The last boxing saw of Leo Lokovsek, he was sitting on a windowsill in a Seattle, Washington gym, staring into the abyss that had just opened under him when his manager, Jack Hurley, told him to forget about ever fighting again.
It was February of 1953, and Lokovsek had come to resume training just two weeks after an automobile accident put him in a coma for 12 hours and left him with a permanent scar meandering from the corner of one eye up past his lush hairline. The tracks of the 35 stitches that closed the wound were fresh.
Two days before the accident, the 6-1, 195-pound Lokovsek went 2-0 as a professional by knocking out Joe Singleton in two rounds.
?I?ve been banged up as badly playing football,? the 23-year-old former University of Washington linebacker said from his hospital bed after he came to. ?I?ll fight again.? His doctor gave him the green light, but when Lokovsek showed up at the gym Hurley told him no way??not if all the doctors in the Mayo Clinic told me you?d be okay to fight again.? Hurley cited Ernie Schaaf and Lem Franklin, heavyweight contenders a generation earlier who died because of previous head injuries that had gone undetected. Hurley had been Franklin?s manager.
?You?re young,? Hurley told the crestfallen fighter. ?You?ve got a wife and baby to look out for. You got your whole life ahead of you, and if you?ve got the guts to fight, you should have the guts to start over.?
Lokovsek forlornly acquiesced.
?I was going to do so much,? he said. ?I was going to be champion of the world. All through my life I?ll wonder if I could have made it. Now I?ll never know.?
The scene was recounted by Emmett Watson of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in a poignant column titled ?The End of the Line for Leo,? included in the 1961 anthology ?The Fireside Book of Boxing,? compiled by the great W.C. Heinz, and its 2003 updated version called ?The Book of Boxing.?
?It tells, with great beauty, not only of the end of a fine prospect but of one of the great teacher-trainer-managers,? extolled Heinz.
Laurie Lokovsek Tryck cried when she read it recently. She was just three months old when her dad?s promising boxing career was shut down?a development with seismic ramifications for her future as well as his.
?Leo struggled for years after his career-ending accident,? she says. ?He started drinking, and my parents divorced when I was four or five years old. For many years I lost touch with my father.?
Laurie has no doubt that the forced abandonment of Leo?s dream of ring glory caused the depression that resulted in his alcoholism. ?Right when he was on the cusp of it, it was taken away from him,? she says.
She?s equally certain that, had the accident not happened, the dream would?ve come true.
?From what others have told me, he was very talented,? she says. Said a family friend who saw him fight: ?Leo Lokovsek was one tough hombre?he had it all.?
Jack Hurley didn?t take on any other kind.
?There was no reason why he shouldn?t have reached the heights in boxing,? said the dour manager who steered Hall of Fame lightweight Billy Petrolle there in the 1920s, and later transformed Harry ?Kid? Matthews from an obscure journeyman into a heavyweight contender. ?He was green,? Hurley said of Lokovsek, ?but he had a sock like the kick of a mule.?
They hooked up in late 1951, after Leo, then a junior at the University of Washington, made national headlines by quitting the Huskies football team in the middle of the season. ?It?s too big-time for me. I wasn?t getting any fun out of football anymore,? he said. ?I got so I felt I was just a part of a machine and it was getting to be nothing but hard work. I couldn?t take the time away from my studies. And, on top of that, I couldn?t cut it financially and play football on Saturdays.?
(The unreported catalyst for his decision, according to Laurie Lokovsek Tryck, was Leo?s discovery that quarterback Hugh McElhenny and other members of the team were getting paid under the table.)
?I think there?s still fun for me in amateur boxing,? said Leo. He?d fought in the military service, and had won the intramural heavyweight championship at UW.
He also said he might go to law school.
Within a couple months amateur boxing and talk of lawyering were behind him. Leo Lokovsek had enrolled in Hurley 101.
??A young heavyweight is working out daily in a Seattle gym, learning the Hurley system of balance and leverage,? reported the Klamath, Oregon Herald on January 14, 1952. ?He?s Leo Lokovsek, who quit the University of Washington football team after a disagreement with Coach Howie O?Dell. ?I dunno, I dunno,? said Hurley when asked if he planned to campaign with Leo after Harry (Matthews) quits the game. ?The boy?s just beginning?hasn?t even had a glove on.? (Leo won the University heavyweight title but has had no pro fights.) ?Maybe I?ll let him get in a ring in September. It?s best not to say too much about a young guy until you can find out if he has anything.??
For a whole year Hurley tutored his new prot?g? in the gym. Law school would?ve been easier. When Leo had trouble mastering the quick half-steps Hurley taught him to maneuver opponents into position, Jack had him take up bowling to get the hang of it. ?He is a willing pupil and is big and strong,? allowed Hurley in late ?52. ?He has a terrific punch, especially his left. I certainly consider him a bird with a lot of promise. Only time will tell.?
In a stifling dressing room in a Hoquiam, Washington club on January 7, 1953, Hurley told him, ?We?ve worked together over a year, Leo. Tonight you are a professional.?
?What do I do when I?m introduced?? asked Lokovsek. Hurley told him just to nod his head??Nothing else. Acting is for actors. You?re a professional fighter.?
?What?ll I do if he runs??
?If he runs and you chase him, I?ll break a stool over your head. Look?a cat don?t chase a mouse. Cat?s got more sense. I?ve seen a cat get a mouse in a corner and reach right out and put a paw on it. You can?t catch a chicken chasing it. You get it in a corner.?
Sonny Elixman, Leo?s first professional opponent, went out at 2:45 of the first round.
A week later came the knockout of Joe Singleton in Vancouver, British Columbia. ?Someday,? Hurley told a reporter, ?maybe you newspaper guys will be writing Leo?s name Lo-KO-vsek.?
Two days later, on January 24, the car in which Leo was riding crashed into a vehicle in front of it near Everett, Washington. ?Hurley?s ?find?,? as newspapers around the country had started calling him, was finished. After her folks split up, says Laurie Lokovsek Tryck, ?I did not see Leo that much, but always loved my time with him when he was sober. He took me on overnight train trips over the passes while he was working as a brakeman for Northern Pacific railroad. I have wonderful memories of this special time in the big timber country of the Cascade Range.
?My dad started out as a brakeman on the Pacific Northwest train hauls and moved up to organizing the trains and dispatching them here and there. He was head yardmaster at the Auburn, Washington railyard?a very responsible job?when he retired. He loved his job despite the stress and was a true railroader. I loved that about him.?
Leo?s life took a major turn for the better in 1976. He married his second wife, Gloria, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and quit drinking. ?They loved each other dearly,? says Laurie. ?I think she inspired him. He had a happy last 15 years with Gloria.?
A longtime heavy smoker, Leo quit tobacco cold turkey when he retired. A few weeks later, on January 23, 1991, he got out of bed in the middle of the night to walk off a cigarette craving and dropped dead of a heart attack at age 62.
At his funeral a railroad colleague recalled the time Leo and two co-workers went into a bar where loggers hung out. Three younger, brawny lumberjacks started hassling them and, hoping to avoid trouble, Leo went to sit in his truck. A minute or two later his pals came out with the loggers in hot pursuit. After the former were sent sprawling, the lumberjacks ordered Leo out of the truck. He threw two punches. One of the loggers went down and out, another spit out blood and teeth. The third guy crawled under a nearby car and refused to come out.
When Laurie dropped out of Seattle University in the early ?70s to bum around Europe, her father told her: ?Use your brain, Laurie, to get out of a jam; be smart and always try to think a way out of it.
?But if you can?t and have to throw a punch?make it a knockout!?
?I?ve got his big hands and mojo,? says Laurie Lokovsek Tryck. ?It was tough being his daughter when he was drinking, but now I?m so pleased to revisit my dad?s life. He was the real deal?so talented in so many ways.
?He was a contender.?
