeDoux fight in Minnesota, Muhammad Ali had shown Jeff O’Hara some magic tricks in addition to card tricks. Six years earlier in Zaire, Africa, Ali had invented “rope-a-dope” and reclaimed the heavyweight championship of the world from George Foreman.
You’ll never guess what Ali was doing just three hours after that victory. He was sitting on the steps of his cottage totally into showing a magic trick to a group of children. He was showing them a rope cut in two and then the same rope magically whole again. Newsweek magazine’s Pete Bonventre, the sole journalist to come across the scene, recalled: “All I could think was, I don’t care what anyone says, they’ll never be anyone like him again” (Thomas Hauser, supra, at Chapter 10).