In memory of Carmen Basilio

I am not a big fan of boxing, but I am a huge fan of Carmen Basilio.
The former world welterweight and middleweight champion died Wednesday at age 85 in a Rochester, N.Y., hospital near his home, a home he welcomed me into 20 years ago to share stories of his life.
Together with photographer and friend Frank Ordoñez, I experienced his kindness, his humor and his frighteningly close fake jabs. At the time, a film production company had planned to make a movie of his life story. It never happened and that's a shame.
I am sadden by his death and my heart goes out to his wife, Josie, and the rest of their family. But I am honored that I had chance to know him.
Rest in peace, Carmen Basilio.

Here is the article, which appeared in the (Syracuse, N.Y.) Herald Journal on May 18, 1992:

BASILIO'S STORY STILL INTRIGUES

THE CANASTOTA NATIVE'S RISE FROM THE MUCKLANDS TO WORLD BOXING CHAMPION COULD BECOME A MOVIE.

 Promoter Herb Stark sat at a picnic table in his client's family room, rifling through papers strewn before him. Which actor should portray his client in a television movie? 

"Tony Danza or Robert De Niro," Stark said.
This provoked a nod from his 65-year-old client, Carmen Basilio. Out came a recent photograph of Danza with his arm around Basilio's shoulders. Danza, an ex-fighter, sought out Basilio when word spread that he was eating in the same Las Vegas diner.

It's that kind of reaction that makes the former world welterweight and middleweight champion movie material nearly 31 years after his last fight.

"People haven't forgotten me so I guess I'm one of the lucky ones," Basilio said, squinting through his swollen eyes. "There's so many things that happened in my life. We didn't have much money. Times were tough. It'd make a good movie, exciting."

Basilio and Stark, an agent for former athletic champions, have talked for years about making a film or documentary on the retired boxer's life. Lou Buttino who, like Basilio, grew up in the Madison County village of Canastota, is working with them.

"I think it would break new ground, to show how Carmen Basilio has been able to adjust after the glory days are over," said Buttino, a journalism professor at St. John Fisher College in Rochester. "He has a real appreciation for life."

Their chance came last summer when Michael Derrick, president of Film Producers International at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., attended a charity banquet in Rochester. Derrick was impressed.

He sees Basilio's rise from the mucklands to world welterweight and middleweight champion as a made-for-television movie or film for the international video market.

"Enough with the naked women and the drugs and blood and that stuff," Derrick said during a telephone interview from his Orlando home. "He's the kind of guy that can give us the ... story people want."

No contracts have been signed, the film has no title and no actors have been cast, but production should begin this summer, he said.

"It's very conceptual now," Derrick said. But "it'll happen one way or another. These things just take time."

They haven't talked money yet either, but Basilio said he isn't concerned.

"Ah, I got what I need," he said.

Parts of the $7 million to $8 million movie probably will be filmed in Canastota, Derrick said. Buttino hopes Derrick will let him write the screenplay. He will be contributing editor and creative consultant for the movie.

"There aren't many people who have the opportunity to write about their heroes," Buttino said. "Usually when boys meet their heroes they become disappointed. I was never disappointed with Carmen Basilio."

Buttino already has started piecing the film together in his mind. He imagines a black and white opening, set in the 1930s and staged in the onion fields, where Basilio worked with his eight brothers and sisters.

Ordered to bed each night by 8:30, Basilio remembers Fridays when his father would wake him up at 10 p.m. to listen to the fights on the radio. He remembers his first pair of boxing gloves, ones his father bought for the family.

Because Basilio fell between his two brothers in age and weight, he boxed one after the other. But the brothers were featherweights compared to the sisters.

"If you want to be a fighter, all you have to do is have five sisters older than you. I learned how to defend myself,” he said, exhaling a gruff chuckle. "We didn't box. We fought."

The film is Basilio's chance to boast of his determination. Ask him who deserves credit for his boxing success. The pessimists, he'll say. Many doubted the power of his 5-foot, 6-inch frame. Each punch he packed was fueled by stubbornness.

"Just tell me I can't do something," he said.

Everybody told him he was too small to box. At 13, he had his first and only high school bout when another school finally dug up another 80-pound boxer to fight him. He won.

"I used to dream about these things, being a world champion," he said. "The teacher, she'd ask a question. I wouldn't hear a thing. I was busy dreaming."

After his high school match, World War II forced Canastota to cut the sport from its budget. Soon after, Basilio dropped out of high school. He boxed for fun around the neighborhood.

His next refereed bout was in the Marine Corps in 1947, where he was paid $10 a fight. Basilio turned pro in 1948 after he left the military and won the Golden Gloves amateur tournament sponsored by the Herald-Journal. He supported himself, his then-wife, Kay, and two adopted children by assembling generators at a Syracuse Autolite plant.

"I worked my way up to $150 a fight," he said.

The dream was threatened in 1950 when Basilio was stricken with mononucleosis. He told no one but his doctor and his wife. During the six months he spent recovering, the pessimists returned. They told Basilio his glory days were over.

Enter trainer and friend John DeJohn, the man whose coaching landed Basilio in the ring with reigning welterweight champion Tony DeMarco at the Onondaga County War Memorial on June 10, 1955. The two fighters gave the audience its money's worth. Basilio was badly hurt, but he pounded on, knocking DeMarco out in the 12th round.

Here the picture fades to Canastota, where Buttino, his two brothers and his father gathered around the radio in the family's living room. The fight was over. The announcer's words triggered the village fire alarm.

"From Canastota, New York. The welterweight champion of the world, Carmen Basilio."

The high school band began its march down Peterboro Street. Tavern owners gave out free beer and soda in honor of the Italian onion farmer's son. Proud villagers shouted, "We did it! We're the champion of the world."

"People were coming out of their houses," Buttino said. "Everybody was really celebrating. That night had a tremendous impact on my life."

Flash through two years of matches and rematches - victories and defeats - most of them against DeMarco and Johnny Saxton. Basilio was gaining weight. Though he tried to sweat it off, he was finding it more and more difficult to remain a welterweight.

Weak from dehydration, Basilio left the ring and headed for Alexandria Bay. There he trained for the most important fight of his career - a match against reigning middleweight champion Sugar Ray Robinson.

Fade to Sept. 23, 1957. Basilio stands in the center of a packed Yankee Stadium. The match between Basilio and Robinson would be the first non-heavyweight match to gross more than $1 million.

Robinson danced and Basilio stalked. Every chance he got, Basilio took an inside jab. Basilio won.

Flash to 1958. The onion farmer's son takes the $10,000 Hickock belt, the Pulitzer prize of athletics. The Boxing Writers Association names him "fighter of the year." His picture appears regularly on the cover of "Ring" magazine.

His second wife, Josephine, keeps the covers with the photographs, the plaques and the gold ring Basilio received in 1989 when he was inducted in the International Hall of Fame, located in his hometown.

"She likes all that stuff," he said.

Basilio ended his boxing career in 1961 after tendinitis set in, preventing him from fully extending his right arm. He was 34 years old and Le Moyne College was building a new field house. The administrators would be honored to have the former world champion on their staff, they said.

At Le Moyne, Basilio quickly earned a new title, "the toughest physical education teacher on campus." The boxer was as hard on his students as he was on his opponents in the ring, said Athletic Director Richard Rockwell, who was hired as the college's physical education director in 1967.

"It became almost a status symbol if he slapped you around," Rockwell said. "If you tried things like that now you wouldn't have any kids here. The 60s and 70s were different times. The things we did then, we'd get fired for now."

Rockwell wasn't surprised to hear about Basilio's fondness for his Le Moyne days. The students respected him, he said. Basilio frequented their dorms with reels of his championship fights tucked beneath his arm. The films drew standing-room only crowds, he said.

“The best times of my life were when I was teaching phys. ed.,” Basilio said. His elbows rested on the picnic table. “Yeah, those were the days.”

Basilio retired from the school in 1981 to become a district sales representative for the Genesee Brewing Co. in Rochester, where he has worked part-time promoting the company’s products since 1981. He moved to Rochester in the mid-1980s when he divorced and remarried. That’s when Buttino ran into the boxer for the first time since Buttino was a teen.

Stiffer laws and fingerpointing: how strategies that helped people of color can help working women

When I  first starting working as a journalist, we had few, if any, minority reporters at the newspaper. We had none whatsoever in our rural Central New York bureaus, where our readers were mostly white.
Yet, here we were condemning others for not having people of color on their payrolls.
Newspapers across the country praised new government incentives. We reported on the lawsuits. We exposed the inequities. We wrote editorials about unfair and racist policies. We pointed fingers and demanded fair pay and equitable hiring practices.
Then the world woke up and started pointing fingers at us.
Who were we, with our lily white newsrooms to condemn them?
Things changed.
Our bureaus suddenly became more colorful.
At the time, I was routinely working 14-hour days with little or no overtime pay. I sometimes worked six- or seven-day weeks. I thought nothing of it. The culture was encouraged by the newspaper as a whole -- by everyone from the publisher to my editor to fellow reporters.
That was how we got ahead.
We did the work of two people for the pay of one. We made ourselves invaluable and if we did that well enough, we might just get moved to the city desk. When women decided to have kids, they either quit, took copy editing jobs or resigned themselves to rarely seeing their children.
Those who tried to reign in their hours were written off by the rest of us.
They were no longer "real" journalists.
Men who wanted more time with their families got the same treatment.
So imagine my surprise when one day, a young, black woman -- a recent college grad -- who worked in my bureau, refused to work overtime. I heard her on the phone taking a stern tone with an editor. She told him she had a life and she had plans.
She wasn't about to work for anyone free of charge.
I was sure she wouldn't last.
But she did.
When she left, it was on her own terms.
I was a journalist.
I couldn't resist.
I asked her how she got away with it.
It was simple, she said. Newspapers needed journalists of color. They were desperate, but people of color had never before been encouraged to study journalism. It was a matter of supply verses demand. Newspapers were low on supply, so she could demand.
Some called her treatment unfair, preferential because of her minority status.
But I saw what was unfolding and I watched with amazement.
Newspapers didn't want to be accused of giving people of color unfair advantages any more than they wanted to be accused of denying them. And this wasn't really even an advantage. What newspapers had been doing was illegal and these new employees of color had the power to expose those practices and, more important, to take better jobs elsewhere.
So when this reporter and others like her starting refusing to work unpaid hours, our bosses had to comply with the law on behalf of all employees. The newsroom culture started changing. I was no longer afraid to request overtime and I often (not always) got what I asked for.
I never again worked an extra day without pay or other compensation.
So when I heard our President talk about creating equity in the workplace for women Tuesday night by making it easier for them to juggle family and work with child care incentives and better health care, I shook my head. Those are good things, but they are not enough.
They still give employers no reason to offer equal pay and equal opportunities.
What helps is empowerment and empowerment comes in the form of enforceable laws, constant monitoring and public pressure. Someone has to point the finger. Someone has to threaten exposure and lawsuits when that finger is pointed. The lawsuits and the exposure must hurt.
That works.
There is no need to devalue of women (like me) who choose to stay home with their families, but women who make the opposite choice must be valued as highly as their male colleagues. It's only logical. It's only fair. It shouldn't be an issue.
But we are battling fierce cultural norms.
And, sadly, just as we needed government quotas, incentives and more enforceable laws to initiate equity for people of color, we need that same kind of pressure for working women. Women will not be the only benefactors.
Laws that helped people of color helped me, a white woman  from the Adirondacks.
Laws that help women will help men. They will help families. They will help single people. They will help stay-at-home moms and dads. They will help employers, who will have more loyal and stable workforces. They will make the United States a better, more stable, more desirable place to live.
Laws -- not binders, not tax breaks -- will inspire change.


 

Too scared to write, like spooked-scared

I scare myself.
There are certain scenes I just can't write when my husband is out of town.
I can't edit or re-read them either.
My husband finds it ironic that I can talk about such a morbid side of human nature -- about bodies and decomposition, about methods of murder and causes of death -- without flinching, with fascination even when he is home.
I can recount details of lifeless bodies I've seen -- what they looked like, what they smelled like -- with a certain scientific detachment. It doesn't bother me. Sometimes, my husband says, I even sound a little obsessed.
But that changes when he is not home.
On those nights, I rarely write.
I prefer to play Angry Birds.
I can't be the only one.

New agent, new energy

I was excited last year when I dropped the kids off for the first day of school.
I had recently terminated my contract with my agent and couldn't wait to find out what the future would hold. It was a scary thing -- going agent-free after two years, especially since my former agent is such a good guy -- but I knew instantly I'd made the right decision.
We were not a good match.
Sometimes, that happens.
I was careful when I started firing off queries to new agents.
I didn't want to go through that again.
Some rejected me instantly.
Others asked for full manuscripts and have yet to respond.
Others read partials or fulls and decided against representation, or were interested in only one of my two completed novels. The latter were the agents I chose not to pursue. I want an agent who will stick with me throughout my career, regardless of what genre I write. I'd hate to shelve a novel simply because it's not a particular agent's "thing."
Then came the response from Elizabeth Trupin-Pulli of JET Literary.
She'd found flaws in my mystery/suspense novel that no other reader had, and offered to reconsider after revisions. She opened my eyes to those logical errors and immediately inspired confidence. In her emails and on the phone, she struck me as sharp, honest, and experienced.
But it was that confidence that impressed me most.
She knew what both novels needed and she knew how to express that.
She had plans.
She offered strategies, visions and direction.
She knows the industry and knows it well.
She is the kind of agent who can sell my novels and steer my career in the right direction.
I like her but, more important, I trust her.
So here we go.
It's that time of the year again.
All four kids will be in school full-time for the first time ever.
I will have time to write and, as much as I will miss them, I am excited.
But this is a fresh kind of excitement.
This year, I get to write -- just write -- without worrying about the business side of things. 
I feel focused.
I feel encouraged.
I feel, once again, like I made a wise decision.
Two more days and I'm off.