Fighting is what brings out passion from those closest to UMAR, and its life lessons are the ones they know best: discipline; thick skin; adaptation to pain?
Entering their lobby at dusk on September 17, denizens of Baltimore?s Union Wharf Apartments were sure to notice an oddity in their center courtyard. Behind the glass walls of their lobby, fronting their infinity pool, across from the treadmills and ellipticals facing the courtyard through their fitness center?s ceiling-to-floor windows, was a big boxing ring. Elevated on its canvas, young men in imprinted yellow shirts slid past each other like shadows, silently punching at the air coming in from the harbor.
The occasion, Wharf-dwellers could glean from signboards in the lobby, was an event entitled ?Boxing for Books,? in support of the West Baltimore-based UMAR Boxing Program. The host was the Bozzuto Group, a real estate powerhouse that had completed the 281-unit complex in 2013 and sold it this year for $121.5 million, the highest per-unit sale in city history. Like Bozzuto, each of the 30-odd sponsors made money by way of structures going skyward. The social register of the local real estate industry had gathered at the infinity pool?s far end, where cocktails and hors d?oeuvres were in endless supply.
On occasion, a tray migrated forward to the young beneficiaries who had assembled in beach chairs near the ring, carrying indulgences that Cortez Dunston, a hulking young amateur, was having no luck resisting. ?Keep bringing me food like I?m gonna say no to it!? he called to a departing waitress, lighthearted rue in his voice. ?I just lost ten pounds!? Smiling, one of UMAR?s coaches positioned himself between Dunston?s chair and the faraway bar, feigning the duty of a guardian.
Dunston changed his tone. ?It?s free food! I?m a heavyweight! I ain?t gotta make weight!
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Two evenings prior, a half-hour bus ride away, Dunston could be found at UMAR?s headquarters, pounding mitts in a glossy sweat suit. His compact punches, airtight in form, reverberated above the din of the gym. Angled across from him, pounding back at the gloves, mouth slack to chant the commands, was a slender 55-year-old ex-pro named Marvin McDowell, the man who founded UMAR 20 years ago. McDowell and UMAR are synonymous: even the name, which means ?life? in Arabic, is the one McDowell assumed after converting to Islam.
UMAR operates on the second floor of a two-story brick building on Baltimore?s North Avenue corridor, a small space above a Cash USA pawn shop. McDowell grew up three blocks away and, as an amateur in the 1970s, trained in the very same space, when it was home to a gym and a pool hall. A speed bag platform from the old gym occupies a corner of the new one, where it blends in with the standard trappings. The gym?s new counterpart is a computer lab, where youth under 13 must do schoolwork before they can train, the rule underpinning UMAR?s mantra, ?No Hooks Before Books.?
To go between the gym and the lab, one must make an ?L? through McDowell?s office, a cramped and vertically oriented room: columns of plaques ascend the walls; a case of trophies rises to the ceiling by the windows; stacks of paper are a foot high on each end of the desk. When speaking on a topic that excites him, McDowell himself is prone to verticality, at which point he reflexively takes a boxer?s stance. This occurred when reliving his pro career?which took him from the old union halls of Baltimore City to stadiums in England, Ireland, and France?and when unveiling ideas for a National Academic Olympic Boxing History Trivia Challenge.
UMAR has an open-door policy, McDowell says, and 5,000 or so Baltimore youth have come inside. In explaining the program, he leads with the on-site certified teachers, the GED program in development, and the high graduation rate of participants, yet it takes little time to see that fighting is the soul of the program. Fighting is what brings out passion from those closest to UMAR, and its life lessons are the ones they know best: discipline; thick skin; adaptation to pain.
In truth, if UMAR required classwork or educational achievement, its doors would close on many young people with few options. McDowell tells stories of taking vans of teenagers to regional tournaments across the Atlantic, giving some their first exposure to a world beyond Baltimore. ?They would not experience what they experience,? he says of these trips, ?unless they got into the military.?
Despite his best efforts, McDowell?s office has its own de facto open-door policy. During my visit, children caromed in and out of the lab, often leaving the door wide, which drew from McDowell a look of a father?s exasperation. From the gym side, coaches and fighters poked in with questions or bulletins. At one point, the gym-side door cracked open, and in peered a wide-eyed child no older than two, his lower lip in his left hand. He slowly withdrew.
Not even a shut door was failsafe. Once, the muffled gym noises swelled, and McDowell excused himself to see what was up. When we finished talking, two UMAR coaches rushed in with an extended play-by-play of the proceedings. Glen Duzern, an undefeated 130-pound pro, had come to spar, and he had gone into the ring with one of UMAR?s amateurs, who the coaches called ?Smooth.? Smooth, who has just 11 fights, had caught Duzern with a hard body shot, rousing the floor.
Duzern had departed, but Smooth?Joshua Lee is on his birth certificate?was still there, throwing submarine hooks into a heavy bag, neutral in expression, ?19? tattooed on one wiry triceps and ?94? on the other. I noted to McDowell that Smooth was wearing one red glove and one black glove. ?I guess he couldn?t find the other one,? he said. ?We gotta get some more equipment.?
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When the Wharf was dark, the start of the evening program was announced over a loudspeaker, and a stream of suits entered the space along the pool. A few sponsors took turns speaking from inside the ropes, including Scott Plank, local real estate entrepreneur and brother of Under Armour?s CEO Kevin Plank. ?This is my fourth time sponsoring Boxing for Books,? Plank said with practiced gusto. ?And maybe there?s never a time as important as now.? He explained the urgency: ?A lot of people are thinking, should they be investing in the city? Should they be moving to the city??
The speeches were followed by the showing of the early scenes of a documentary on McDowell, titled ?Fighter by Nature,? which rolled on a screen by the ring. As scenes from UMAR flashed?taped applied to hands; feet vying for position on a blue canvas?the sound of McDowell?s throaty voice echoed off of the brick facades: ?When the mind and body is working together, ain?t no stopping it.?
Before long, some attendees had turned inward to renew conversations they had left by the bar:
?You?re just in limbo! You have to wait for months for them to post it online! It?s like this stupid game!?
?We took clients out to a crab house and they were like, ?we don?t have any jumbos!??
?My guy?s good! He?s really good! His name is Gilmer, and I love him!?
McDowell?s narration carried on above the hum: ?You just wish you could do something to just stop it! Because the way things are going, man, you know, I can?t see a future for anyone! A kid will be lucky to make it to be thirty. And they don?t deserve that. But they don?t know that they don?t deserve it.?
After ten minutes, the film was paused, and McDowell entered the ring with Alexander Garner, an aspiring pro and a father of two, who had been training alongside Dunston and Lee the prior Tuesday. The two began a demo of mitt work, which another coach narrated: ?What Marvin?s doing is calling out numbers that a puncher remembers and puts together into combinations?Alexander?s one of the guys that grew up in the program. He laid off it for a while, but he had to come back. It?s in his blood.?
After Garner came Dunston, who towered in the ring, and then a sequence of two other UMAR youth.
The end of the film was then shown, and McDowell said some parting words to conclude the program. The suits slowly departed, leaving over one-third of UMAR?s annual budget behind them.
The UMAR family was now scattered across the patio, a warm afterglow filling the empty spaces. McDowell bantered with parting guests by the ring. Dunston entertained his fellow fighters with a wobbly-legged dance to the music still playing. Glenn Duzern was there, in a kangol and black polo, along with his wife, Franchon Crews, a 2016 Olympic hopeful and minor local celebrity, who wore a green dress. The two chatted in a small circle of friends.
Garner lingered nearby, two boxing gloves hanging around his shoulders like appendages. When the night was over, Garner would return to one of several homes that would have him stay the night. The proceeding days and weeks would include a search for a job and an attempt to find a way back into school, along with, inevitably, near-daily visits to UMAR?s second-story space to train. ?Even when everyone turns me down,? he would tell me later, ?the gym never turns me down.? The din and the shouts and all, UMAR was a sanctuary for Garner. ?It?s peaceful,? he said. ?It reminds you of why you want to want to be on Earth sometimes.?
Two notably underdressed older men approached Crews to ask if she would take a photo with them, and she obliged with a warm smile. As they walked off towards the lobby doors, someone hollered out to Crews from the bar side. ?You think they took a picture with somebody famous? You took a picture with somebody famous! They?re the V.I.P. Boys! The V.I.P. Boys! They crash every party!?
As laughter spread around, Garner swung forward, a smile lighting his face. ?Today was a good day, man!? he called out to nobody in specific. ?Today was a good day!?
