LIVING HISTORY ‘Lords of the Ring’ Documentary explores the glory days of local boxing By Clay McGlaughlin >> cmcglaughlin@times-standard >> @CMcGlaughlinTS on Twitter “Boxing is a lonely and tough sport. It really takes a wounded heart,” said Wendy Lestina of Spriggs and Marley, writer and director of “Lords of the Ring,” the most recent documentary sponsored by the Ferndale Museum. The film explores the Humboldt County boxing scene of the 1940s and ‘50s, when the Eureka Municipal Auditorium “was packed on weekends with screaming audiences cheering for favorites like ‘Chief’ Archie Whitewater, Georges Parmentier, Darrell McCovey, Karel Gensaw, and a host of others,” according to a description from Ferndale Museum Director Don Andersen. “It’s not just about boxing,” said Andersen, “it’s about life and what we do to make our lives important. It’s a great story, just a wonderful story. … It’s about nice people, not thugs, just people who were looking for a way to express themselves, to be important and successful.” The 35-minute film will debut on July 25 for Ferndale Museum’s annual fundraiser, with five showings starting at 4:45 p.m. and running every 45 minutes thereafter. Admission to the event is $20, and includes a sliced steak dinner and silent auction with vintage and collectible items. Dinner will be served from 5 to 7:30 p.m., and tickets are available in Eureka at Rocky’s Barber Shop; in Fortuna at Green’s Pharmacy; and in Ferndale at the museum and at Rings Drug Store. Local boxers interviewed for the film include Frank Lara, Dayton Titus, Buster Sutton, Jerry Miller, Louie Lorenzo and Don Coppini, as well as the Lost Coast Gym’s middleweight pro from the Bronx, Mark “The Hebrew Hammer” Weinman. “While training people in Petrolia, (Weinman) decided to train himself for a boxing comeback,” said Lestina. “So, after 21 years out of the ring, at the age of 50, he trained, booked a fight, went to Florida and won. It has been listed in some online boxing magazines as the third greatest comeback in boxing history, second only to Sugar Ray Robinson and George Foreman. “So into this amateur scene that had its own drama and characters and experiences, we then bring in this professional who’s 30 to 35 years younger than the other men, who were fighting at the end of the second World War. There’s all of these layers of people’s lives being changed by their passion for a sport that is waning in popularity and that few people understand,” she said. While the stories are highly personal, they reflect much larger themes. “As ‘The Hammer’ says in the movie, ‘it wasn’t just a comeback in boxing. It was a comeback in life,’” wrote Lestina in a news release about the event. “He’s speaking for himself, but he echoes the stories of the local amateurs, who recall their often difficult lives as young men. The men’s stories include those of the Hupa and Yurok fighters, who as children were forcibly removed from their families and communities and trucked by the U.S. government to ‘Indian schools’ in Oregon and southern California, where the goal was to separate them from their languages and traditions, and ‘mainstream’ them into Anglo- European culture.” Based on her interviews with Frank Lara, a Yurok tribe member who boxed for Klamath’s Sport Center Athletic Club, Lestina said, “They were just rounded up on the streets of Requa and loaded on government buses and shipped to Oregon … I don’t want to come off as any kind of an expert here, because most of this was very, very new to me, but the point of it was to ‘de-Indianize’ them. They weren’t allowed to speak their languages or participate in any customs, and they were kept away from their families.” According to numerous reports from survivors of the “Indian School” era, the experience traumatized many of the children who fell victim to this forced relocation. They were subjected to abuse of every sort, and taught in many cases that their cultures were inferior and that their families no longer wanted them. The damage was severe and lasting, but in a few cases, boxing gave some of the young men a socially acceptable way to take out the aggression and anger that remained once they returned home. “These guys didn’t always have easy lives, but boxing at that time was a way to reinvent your life,” Andersen said. The documentary team — which also included Eunice Sanborn, Jan Alcock and Brian Christensen — worked for two years on the project, gathering interviews and weaving together the many threads of memories. “As the story developed, we began to realize that there was another, parallel story that enriched and deepened the whole concept of the movie, to a point where I became just passionate about the subject and the people involved,” Lestina said. “These guys all remembered fighting each other, and who they fought, and every detail of these fights. … When you’re recalling thrilling and life-affirming events from your past with the only people who remember it the way you do — what can I say? It was quite a privilege to be part of the reunion of these men getting together and talking about this experience in their lives. “This story is about boxing, but it’s really about people’s spirit — how the spirit is strengthened, how it’s broken and how it can be healed,” she said. “These guys didn’t always have easy lives, but boxing at that time was a way to reinvent your life.” — Don Anderson, Ferndale Museum director
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 14:39:46 +0000
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