Cont...

In a ten year span he faced down a platoon of ring generals in three divisions eighteen times, and then dethroned an idol whose color photograph was tacked to his bedroom wall –Joe Louis. The newspapers were forced to finally acknowledge something insiders always knew, that Ezzard Charles was a “much better fighter than the world had thought he was.” And that wasn’t all. When Ezzard won a decision over Louis, he became universally recognized as the linear heavyweight champion. It was September 27th 1950.

Sixty-five-year-old Maude Foster’s phone rang that night. On the other end was Ezzard:

“Grandma, I won it for you and the Lord.”

“God made you a champion,” she said, “and don’t forget to thank Him out loud.”

He didn’t forget.

DAYS OF GRACE
As his undiagnosed debilitation began to cripple him a few years later, Ezzard Charles’ win-loss ratio tilted sharply for the worse. His last professional bout was in the summer of 1959, the very summer that Lou Stillman closed up his legendary gym on Eighth Avenue.

Citizen Ezzard’s decline only continued. Within two years he had no job, no telephone, and a house that was about to be foreclosed. His garage was empty after he sold his cars to buy food for his family. He managed to get a job working with disadvantaged youth for Mayor Daley’s Youth Foundation in Chicago; though after 1967 he couldn’t even walk the block from his house to get there because the disease had begun to stiffen his legs. It was only the beginning. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a neuromuscular disease that affects the brain’s ability to send messages to muscles, including those used for respiration. Half of ALS patients die within 18 months of diagnosis. There is no known cure.

“Oh, it’s tough all right,” Ezzard said as his health trials began, “not being able to walk like I used to or talk so well. It’s a feeling you sort of have, of being all by yourself. That no one can help you.”

Ironies abounded. His doctors told him that boxing may have actually benefitted his health by delaying the progression of a disease that had begun to develop in his childhood. Long after his days of war, Ezzard found himself doing sit-ups and struggling again with the existential loneliness of a man who fights alone. Only now the sit-ups were an agonizing part of physical therapy, and the garish lights of the arena were turned off.

A police officer and friend named John McManus turned those lights back on.

With the help of Joe Kellman and Ben Bentley he organized an event to raise money and defray the mounting medical bills of the ex-champion. “The Ezzard Charles Appreciation Night” was held on November 13th 1968 in the Grand Ballroom of Chicago’s Sherman Hotel. For $15 the guests were treated to a sit-down dinner and fight films that they themselves could request through the Chicago Daily Tribune. Many bent noses were in the crowd of 1300 –several of them bent by the guest of honor. Rocky Marciano, whose nose he split into a canyon, was a featured speaker. “I never met a man like Ez in my life,” he said as he turned and looked into the eyes of his old foe, “Ez, you fought me about the very best of anybody. I couldn’t put you down and I don’t believe anybody can put you down. You’ve got more spirit than any man I ever knew.”

It was a glorious night. The benefit would raise about $15,000 for Ezzard. It was almost the same amount to the dollar that Ezzard raised for the Baroudi family after that tragedy twenty years earlier.

Boxing made a triumphant return into Ezzard’s life and like a good corner man in a tough fight, it gave him a lift off the stool.

His stool was a wheelchair now. As he struggled to stand up at the podium, Marciano and Archie Moore rushed to his side and lifted him to his feet. “This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he could only whisper, “I just want to say ….thank you. Thank you...”

Eventually the disease silenced him. Then it paralyzed him. He lay on his back for fifteen months in the Veteran’s Administration Hospital as his body wasted away. He had his memories; Grand memories that only former fighters are privileged to have, other memories that only the cursed among them must endure. Less than a mile north was Chicago Stadium, where the image of Sam Baroudi collapsed again and again.

As leaves fell to the ground outside the window during the last autumn of his life, the man whose photograph once hung on his wall appeared at the door of room B-804. Joe Louis stood for a moment, and then walked over to the bed. “I could lick you now, champ,” he said gently, “…I could lick you now.”

Ezzard Charles smiled. The radiance of it filled the room.