HAVE you ever had a tour of a famous building, such as the US Capitol, and noticed the tour guide closing her eyes, reciting her spiel, half-conscious, half asleep? She has given this tour hundreds, maybe thousands of times. You hear it the first time and its interesting, but to her its like reading the phone book.
Sometimes I feel that way about Jack Dempsey. A picture of him with my late father, Max Goldberg, hangs on our office wall; theres much lore in the family about my late Dads friendship with the heavyweight boxing champion of the 1920s.
Dad had a one-on-one TV show and interviewed many of the leading politicians and personalities of the 1950s and 1960s. We wish we had tapes of his interviews with the late President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., but we dont.
Before TV, Dad was in radio and newspapers. Right out of Denvers North High School he wrote sports for the Salt Lake Telegram. As the story goes, he, all of 19, told his editor that he was going to bring in an exclusive interview with Jack Dempsey, whose fame was at its height.
The editor frowned skeptically.
Dad brought in the interview.
His older brother Willie was an old friend of Dempsey we dont know how and introduced his kid brother to the famous fighter.
So here I am, standing in front of many pictures of Dad with famous personages in the IJN conference room, telling countless visitors, ?. . . and this is Dad outside the old Orpheum Theater downtown with Jack Dempsey.
Ooh and ahs.
But I feel like that DC tourist guide, mouthing the words automatically. Who is Jack Dempsey? I really dont know. Besides the fact that he held a boxing title, I dont know a thing about him.
I certainly dont know why people, even today, almost a century after he became heavyweight champion and long after he died in 1983, still seem impressed by those photos of Dad with Dempsey.
Dempsey must have had some kind of staying power besides sports.
And so, on one recent evening, when I noticed a book on my Moms book shelf titled, simply, Dempsey, I took it off the shelf and opened it.
It is an autobiography.
THIS is far from the kind of book I normally look at. It is about a world and a lifestyle far removed from my interests. But I wanted to see what attracts our office visitors to the picture of Jack Dempsey.
And something else.
Thumbing the first few pages of the book, I notice that Dempsey had a certain human quality, very much at odds with being a boxer. It would be cynical to say that because this is an autobiography, Dempsey simply covered his warts. Its not likely, for of all the heavyweight boxing champions of the last century, only two still have name recognition: Muhammad Ali and Dempsey. Something besides pugilistic skills must have set him apart.
His human quality was a certain, gulp, kindness and humility. Not words one would normally associate with a boxer . . . but Im getting ahead of my story.
What stands out in the first part of the book is Dempseys graphic descriptions of poverty in Colorado, of the kind of life that so many, including my father and his family, lived at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Dempseys were a big family and had little. Jack Dempsey made a living the hard way as a miner. He lived deep underground, pushing very heavy rail cars filled with rock and ore.
His quality that comes through at the beginning of the book is persistence, colored with pride. Nothing in his family, his education or his sports opportunities could have predicted his rise.
Dempsey was born in Manassa, Colorado, had a lot of native smarts but little education. He had virtually no access to gyms, training facilities, not to mention mentors or managers. He had to struggle just to get a fight. Often, he went months without an opportunity because he was underground, in the mines.
IN tone, the book is divided in two.
Before Dempsey became the heavyweight champion he was hungry, driven, focused, poor, disciplined. After he became champion, he became rich. He had made it. He became an entertainer, playing on his new status as heavyweight champion of the world to secure the equivalent of todays endorsements.
Here is where the book becomes a character study. Dempsey had an endearing and a charitable quality.
He lent money or simply gave large sums to his former opponents who fell on hard times. He parlayed his sports fame not only into wealth but into status. He became friendly with presidents, especially FDR. He helped raise money for the war effort in WW I and volunteered to serve in WW II.
He does not hide his faults. He was unable to focus on and sustain a marriage. He grasped for recognition, which, in his case, meant the likes of being honored in Madison Square Garden with 15,000 people present. He admits his own faults in his relationship with his longtime manager, Jack Doc Kearns, and with others.
A person interested in character has much to learn from this frank autobiography. One cannot help but be impressed by the vaudeville sense of fun and joie de vivre Dempsey exuded. He loved people. Thats what made his restaurant in Times Square such a success.
Again, his character is hard to put together. He is a boxer, a fighter and a lover of people. A main reason for Dempseys name recognition today is the 50 years he spent cultivating his relationships with countless friends. If there is one overworked word in this book, it is pal. Dempsey had a lot of pals.
FOR the boxing aficianados, one gets the inside scoop on the Willard fight, the long count during which Dempsey lost his title to Gene Tunney, and the way he beat George Carpentier. (All of them, Dempsey later befriended and, in Willards case, helped financially.)
Excuse me if I mix a metaphor, but there is one incident in the book that left me utterly appalled, not about Dempsey, and not without hindsight. Jack Dempsey is merely the foil for, of all things, one more astonishing detail about the Holocaust.
Dempsey, as I say, had stature. He was friends with presidents. He had a national cachet, perhaps like Yogi Berra today. Dempsey was a known face at presidential inaugurations and similar high focus events. He was buddies with everyone from Babe Ruth to Lyndon B. Johnson to Judge John J. Sirica (of Watergate fame). Of all the US presidents in his lifetime, he was friendliest with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
And so, what does Dempsey remember FDR for? His great ability at and appreciation for practical jokes. One fine day as WW II was beginning to rage, Dempsey secured an appointment with the president for a friend, Wild Bill Lyons, who is just tormenting me to meet you, as Dempsey put it to FDR.
Well, the president knew of Dempseys own fondness for practical jokes, and said he would meet Lyons on one condition.
Ive never seen anyone being given a hotfoot, and Ive heard that youre pretty good at it, Jack. What about showing me how you do it while Lyons is here?
Anything you say, Mr. President.
So, Lyons and Dempsey are ushered into the FDRs office.
As Wild Bill stared and jabbered about what a great honor it was to be in FDRs presence, I dropped down, stuffed matches into the soles of his shoes, and lit them one by one. Smoke curled up as Roosevelt clasped Lyonss hand tighter. We all wondered how long Wild Bill could maintain his composure in front of the President of the United States. The matches caught and Wild Bill, no longer able to control himself, yelped, Please, please, Mr. President. Let go of my hand.
Why, Mr. Lyons, whatever is the matter?
You can imagine the rest.
Maybe this is not fair, and maybe even a wartime president needs an outlet and a moment of relaxation, but I could not help but thinking that here it is, Jews are already being killed by the thousands, a world war is raging, and FDR agrees to meet someone if he can witness a hotfoot!
Dempsey, OK. Hes a boxer, an entertainer, an entrepreneur. He did not choose to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. But FDR theyre killing the Jews in the streets of Germany, not to mention soldiers and civilians all over Europe, and the president engages in this kind of diversion.
Not a warm recommendation, in my gut.
IN any event, now I know why so many people nod in recognition when I tell the story of my Uncle Willies and my Dads friendship with Jack Dempsey.
When he was 76 years old, Dempsey was riding in a taxi that stopped at a red light. Two young punks ran at the cab from both sides. The cabby was frozen with fear as they flung the doors open . . . so I took care of the situation by swiftly belting one with a right and the other with a left hook, flattening them both.
A boxer would have left it at that.
Dempsey:
I felt sorry for them, having to hustle what they thought was the perfect victim a nicely dressed older gentleman who would have forked over his money immediately rather than risk a fight. They were young, no more than 19 or 20, but given a few boring but active years on the streets, they could age and harden mighty fast.
These were the kids that boxing would have helped, by rerouting their hostility and aggression until they developed a sensible defensive or offensive skill with pride instead of vengeance.
A boxer.
And a character study.
