Funeral for a friend

I thought I’d share this here. Not going to supply a real name so as not to dox myself: I’ll call him Wade.

Wade was a guy in my hometown who had like 100 amateur fights and won at least one state Golden Gloves title. I saw him fight amateur a few times when I was coming up — lightweight (ish) with no real power but a helluva chin and just kept coming no matter what. High-volume puncher with a lot of heart.

After high school he went to college and to the police academy and became a policeman. He also joined the Army national guard.

Some time later I started working with boxers, some amateurs and eventually local pros (and one or two from other places who came to me) as a manager/trainer. My brother promoted local club shows, usually three (maybe four) a year and in association with others maybe one or two out of town.

Well I hadn’t seen Wade for a number of years and then he shows up at the gym one day. He’s in his mid-30s now and knows we’re promoting shows, he’s a police officer in a nearby town and says he knows he’s not going to be a world champion but he’d like to have a few pro fights. So we shook hands (never a contract) and added him to the roster.

Best as I recall, I never asked for a penny from him. But he always gave me a piece of his purse — not much, as he wasn’t making much (mostly four-rounders on undercards), but he said fair was fair and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Because of his law enforcement connection, I nicknamed him “The Law,” got him a toboggan cap (he always wore those anyway) with the nickname emblazoned on it, gave him Bobby Fuller’s “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)” as his ring-walk music. He sold a ton of tickets (and kept a portion from each one sold). When that music would strike up, the place would go nuts. Some people even sang along. Great guy, great times.

He had about 10 pro fights, lost a couple of them and decided to hang it up.

Over the years, he went overseas as a privately-contracted MP (military policeman) for the UN and also served in Afghanistan and I think Baghdad when his guard unit called up. When he was in country, he worked for one or another police department.

During one period when he was not overseas I ran into him at a local restaurant and he invited me to sit and eat with him. Told me he ate there on the same day every week at the same time and invited me to join him anytime. I didn’t make it every week but I did several times and we had several great conversations as we broke bread together. I fell out of touch when he got sent overseas again.

Well, a little over a week ago he died in a collision with an 18-wheeler at an intersection. It’s been bothering me ever since i heard.

Today, I drove halfway across the state to his (original) hometown for the funeral to pay my respects. it was both a police and military funeral — with the state honor guard providing the gun salute and ‘Taps’ and then his police department (it seemed like everyone who wasn’t working a shift was there) did the ‘End of Watch Call’ over their radio with the sound turned up.

I cried. It still hurts. There were many people at the funeral who knew him better than I did, or at least spent more time with him more recently. But there’s a bond between boxer and coach that’s very real and very deep if you really connect and stay together for a few years.

I never heard a bad word about Wade. I never saw him show his ass one time, nor even in a bad mood. i respect the hell out of everything he did with his life and what he gave to boxing. And I really miss him.

Thanks for letting me share this here. And if you feel moved to do something, just go to YouTube and call up “I Fought the Law” and know we lost a good one.

 

I’ll add this tidbit I learned from the funeral from a guy who served with him in Bosnia in the UN peacekeeping force:

I knew from Wade telling me that he managed to set up a little gym with a heavy bag and speed bag and an area to jump rope in an attic on their base. He was a workout nut, so no surprise there.

I didn’t know how much he did to bring sport and community to a little corner of a war-torn country. They were based as the guy described it in a small town 60 miles from civilization … they’d have power during some parts of the day and not others. It was dirt-poor. Wade took it upon himself to try to expose some of the kids to sports and coach them up (sometimes with a few other peacekeepers).

When he’d go to a bigger base, he’d go to the supply depot and scrounge up sporting equipment — sometimes he bought it, other times he begged it. Soccer balls. Baseball bats and gloves. Even managed to get ahold of a basketball goal that he was able to set up and a basketball or two. Not for the base, but for the little town. He’d go out with the equipment and set things up and teach the kids how to play (they already knew soccer better than him but he organized games between kids and even sometimes kids vs soldiers, who would play easy with them). This was how he spent his spare time. He’d get the base translator to go with him sometimes so he could communicate better when coaching them.

His former mate from the base told us all this and then began reading Facebook messages he had gotten — he and Wade (and probably some others) had stayed in touch with townspeople — and they were almost all from kids who had learned sport and wanted to recognize the nice foreigner who had spent his time teaching them, or parents of those kids who talked about how bleak that time was with their country at war and how he was a shining light that helped make life a little better for their children and their town.

RIP my friend. Our world was a better place for having you in it.