The arts of boxing and life

Stag at Sharkey's, 1909 by American Ashcan School artist George Bellows*

When I was a little girl, I used to sit on the wide, flat arm of my grandfather's favorite chair and watch The Saturday Night Fights with him. My grandfather was a tiny fellow, a chemist/accountant with a more than respectably large nose, and a brain to match. I doubt he ever hit anything in his life, although I'm sure he'd have made every attempt to punch out Richard M. Nixon. My first political memory is of Gramps saying Vice President Nixon (Eisenhower was president then) was the most disgusting politician he'd ever seen, quite a statement since Gramps was born in 1886 and had seen lots of scoundrels in office before Dickie's first election to national office.

Gramps was always right. I adored him, even when he complained when my grandmother bought me "paper shoes"...sneakers in US terms, plimsolls UK. Or when he wouldn't eat chocolate cake because he claimed it was just burnt vanilla. Gramps was a work of art. He was a kindly curmudgeon, a down-to-earth genius, a former country boy who never wore anything but a starched white dress shirt in his adult life as far as I can tell.

He certainly didn't encourage me to be an artist. Indeed, he didn't encourage me to be anything, except successful and even that he didn't push. But he read six newspapers every day, devoured detective novels for relaxation, smoked one huge smelly cigar a week during baseball season while watching double-headers, and instructed me in the art of boxing.

Gramps couldn't tolerate the sluggers; he liked the boxers, the fighters who used tactics more than mere muscle, and who stood for something. This was all transmitted to me, wordlessly I imagine. And so, I ended up being a rare bird, a liberal woman who appreciates a good boxing match.

Yes, I know. Boxing is deadly; aside from giving Muhammad Ali a good life, it is also taking it by bits, through the Parkinson's disease repetitive slams to the skull have produced and which this rare, bona fide American hero endures with a great deal of grace. It is definitely a case of the good with the bad. Ali got himself out of the ghetto, as have so many others, by boxing. A shame they had to do it that way, but it was a pragmatic approach in mid-century America. Ali also stood for something, having dumped his precious Olympic medal into the Mississippi River in protest against the treatment of blacks in the US. I was a fan of Ali when I was in high school, when he was still called Cassius Clay. Even on eastern Long Island where I lived, being fond of a black athlete, even the  poetry-spouting, totally unique Cassius Clay,  constituted a prescription for ostracism by one's peers.

What brought all these thoughts on was a Facebook exchange with a friend today that included lyrics from Paul Simon's "The Boxer." It led me to think about Angelo Dundee, Ali's "cut man" and trainer.

So I looked him up. Dundee died about a year ago, RIP. But the article mentioned that he had got his start as a cornerman/jack-of-all-trades at Stillman's Gym, a New York City boxing establishment.

I lived there. No, not in the gym. It was torn down in the 1960s and a high-rise apartment building erected on the site. I lived in that for about three years in the late 1970s. I confess that I didn't even know of the connection until a really slimy politician my former husband was working for (he eventually quit) told me about it, trying to aggravate me, I suspect. I'm sure the politician was shocked when I genuinely thanked him for the information.

My grandfather's name was Harry Stillman. No, no connection to the gym that I know of. But then, I didn't know much about my family until I began doing research on the Irish side to establish my descent and gain Irish citizenship (I was successful!), so I could more easily move to the UK with my current husband, a UK citizen.

It turns out Harry's descent was from English forebears who settled early in Rhode Island, fanning out later to western New York State. Every time I check ancestry.com, it turns out someone has added information to my family tree on my Irish father's side. I wonder if sometime the Stillmans who began Stillman's Gym will turn up on my mother's somewhat more difficult-to-research family tree, and if I'd even figure out that's who they were.


* Bellows also taught at my alma mater, The Art Students League of New York.