(The Evansville Courier & Press published the following column by Dave Johnson on its website on August 20. Gene Norman is a retired member of BLE Division 246 in Evansville.)
EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Gene Norman may be on the ropes, but he isn’t down for the count.
The old boxer is still in there fighting. Fighting for his kids.
And he needs your help.
Since 1997, Norman has operated the West Side Boxing Club at 3712 Upper Mount Vernon Road. Werner Construction donates use of the building and pays the club’s utilities.
But that’s about to change.
Two weeks ago, the otherwise vacant building was sold. Which means the boxers will have to go.
“We’ve got until Aug. 30,” Norman said. “Then we have to find a new place.”
So far, he’s had no luck.
“We’ve talked to some people and put some feelers out, but nothing definite,” Norman said. “We’re in a real bind.”
He’s been in binds before, and he’s always managed to work out of them.
“When we started the club, we didn’t have anything,” said Norman, a retired locomotive engineer. Not even a ring.
“We held car washes and parked cars at the Fall Festival. Stanley Johnson, my coach at the time, and I put up some of our own money. Then we went out and knocked on doors.
“We raised enough money to buy the canvas and ropes, and we got some of the lumber donated. Then the Werners put it together for us.”
Bruce and Lisa Werner, who owned the two-story brick building “couldn’t have been any better to us,” Norman said. “They gave us the upstairs, gave me a key and paid for everything.”
Norman received more help last fall, when the club’s furnace broke down. Randy Weir, who owns a West Side heating and air conditioning company, donated and installed a new one.
“A lot of people have helped us over the years,” said Norman. “We couldn’t have made it with out them.”
Norman, 67, has been involved with boxing since he was a kid growing up on the West Side.
“Back then, the police department sponsored a league (and) the firefighters had a team. I boxed for Ed Mooney. He ran a car dealership on West Franklin Street and had a boxing club in the front of the building.”
He also boxed in the Navy. “I boxed all over the East – in Japan, in the Phillipines. Sometimes, we’d box on the ship. Or we’d go into a port and lay down a mat …”
When he left the Navy in 1956, Norman returned home, started raising a family and got into coaching youth baseball, basketball and boxing teams. He helped Dick Hildebrandt coach the Evansville Boxing Club at the C.K. Newsome Center. Then he decided to start his own club. Since the West Side Boxing Club opened in September, 1997, Norman estimates about 300 male and female fighters between the ages of 8 and 28 have passed through the doors. Several have won state championships.
They work out for two hours a night, three nights a week. Norman and Larry Williams, whose son is in the club, are the coaches.
“Sometimes we have 10, sometimes 12 and sometimes four,” Norman said. “We average 10 to 15 a night, but we could have 15 today and one tomorrow. They come and go, but we always have enough to stay open.”
The club is non-profit. I asked Norman what he gets out of it.
“I love working with the kids. It gives me something to do and it gives them some place to go. It keeps them off the street. And I’ll tell you this: We’ve never had one of them get in trouble yet.”
The only cost to the boxer is a $35 fee for insurance and $5 for hand wraps. “I buy mouthpieces by the gross and give them away,” said Norman.
Parents and grandparents often chip in, too, to help defray travel and other expenses and to buy “the necessities, like light bulbs and toilet paper.”
“The ring, the bags and the other equipment are already paid for,” Norman said. “So, really, we don’t need a lot of money” to stay in business.
But they do need a new home. If you can help, call Norman at (812) 491-0395 or Williams at 422-0074.
“I’d like to keep this going,” Norman said. “I’d sure hate to close her down.”