The Quarry story was as compelling as it was heartbreaking. It was a writer?s dream, but a nightmare for the participants?
I don?t particularly care for cemeteries, but I was touched by a recent article penned by my esteemed colleague, Clarence George. It was entitled ?Odell Polee: Flowers on a Grave,? and he described how the dead are so often quickly forgotten and relegated to the scrap heap of anonymity.
After reading that, I got very nostalgic over my own experience at a cemetery, at least as it related to boxing.
During my more than 30 years on the boxing beat, I have accumulated many vivid memories. Some were memorable because of the joy they brought, others for the emotional distress they caused.
Beginning in May 1993, when I met former heavyweight contender Jerry Quarry at the Lennox Lewis-Tony Tucker bout in Las Vegas, I began an 11-year journalistic affair with the Quarry family.
Jerry, 59-9-4 (33 KOs), was quite possibly the most popular heavyweight boxer in history to never win a world title. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a true athletic icon, the Great White Hope who battled such legendary champions as Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton and Floyd Patterson.
Although Jerry never became a champion, his immense fame enabled him to secure high-profile product endorsements, as well as appearances on Bob Hope specials and guest-starring roles on such top-rated television shows as ?I Dream of Jeannie? and ?Adam-12.?
Jerry?s younger brother Mike was a top-rated light-heavyweight during a 13-year pro career that ended in 1981 with a record of 69-13-6 (17 KOs).
The duo had been popular enough to do commercial television endorsements that included a Miller beer commercial.
By the time I visited them at separate locations in California in 1995, they were both afflicted with pugilistic dementia. Mike was still fairly functional and working as a landscaper at a church in La Mirada, while Jerry, who appeared childlike, was living with his brother James, a bank loan officer, in a desert town called Hemet.
I chronicled their challenges for many publications. Among others I interviewed was brother Robert, who had also boxed professionally, as well as their father Jack, the rugged patriarch who hailed from Oklahoma and had ?Hard Luck? tattooed across his gnarled and meaty fingers.
The Quarry story was as compelling as it was heartbreaking. It was a writer?s dream, but a nightmare for the participants.
Jack Quarry and his wife Arwanda had eight children; four boys and four girls. The family?s itinerant ways did not stop with each new child. They moved regularly throughout California, always looking for work and a better way of life.
?It seems like we were always living at the end of a cotton patch with signs that said ?Okies and Dogs Keep off the Grass,?? Jack recalled. ?We were poor, all we knew was dirt floors and throwing crap into the street. And people never let us forget that.? Other than boxing, the boys? childhood memories were few.
?Dad would brag to all his friends in the bars that his sons would be world champions someday,? recalled James. ?We would fight in bars or in back rooms or a backyard. We would mostly fight each other because there were no other kids to fight. We didn?t like it, but we wouldn?t have dared say no. We realize now that he was just living his life through us. We were going to make up for his failures.?
Jack, who passed away in the early 2000s, did not deny ?encouraging? his kids to fight, but insisted his reasons were not so sinister or selfish. He had also moved often as a youngster and found that fighting was the only way he was able to garner acceptance among his new friends.
?As a kid I would wish in one hand, spit in the other and see which one filled up quickest,? he explained. ?I never rode a bicycle or threw a football or baseball in my life. I never roller-skated or did any kid things. I was always the stranger in town, and my family never stayed in one town for more than a few weeks.
?My brother was seven years older than me and an amateur boxer,? Jack continued. ?I used to take the gloves to a park wherever we were, and let some other kid give me a beating just to get some attention. It made me feel like one of the guys. That was the only way I knew to reach my kids.?
According to Jerry and James, there was one incident that left an indelible impression on both of them. One day James was involved in a softball game with a group of new friends. An argument ensued and he walked away from a fight. At seven years old he was used to fighting on a regular basis, but he despised it.
When Papa Jack got word of his resistance, he cursed and berated him, called him a sissy and a coward and kept screaming, ?You?re not a Quarry, you?re a quitter.?
?He made me strip naked in front of the whole family,? James recalled unflinchingly. ?He made me get my sister?s bottle and one of her diapers. He pinned the diaper on me and made me suck the bottle. I had to say ?I?m not a Quarry, I?m a quitter? over and over.
?After that my whole childhood was filled with dread and fear and self-doubt,? James continued. ?But for Jerry it had the opposite effect. I?ll never forget it. Jerry watched the whole thing, and looked very scared. After it was over, he walked up to me, dead serious, almost like an adult, and said, ?That will never happen to me.? He was only six years old. That was the major difference between Jerry and me. He could take it. I couldn?t.?
Jack said he didn?t specifically recall that incident, but offered an ambiguous explanation nonetheless.
?Jimmy was always a pants-wetter and Jerry was a bed-wetter,? he said. ?I might have made them wear a diaper to school or around the house. But the way Jimmy says it that would have stood out. My daughter mentioned that to me, but I don?t remember it. And believe me, I would have remembered that.?
From that day on, neither Jerry nor Mike would ever display any quit in the ring. Jerry showed his courage countless times as an incredibly popular television performer.
?Jerry was a great fighter,? said James. ?That has never been disputed. He had the talent to become champion, and stay a champion a long time. But Jerry always wanted to please my father, and our manhood was always measured by how tough we were, not how talented we were or how much we learned in school or how much knowledge we accumulated. The only thing that mattered was our toughness.?
?I tried to please my daddy, too,? countered Jack contemptuously. ?And he was an escaped convict who lived his whole life on the lam.?
Fighting in his older brother?s shadow, Mike?s best?and worst?night was when he challenged hard-punching light heavyweight champion Bob Foster for the title in June 1972.
Unbeaten in 36 previous bouts, Mike took the fight right to the much taller Foster, only to be knocked cold by a left hook in the fourth round. ?I did very good for three rounds,? said Mike proudly. ?I was doing the Ali shuffle and making him miss. In the fourth he hit me with a left hook that ranks with the best of all time. People say he got lucky. But he was a great champion, and I truly believe that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity; when you get paid back for all those extra miles you go. That just wasn?t my day.?
?That was the only time I was concerned I might have killed somebody,? Foster said years later at an International Boxing Hall of Fame weekend. ?I hit him with a left hook, and his eyes weren?t moving. Then they moved in his head, and I only saw white. I said, ?He?s dead!? My manager said, ?Business is business.??
?I guess fame is always fleeting unless you?re Elvis Presley or somebody like that,? Mike would say in 1995. ?But this is the real world. It seems that our lives were lived forward and learned backward.?
Never was that more evident than in the case of the Quarrys. Although Jerry had served as a CBS boxing announcer and was described by noted historian Mike Silver as ?sharp, witty, charismatic and insightful,? he couldn?t stop fighting and eventually paid a heavy price for his error in judgment.
In the end, the countless punches he had absorbed during his whirlwind 17-year career had finally taken their toll.
Jerry spent his last years in a childlike state, unable to care for himself. By the time he died at the age of 53 in January 1999, he had become the poster boy for legions of boxing abolitionists.
The same insidious disease would later claim Mike, who passed away at the age of 55 in June 2006.
On Memorial Day weekend in 2002, I visited Jerry?s grave at Shafter Memorial Park in California. On the stone is a photo of him, his hands in boxing wraps, and his ruggedly handsome face looking out into eternity. Etched under his name are the words ?The Great White Hope? and ?The Best Of All Times.?
Directly across the street was a huge field filled with endless rows of apple trees, all of which looked like they were weeks away from being picked.
As I stood under the unrelenting sun, a long freight train roared down the tracks adjoining the cemetery. I imagined a vagabond family aboard, headed for a crop and the precarious stability of some temporary work.
I couldn?t help but be struck by one particular irony, as well as a bit of moral ambivalence. Here lay Jerry Quarry, who was as handsome as any Hollywood leading man, a childhood idol to millions, including me, and a formidable challenger to legendary boxing figures like Ali, Frazier and a veritable who?s who of top contenders.
His boxing career had taken him all over the world, brought him an abundance of squandered riches, and no shortage of fame, glory and idolatry. But in the end, he wound up just a few steps away from where it all began.
Seven years later his younger brother Mike would join him there, always and forever to be in his brother?s shadow.
