Ailing ex-boxing champ still has some fight left in him
Pan Am champ vows to fight health troubles
Lee Carr early in his boxing career, when he was a Pan American Games heavyweight champion in 1963. Carr was 47-6 during his amateur boxing career. He was usually able to beat stronger punchers with his quickness, but had trouble with slick boxers.Times Herald-Record/CHET GORDON
By Kevin Gleason
Times Herald-Record
July 20, 2008
DEERPARK - Lee Carr wanted to die. His wife had passed away in 2004, and he expected each of his four operations the past three years would result in his own death.
But for some reason, Carr kept waking up, and he's still trying to understand why.
Do some things happen for a reason? Or are some folks prone to life's misfortunes without explanation? Carr tries to figure out how he went from the 1963 Pan American Games heavyweight boxing champion, one who sparred with Muhammad Ali, to a man so desperate he sat down three months back, gripped a pen with his large right hand and scribbled an ad for the local penny saver:
Retired Boxers Foundation
The Retired Boxers Foundation acted quickly after getting word of Lee Carr's financial woes. RBF called upon Ring 8, a New York-based veterans boxing association, which quickly secured Carr the first of $100 monthly checks. The amount will cover co-payments for his medicine (about $60 a month) and help with bills.
The RBF is a volunteer non-profit organization started in 1998 by Alex "The Bronx Bomber'' Ramos, 47, a former four-time New York Golden Gloves champ who went 39-10-2 as a pro. Ramos has been sober for years after having alcohol and drug problems following his career. With no pension plan in boxing, he created the foundation to help retired boxers down on their luck. And there are many of them. Every cent donated goes to the fighters.
Donations can be made online at retiredboxers.com. Ramos can be reached at rbfalex@gmail.com.
NEED HELP: 69 year old cancer patient needs bill money. Tried all I can. Any donations appreciated. Thank you. Send to: Lee W. Carr, 16 Forrest Drive, Port Jervis, N.Y. 12771-5219.
Lee Carr, Bronx transplant, intensely proud and stubborn, who spent years helping others, including his country and especially his wife, needed help getting off the canvas. Begging for a buck, he figured, was his last recourse.
The rise of a champ
Carr was born in St. Petersburg, Fla., and 6 years old when the family moved to Harlem. He grew up in the South Bronx, where boxing was immensely popular, and watched the fights on TV.
Carr realized by age 15 that he could fight because his one brother, three years older, stopped messing with him. Carr first stepped into a boxing gym at 16. His hero was The Old Mongoose, Archie Moore.
Carr went 47-6 as an amateur. He was usually able to beat stronger punchers with his quickness, but had a heck of a time with slick boxers. He married his first wife and was drafted into the Army three months later at age 23 while she was pregnant. Carr got out two years later, in November 1963, and was offered a contract to fight. He made his pro debut on Jan. 9, 1964, decisioning Dick Greatorex, and won his first six fights.
Many of Carr's best days as a fighter came on the Army boxing team. He progressed from fighter to boxer with an arsenal that included nasty right and left hooks, and a triple left hook — a shot to the body, upstairs to the head, then back to the body.
The repertoire helped Carr take out future pro champion Oscar Bonavena in the second round of the Pan-Am Games semifinals before earning Pan-Am gold in Sao Paulo, Brazil, by knocking out Brazilian Jose Jorge in the first round.
"I used to drop people with the right," Carr says, "and knock them out with the left."
Carr admits that, for whatever reason, he was a better gym fighter than on the big stage. That was proven when, he says, he held his own sparring with Ali for a few days — and $500 — in 1969.
Carr was turned off by Ali's clowning and trash talk. The Greatest didn't wear a mouthpiece, telling Carr, "You can't hit me anyway."
It was a claim, Carr says, proven untrue when he busted Ali's lip with a right uppercut.
"He didn't know that I was a good gym fighter, I guess,'' Carr says. "I hit him and he got a little annoyed."
Ali claimed he wanted Carr to become a regular sparring partner, Carr says, but Ali never called.
Carr wound up 9-8 as a pro. He made about $20,000 in all, his top purse was $5,000 for a third-round knockout loss in '68 to Bonavena, Carr's victim in the Pan Am Games semis. Carr retired after being knocked out by Ron Stander in the sixth round of a fight on May 1971 in Omaha, Neb. It was Carr's eighth defeat in 10 fights. His boxing career was over at 32.
"I peaked right before the service and when I was in the service," he says. "I could see the punches coming. When I fought Leotis Martin (in 1967), I couldn't see none of his punches. That's why I got pounded to death (losing by second-round knockout)."
In that sense, boxing's a harsh microcosm of life. Things become really hard when you don't see the punches coming.
"Things started falling apart"
"I didn't care for it," Dolores Rowland is saying over the phone about her brother placing the ad. Rowland lives in Schenectady and is Carr's only sister. Their two brothers passed away, one in 2006 three months past his 70th birthday, the other in January on his 67th birthday.
Carr's three daughters, all in their 40s, live in Atlanta, Westchester County and Sayville, N.J.
"He did it because he was frustrated,'' Rowland says of the ad. "We (family members) were pulling more for him to sell the house and let it go. But he just won't do it."
It's not so much that Carr won't sell the house to help wiggle from his financial jam. He can't sell the house, not this house, the cramped mobile home filled with stuffed boxes and constant reminders of his late wife, Mary.
Carr had fallen in love with the area while training in the Catskills. The home was a surprise birthday present from Carr to Mary. They settled into their place, just off Route 209 in this tiny Western Orange County blue-collar town, in February 1997. "She had already started to get sick," Carr says.
The boxer's wife had dementia.
Carr was virtually her sole caretaker for her last eight years. He fed her. He bathed her. And when she was especially weak, he carried her.
"She should have been in a nursing home," Rowland says sympathetically. "He did everything for her.
"Little by little things started falling apart. Then he started falling apart."
After 37 years together, the last five in marriage, Mary Carr died. Lee grew angry with God for not having his prayers answered. Anger turned to depression, and as his own health worsened, Carr thought death might be the best alternative.
By 2005 he had his first operation, to repair a heart problem. Soon he needed prostate surgery. Then Carr was diagnosed with colon cancer. "I thought I was gone every time I had an operation,'' he says. "It just felt like that."
At first he refused chemotherapy — "My first wife died taking chemo" — but the cancer spread to his liver and he started accepting regular doses last July. These days Carr receives weekly chemotherapy treatments as an outpatient at Bon Secours Community Hospital in Port Jervis.
He had gotten by working various jobs, the same as he'd done since the time he retired as a boxer. He had no formal career after boxing and the military, but steady jobs all along.
One of his last jobs was night greeter at a Wal-Mart where he'd give customers hundreds of homemade packets featuring pictures and stories highlighting his career.
"People think you are BS-ing them," Carr says. "So I'd tell them the things I went through in boxing."
But deteriorating health left Carr unable to work and bills started piling up. Family members spread out around the Hudson Valley and beyond helped with his finances as best they could. Most of them invited him to come live with them. But Carr would have none of it.
One relative in particular has been in a position to help. Carr's grandson and namesake has struck it big as a singer/songwriter. Lee Carr, just 24, recently signed a multi-millionaire deal with Jive Records, his signing recorded on YouTube.com, and the title track of his debut album, Stilettos, shows off his magical croon.
she rockin them stilettos (stilettos)
like a super on a runway scene
she rockin them stilettos (stilettos)
oooh shorty doin sumthin to me
she rockin them stilettos (stilettos)
black white pink red man i don't really care
she rockin them stilettos (stilettos)
oooh she rockin thems right there
The older Carr had some musical talent himself. He started playing the saxophone in junior high and still regrets not pursuing a music career after boxing. But he says he witnessed too many children struggle without parental guidance and he needed to be around to raise his children. So he stayed close to home working many different jobs.
Carr still keeps the sparkling sax nearby. A guitar rests to the left of his couch, and when strong enough he still plays the harmonica.
"I always prayed for Lee Carr to become a millionaire," he says with a big laugh. "Lee Carr became a millionaire and it wasn't me.''
His grandson has helped Carr to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, the grandfather says. But the bills — mortgage, gas, electrical — continue to devour his $660 monthly Social Security checks. Medicare covers most of his chemotherapy bills, but Carr spends about $60 a month on medicine co-pays.
The Retired Boxers Foundation recently got wind of Carr's situation and sprang into action. The tiny non-profit group relies on donations and puts every cent into the pockets of retired boxers down on their luck. RBF contacted Ring 8, a New York-based veterans boxing association, which has begun sending Carr monthly $100 checks. RBF plans to continue helping Carr.
"He was a real gentleman," says foundation vice president Mike Indri, who spoke to Carr by phone. "He was really refined. You usually don't get that speaking to ex-fighters. Look at the heart of this guy. We have guys half his age who are capable of working and they won't take a job because they think it's beneath them."
Boxing has no pension plan.
"I can count on one hand guys who better themselves through boxing," Indri says. "These guys wind up with nothing."
A cry for help
Placing the ad was one of the hardest things Carr has ever done. He's not only proud and stubborn but smart and well read. Carr's depth of knowledge extends well beyond boxing and into religion, philosophy, music and politics. He greets just about any topic with an opinion and evidence, often anecdotal, to support the opinion.
But intellect doesn't pay the bills. How many employers, as Carr puts it, are looking to hire a 69-year-old cancer patient?
"I was up the creek and I didn't know what to do," he says. "That's (asking for money) worse than being on Social Security, to me.''
He's thinking of removing the ad, in its third month. He's only gotten $20 or so, and has actually lost a few bucks on the idea with weekly ad rates at $4. One woman came by and cooked him a ziti dinner and another promised to regularly drop off eggs.
"I've always been told that if people want to do something for you,'' Carr says, "you should let them do it.''
Carr's spirits have been high. He's thrilled with the gesture of the boxers' foundation. Carr says he feels pretty good despite the chemo and has been able to work a bit lately, helping install televisions in homes.
And he no longer wants to die.
In fact Carr has become almost obsessed with making it to 70, a goal that will be achieved come Oct. 1. The milestone is a biblical thing, he explains, a sign of good living. The family's planning a nice birthday party.
A believer in God, Carr has moved toward agnosticism since his wife's death. According to the dictionary definition, agnostics find it impossible to know the truth in matters pertaining to God and the afterlife. Carr still reads the Bible and, "I believe there could be the possibility of creation,'' but it's clearly a confusing time for him spiritually.
"I just want to make it to 70," he says.
Such talk draws snickers from family members. "I tell him, 'You are going well past 80,' '' Rowland says. "He's too stubborn not to.''
Do some things happen for a reason? Maybe. Carr has no explanation for while recently collecting scraps on the side of Routes 42/97, he found an unblemished Freddie Jackson CD featuring the very song, "You Are My Lady,'' that he'd sing to his dear wife.
There's something that I want to say
But words sometimes get in the way
I just want to show
My feelings for you
There's nothing that I'd rather do
Than spend ev'ry moment with you
I guess you should know
I love you so.
"I've lived a decent life," Lee Carr says. A poster of Martin Luther King hangs on a wall opposite the couch. "I just happen to be one of those hard-luck guys."
kgleason@th-record.com
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I saw Lee fight in the old Madison Square Garden and he was a terrific right hand puncher. With him having prostate surgury, colon cancer, chemo, the death of his wife, no wonder his faith is shaken to the roots.I wish to God I could help him. So many people this winter will be freezing and in grave danger without any real help from HEAP's limited resources. I hope to God the USA stops sending one more dollar to Iraq and helps people here at home.
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