The Year 1952, Chapter 8

As soon as the first ray of sunlight enters his room Wednesday morning, September 24, 1952, Burt jumps out of bed and races downstairs.  He opens the front door and finds the newspaper waiting for him.  Burt doesn't have to turn to the sports section to find what he's looking for.  It's right there on the front page, a picture of a smiling Rocky Marciano.

Burt can't believe his bad luck.  He turns to the sports section to read about the fight.

"Trailing badly on the scorecards of all three judges after 12 rounds, Marciano needed a knockout to win the championship.  Answering the bell for round 13, Marciano stalked Walcott from a crouch, forcing him to retreat.  When the former champion's back touched the ropes, both men unleashed big right hand punches.  However, Rocky's was quicker, landing flush on Walcott's chin, turning off his brain with all the suddenness of a power failure.  Jersey Joe collapsed into the ropes, his left arm hooked over the middle strand, suspending him temporarily until gravity eventually took over."

Burt is in utter disbelief.  How could this have happened?

Harvey walks by and can't resist making a comment.

"I told you he would win.  Rocky Marciano proved that eventually he prevails.  He has great stamina and a powerful punch.  You'd better listen to me more often on these things."

Burt listens, but is burning inside.  This proves life is not fair.  But, shouldn't it be?   

After his father left for work and before he has to leave for school, Burt sits in front of the TV thinking about what his father said, "eventually he prevails."  That infers that Marciano had enough time remaining in the fight to assert his will over Walcott.  

The fight was scheduled for 15 rounds as was traditional for championship fights in 1952.  What if there hadn't been a 13th round?

The TV in front of Burt shows the end of the fight.  The ring announcer is reading the scoring of the three judges.

"Judge Zach Clayton scores the fight 8 rounds to 4, favor of Walcott.  Judge Pete Tomasco scores the fight 7 rounds to 5, favor of Walcott.  Referee Charley Daggert scores the fight 7 rounds to 4 with 1 even, favor of Walcott.  The winner by unanimous decision and still heavyweight champion of the world, Jersey Joe Walcott."

Burt turns off the TV and happily goes to school.  

Burt doesn't know that 30 years in the future, because of the death of Korean boxer Duk Koo Kim from a punch in the 14th round, championship fights would be reduced to 12 rounds.  Or does he?    

Postponed

When I moved to Philadelphia in 1963 as a college student, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunities of living in a big city, especially regarding spectator sports.  Besides attending Penn football and basketball games, I went to other events.  

One such sporting event was the middleweight (no more than 160 lbs. or 73 kg.) championship fight between Dick Tiger (champion) and Joey Giardello (challenger) scheduled for Convention Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey (a one hour bus ride from Philadelphia) on the night of December 7, 1963.

Dick Tiger, born Richard Ihetu in Nigeria on August 14, 1929, won the title by beating Gene Fullmer on October 23, 1962 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.  Joey Giardello, born Carmine Tilelli in Brooklyn on July 16, 1930, spent most of his life in Philadelphia.  On June 24, 1963, he defeated the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson to become the #1 contender.

I also bought a ticket to the 1963 Army-Navy football game at Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia (site of Marciano-Walcott fight).  This had been and still is one of the most iconic rivalries in America.  It was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, November 30.  However, because of the JFK assassination eight days earlier, the game was postponed one week, to December 7, the day of the Tiger-Giardello fight.  Could I do both?  Yes!

A year before, I did three sporting events (NBA, NFL and NHL) in two days (Saturday and Sunday) and two cities (Syracuse and New York).  It was the subject of my very first blog post on December 29, 2014, A Weekend in New York.

I got up late that Saturday, December 7, as the football game didn't start until the early afternoon.  I took public transportation to the stadium. 

Navy entered the game with an outstanding record of 8-1 including victories at Michigan and Notre Dame.  They were ranked #2 in the nation.  Army had a very respectable 7-2 record including a victory at Penn State.

My seat was behind one of the end zones at a very low level.  It was so low that if someone walked between me and the playing field, they obstructed my view.  However, as one of 100,000 spectators, I enjoyed the experience of what turned out to be one of the most memorable Army-Navy football games.

Navy, led by the great Roger Staubach (Heisman Trophy winner and future Dallas Cowboy star quarterback), dominated the game and led 21-7 with 10 minutes to play.  However, Navy, clad all in gold, never touched the ball again.  

Army, in black jerseys, received the ensuing kickoff and methodically marched down the field toward my end zone.  With about 6 minutes left Army scored a touchdown and made a two point conversion to cut Navy's lead to 21-15.

In a surprise move (not wanting to give the ball back to Staubach), Army executed a successful onside kick.  Another methodical time consuming march down the field quickly ate up the clock.  On a third down play, Army arrived just two yards from the winning touchdown with 18 seconds to go.  

Army lined up for fourth down, but their quarterback, Rollie Stichway (same initials as his Navy counterpart), out of time outs and fearing his teammates could not hear the snap count because of the extremely loud crowd noise, asked the referee to call an official's time out (which he did twice before).  This time the referee declined and the clock ran out.  Navy won and it all happened right in front of me.  

With little time to spare, I rushed to the station for a bus to Atlantic City.  My seat for the boxing match was at the main level (below the ring) near the back of the auditorium surrounded by a large crowd.  The following year, it would be the site of the Democratic National Convention that nominated LBJ for president.

The Tiger-Giardello fight was a classic match of a puncher (Tiger) versus a boxer (Giardello).  The boxer must use his acumen for the whole fight, not letting his guard down for a second.  The puncher needs only one big punch...if it connects.

That night Giardello fought a superb fight, out boxing Tiger over 15 rounds, never letting him unload a big punch.  I was not surprised when the official decision was announced that there was a new middleweight champion of the world.  Referee Paul Cavalier, the sole judge, scored the fight 8 rounds for Giardello, 5 for Tiger and two even.

I could not relish the moment as I had to rush to the station for the last bus back to Philadelphia.  When I arrived at my dorm room well past midnight, I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally.  I slept soundly, perhaps dreaming of another December 7th in the future.

                   

Arnold and Rocco

Arnold Cream was born January 31, 1914 in Pennsauken, New Jersey.  His father was an immigrant from the Caribbean island of St. Thomas who died when Arnold was fifteen years-old.  As the eldest of twelve children, Arnold then quit school to work in a soup factory to help his mother support the family.

Rocco Marchegiano was born September 1, 1923 in Brockton, Massachusetts.  Both his parents were immigrants from Italy.  Rocco attended Brockton High School until the tenth grade.  Later, he worked as a ditch digger, a railroad layer and a shoemaker.

At sixteen years of age, Arnold started his career as a professional boxer.  He adopted the name Joe Walcott who had been a boxing champion in Barbados and added Jersey in honor of his home state to become Jersey Joe Walcott.

In 1943, Rocco was drafted into the U.S. Army.  Stationed in Wales (U.K.), he helped transport supplies across the English Channel to Normandy (France) after the D Day (June 6, 1944) invasion.  Rocco was discharged from the Army in 1946.

For the first fifteen years of his boxing career, Jersey Joe Walcott was forgettable.  However, that changed near the end of the WWII when he started beating top contenders.  On December 5, 1947, Jersey Joe fought Joe Louis for the heavyweight championship, being the oldest man to do so.  Despite knocking Louis down twice, Jersey Joe lost a controversial split decision.  In a rematch on June 5, 1948, Louis knocked him out.    

In 1947, Rocco pursued his dream of being a professional baseball player.  He was in Fayetteville, North Carolina for three weeks as a member of a Chicago Cubs minor league team.  However, Rocco's career as a catcher was short lived.  He returned to Brockton and started training as a boxer.

On June 22, 1949, Jersey Joe lost a unanimous decision to Ezzard Charles in a fight to determine a new heavyweight champion after Joe Louis retired.  On March 5, 1951, they fought again with the same result.  However, four months later, Jersey Joe, in his fifth try, became the oldest man to win the heavyweight championship when he knocked out Charles.

On July 12, 1948, Rocco started his professional boxing career.  He knocked out his first sixteen opponents.  After a ring announcer had difficulty pronouncing his name, Rocco took the professional name Rocky Marciano.  Beginning in 1950, he started defeating top contenders such as Carmine Vingo, Roland La Starza and Rex Layne.  On October 27, 1951, Rocky knocked out ex-champion Joe Louis.  

Less than a year later, Rocky Marciano would fight Jersey Joe Walcott for the heavyweight championship of the world.           

Cochise

On February 4, 1861 (158 years ago tomorrow), U.S. Army Lt. George Bascom attempted to arrest Cochise, chief of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, believing him guilty of a raid on a ranch in southern Arizona.  He escaped.  Cochise, maintaining his innocence, felt betrayed by the Army over this incident.  Subsequent killings by both sides led to relentless warfare between the Apaches and the Army over the next 11 years.  

In 1950, James Stewart and Jeff Chandler starred in the movie Broken Arrow, which is based on the real life relationship of Cochise (Chandler) and a white man, Tom Jeffords (Stewart).

During the above conflict, the civilian mail service in the area had been stopped by the Apaches.  In an attempt to restart the service, Jeffords learns the Apache language in order to directly confront Cochise (whom he had never met) and ask for such a favor since this mail had nothing to do with the Army.

Jeffords enters the Apache stronghold alone.  Cochise's first words to him are, "How do you know you will leave here alive?"  Jeffords has no answer.

However, as the two men from two different worlds talk, they develop first a relationship and then a friendship.  

Cochise agrees to let the mail go through.  And it does because Cochise was a man of his word.  Eventually, a peace treaty between the two sides is agreed to.

"Broken Arrow is noteworthy for being one of the first post-war Westerns to portray Native Americans in a balanced, sympathetic way."  In the film, Cochise makes a joke.  What is more human than that?

Twentieth Century Fox employed about 240 Apaches from a nearby reservation in Arizona to be extras in the film.  However, for the principal Native American character of Cochise, it hired Brooklyn-born Jeff Chandler.  Producer Julius Blaustein recalled "We had a terrible time locating an actor with the proper voice and stature to play Cochise."  

Jeff Chandler (original name Ira Grossel) was born into a Jewish family on December 15, 1918.  After World War II, he tried to break into the movie business.  According to Chandler, Fox was "looking for a guy big enough physically to play the role and unfamiliar enough to moviegoers to lend authenticity."  

Jeff Chandler was almost perfect as Cochise and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (won by George Sanders in All About Eve).  Perfection would have been hiring a Native American actor.                  

The Year 1952, Chapter 7

The most prestigious title in boxing is the Heavyweight Champion of the World.  This weight class is for boxers greater than 175 lbs. or 80 kg.  In September of 1952 the champion is Jersey Joe Walcott.  

Walcott won the title on July 18, 1951 when he knocked out defending champion Ezzard Charles at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.  He defended it by defeating Charles again, this time by a decision on June 5, 1952 at Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia.  Three months later, Walcott looked for another opponent to earn another big pay day.

On July 28, 1952, undefeated Rocky Marciano knocked out Harry "Kid" Matthews at Yankee Stadium to cement himself as the next contender to face the champion.  Walcott agreed to fight Marciano on Tuesday night, September 23, 1952, again at Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia.

For a couple of weeks before the fight, Harvey and Burt discussed nothing else.  Early on Harvey talked up the inevitability of Marciano continuing his undefeated winning streak.  His record was 42 wins (37 by knockout) and no defeats. 
   
"Nobody can stand in front of Marciano for long.  He is unbeatable."

Was it a coincidence that again Harvey took the white guy?  So, Burt was for the champion, Jersey Joe, the black guy.

"Nobody is unbeatable.  Even greats like Sugar Ray Robinson and Willie Pep tasted defeat."

"It (is) a match that (has) inspired great public interest.  Opinions on who (is) more likely to win (are) sharply divided.  For some, Marciano's advantages in youth (29 year-old) and power (are) too much for a ring-worn, 38 year-old to overcome.  But more than a few (see) Walcott's edge in experience, ring smarts and technique as being the deciding factors."  

Marciano is a 8-5 betting favorite.  It is the first time since challenger Joe Louis fought Jimmy Braddock (1937) that the champion is the underdog.  

Normally such important fights are televised or at least broadcast on the radio.  But not this time.  There is new technology.  The heavyweight championship fight will only be shown to paying customers in about 50 movie theaters around the country.  This will generate more revenue to the promoters and fighters than in the past.    

When Burt went to bed that Tuesday night, he almost couldn't fall asleep as he anxiously waited for the sun to come up Wednesday morning when the newspaper would tell him what he desperately wanted to know.  He was praying this was the day he had been waiting for.  Walcott will win and Burt can show his father that he too could pick a winner.  

   
           

New World

In August 1963, I passed through a transformation.  I had spent the first eighteen years of my life in small town Oswego, New York.  Now I would enter a new world as a student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, a big city.  

From my perspective, I had been a Jew living in a non-Jewish world (Oswego).  Now I would be Jew in a very Jewish environment (Penn and Philadelphia).

This Jewish perspective was not something put upon me by my peers (I never felt any animus or antisemitism).  It was put upon me by my parents who made me feel some kind of vague danger from the non-Jewish world.

There was a second element to this transformation.  I had been under the thumb of my mother who was a very controlling person.  She believed children lacked the ability to know what they should do given a choice.  Between adults and children, who would make a better decision?  

But, then this logic falls apart.  At eighteen with no experience, I was cast out, encouraged to leave home, go to a good university and start making decisions on my own.  Good luck!

However, from my perspective, it felt as if I was being released from prison.  Despite my lack of experience, I felt I was ready for the challenge.  I could do whatever I wanted (making quick decisions) even if, with 20-20 hindsight from fifty-five years into the future, what I wanted turned out to be not such a good idea...some times. 

As I recall, the period from my high school graduation to leaving for Penn (2 months) was one of planned isolation.  I basically abandoned my high school friends as if I was entering a new chapter of my life and had no room in it for them.  I would replace my old friends with new Jewish friends that would fulfill my Jewish identity.  Is there such a thing as having too many friends?

For the next twenty-five years, I did not realize what I had so easily and carelessly cast aside.  When I received an invitation to our class reunion in 1988, I came to the realization that I wanted to include my old life along side my new one.  But I got a punch in the gut when I arrived and discovered my best friend from the old days, Frank Ruggio, had died of cancer six months before.  However, I was able to reconnect with some of my old Oswego friends.  

Returning to August 1963, I remember being abandoned by my parents in my dorm room after dinner.  My two roommates (from Boston and Orlando) on the fifth floor of the Class of 1928 dormitory had not as yet arrived.  I was alone and lonely.  I was at the crossroads of my life and was not quite sure if I was adult enough to act like an adult.  

Then there was a knock on the door.  Another freshman from down the hall invited me to come to his room where others had gathered to shoot some bull.  I accepted and quickly started to feel I had successfully entered the new world I had been looking forward to.            

Tale of Two Statues RevisiTed

On March 26, 2015, I published a post regarding two Civil War statues, one in my hometown dedicated "in honor of the soldiers and sailors of the County of Oswego who nobly defended the Union, 1861-1865."  The second was in my adopted home of Chapel Hill, North Carolina dedicated "to the sons of the University who entered the war of 1861-1865 in answer to the call of their country (the Confederacy)."

The second statue (known as Silent Sam) was erected in 1913 on the UNC campus at a time when a narrative was spread throughout the region that the Civil War was all about the independence of southern states, similar to 1776.  However, the spark for such independence was the desire to perpetuate the slavery of blacks.  Such slavery ended when the 13th Amendment was added to the Constitution in December 1865.  

In 1913 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was an all-white public institution.  It became integrated in 1955.  As I stated in my original post, "How can the University's administration expect the black student body, faculty and staff to tolerate a symbol of a time when white North Carolinians fought to preserve the slavery of their ancestors?"

In 2008, I sent a letter to the editor of The Daily Tar Heel (student newspaper) advocating Silent Sam's lawful removal from the campus.  My letter drew a threat from another reader.  Subsequently, the State passed a law making it illegal to remove such Civil War statues.

On August 20, 2018, demonstrators pulled Silent Sam off of his pedestal.  This was the culmination of decades of protests and vandalism against the statue's presence on the campus.  

The demonstration started in the center of Chapel Hill in support of a UNC student who faced criminal charges for throwing red ink and blood at Silent Sam on an earlier date.  However, it quickly "morphed" into a march to the statue.  In spite of police presence there, the demonstrators were able to take down the Confederate symbol.  Many demonstrators were arrested by the police.  Campus staff placed the statue on a flatbed truck and removed it from the area.  

The University issued the following statement: "Last night's actions were unlawful and dangerous, and we are very fortunate that no one was injured.  While we respect that protesters have the right to demonstrate, they do not have the right to damage state property (Silent Sam)."    

It has become a polemic issue as to what to do with the removed Silent Sam.  On December 14, 2018, the University's Board of Governors was set to vote on a proposal to build a $5.3 million historical center on campus where Silent Sam would be placed.

However, "just hours ahead of the Board Meeting, (Spectacular Magazine) published an open letter from (UNC) athletes that accused the University of using black students as 'accessories' and criticized the Athletic Department for not taking a stand on (Silent Sam)."  The Board voted against the proposal.  What to do with Silent Sam remains in limbo. 

On January 15, 2019, at the direction of UNC Chapel Hill's Chancellor, the statue's base, which bore plaques commemorating university students who had fought for the Confederacy, was removed as well.