The Day That Changed My Life

          At some time or another, most of us have faced and overcome obstacles through tenacity and patience. This blog is meant to encourage those of you who have not yet faced the fire-spewing dragon to do so with determination, courage, hard work and the resilience to bounce back from disappointment and fight on. Though it’s my story it’s not meant to be about me, but about facing our fears and setbacks.I enjoyed a very successful career as a criminal trial lawyer and now as a published author of mystery/crime novels, and I owe much of that success to the day that changed my life.

       It was early in the fall semester of my sophomore year in high school. My friend Gary and I were working our way through the crowded hall near the trophy case when I was stopped by a classmate; we’ll just call him Bob. He was a football player, somewhat bigger than I and known as a pretty tough guy who felt a need to remind everyone of that from time to time. He made a comment about the hat I was wearing, grabbed it off my head, went to the water cooler, filled the hat, came back and dumped it over my head. I raised my hands to fight and he hit me on the jaw. I went down and slid across the wet floor to the water cooler. It felt like every kid in school was standing there watching. Bob merely turned and walked away. Gary helped me up and stopped me from going after him. I wasn’t a fighter; not nearly big enough for that, but neither was I a coward. It was a good thing that Gary stopped me; otherwise I might have been badly hurt.

          Something changed in me that day. I had never been humiliated like that before. I wanted to do something about it. With encouragement from my mom and help from my dad, I decided to take up boxing. My dad had a friend named Fritzie Zivic who had been a World Welterweight Boxing Champion. He spent the next seven months training me for the spring boxing tournament. I gained weight and learned how to fight.

When tournament time came in the spring of 1955, I was a middleweight at a little over 160 pounds. As it happened, Bob was in the same weight division but in the other bracket, so the only way we would fight each other was if we both won our three preliminary bouts. We both did and were scheduled to face off for the championship. Everyone in school knew about the incident in the hall, and the auditorium was packed.

I had watched Bob’s preliminary fights and he was a bulldog. He didn’t have very good skills but he was fearless and kept charging his opponents, pressuring and simply overpowering them. Most of Bob’s weight was in his upper body and he was strong. His shoulders were thick and his arms powerful.

Before the fight Fritzie told me to stay away from him and let him tire himself out; he wouldn’t be in as good a shape as I. When he tired, I would take control of the fight and begin inflicting punishment.

That’s exactly how it went. Bob pushed and I backed up. He kept coming and throwing punches; I kept withdrawing and dodging punches. He tired quickly and after two minutes of the first round I saw my opportunity and took it. Bob went down, got back up and a moment later the referee called it a TKO. I had won! I was the Middleweight Champion. What a feeling!
In retrospect, I wasn’t as tough as Bob, but I was patient and used what I had and that’s what won the fight.

So many things changed that day. Up until then I had always been kind of a background figure in school without any real athletic success, but from the day I beat Bob everything changed. All of a sudden I was very popular at school. Even the football players treated me differently. In my junior year I was elected my home-room president and in my last year I was elected as one of the top four officers of the senior class.

All of the changes in me that my parents encouraged; my confidence, my motivation to make something of myself, and my improved social skills, all began that day. I give a lot of the credit for that to Bob for popping me in the jaw right in front of the trophy case on that fall day of my sophomore year in high school. Bob transferred to another school at the end of the year.

Almost thirty years later I ran into him in Meadville, PA. He looked at me and said, “Don Lewis.” I glanced at him and then he said, “Bob,” and his last name. Immediately the incident in the hall flashed into my mind and I said, “The last time I saw you I was looking up.” Through a tight smile he replied, “Huh uh, counselor, the last time you saw me I was looking up.” We both laughed. He’s a totally different guy now, and even though I’ve only seen him a couple of times since, it was a pleasant reunion.

http://www.etlewis.com/