I know not everyone is a heavyweight boxing fan...

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Joe Frazier's legacy will include more than his battles with Muhammad Ali

Sunday, November 06, 2011, 12:08 AM

  By Jerry Izenberg edited by I, Praetorian

   Former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier, shown in 2009, has been diagnosed with liver cancer.

   Joe Frazier is dying inside a hospice in Philadelphia. He has liver cancer. Soon the Philadelphia left hook that seemed to have a life all its own will have lost every ounce of its thunder. Soon, Joe will be gone.

But Death, be not proud because you will not beat Joe. He will simply have run out of time before the final bell rings. In his last moments, his mind will still have him moving forward with that little bounce in his stride. And it will be as if he's saying:

   "Come on, Death. Show me what you got. You might win, but before you do I got something here for you."

So what follows here is the way I will always remember him. I covered his career. I was there on the night in the Philippines when he and Muhammad Ali left giant footprints as their legacy.

   Perhaps the best way to understand that is to begin in the wake of their first dramatic meeting in New York. This was one week after Joe Frazier had dumped the once and future heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali on his rear end on that long-gone night in Madison Square Garden.

Now we were standing outside a deli not far from the Joe Frazier Gym in North Philadelphia and these three kids, maybe 9 years old each, were running toward us shouting:

   "Joe Frazier ... Joe Frazier ... Joe Frazier."

   And the smile on Joe's face as they came nearer and nearer seemed to light up the tired, gray neighborhood. As they danced around him, Joe sent an aide back to his Rolls-Royce for autographed pictures. He gave one to each and Joe told them: "Now y'all stay in school. Don't make me have to find you."

Two of them laughed, but the third one said:

   

"My daddy says Muhammad Ali was drugged,"

   In that instant a cold, cold mask seemed to slide across the champion's face. "Yeah ... yeah," Joe said, "I drugged him with a left hook." And they saw the look in his eyes and all three of them ran away.

Frazier turned to me and said:

   "You heard that. What I got to do? What the hell I got to do?"

There was nothing he could do. Not then. Not ever. The sheer force of Ali's personality would doom him to a role as destiny's stepchild. The impossible riddle Joe posed that afternoon would follow him through his always courageous and often brilliant career. It was a question with no answer.

This is what Herman Melville meant when he wrote of Ahab's pursuit of the great white whale in Moby Dick. He and Ali would be linked forever inside a crucible of their own making. You could not mention one without the other.

Each time they would push each other to a place where neither had been before. Styles make fights and the very nature of their styles dictated that each time they met, they were not fighting for a belt or a crown. They did not fight for the championship of the world or Paraguay or Manila.

   No matter that Ali had the personality, the charm, the wit to dominate America's memory. Joe had the tools to force greatness upon Muhammad. That's why the thing they fought to claim was the heavyweight championship. The true fight was for claim over the other.

And they both knew it.

   It was never more obvious than on a sweltering day inside the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City just beyond the Manila skyline. It was at least 100 degrees inside that arena. At the start, Ali was, well, Ali — dancing, jabbing, taunting, winning. But something out of the ordinary happened in the fourth.

For virtually all of his career, Joe Frazier was a one-handed fighter (but what a hand!). His left hook was ferocious. His right hand? Well, you had to wonder whether he could even tie his shoes with it.

   But in the gym in Philly, Eddie Futch, the head trainer, and Georgie Benton, his assistant, worked for weeks on that right hand. "You are going to give him something to think about," Futch said over and over.

And in that fourth, Joe threw a right hand that landed on Ali's head.

   “You ain't got no right hand," Muhammad chanted shaking off the amazement. And then — POP. Another one.

"They told me you old," Ali said, breathing hard.

"They told you wrong," Joe shot back.

   And now suddenly it was a fight. A fight? Hell, it was the greatest heavyweight fight since Cain and Abel.

The ebb and flow was incredible. Guys get up off the mat in a fight and, once in a while, win. But you rarely see one guy losing and then winning and then losing and then ...

Well, you get the idea.

   In the end this fight was decided by anatomy. The shorter Frazier began to experience huge swelling around the eyes. In order to see, he had to straighten up — the exact opposite of his corner's game plan.

Ali now was winning. But in Round 13, he was so exhausted at a time when Frazier stood there with both arms down and legs exhibiting all the power of wet spaghetti. All Ali had to do was walk 5 feet or so and touch him and it would have been over. But Ali was too weak to do it.

   In the corner after 14, Futch told Benton to cut Joe's gloves off. Joe pushed and shoved and threatened, but they came off. Then Ali saw that it was over and collapsed.

   Nobody was tougher than Joe Frazier. Nobody had a bigger heart.

Death will probably win this last fight, but knowing Joe in that hazy limbo that spells the end, he'll probably tell old Death, "Don't gloat. Fifteen years ago, you wouldn't have laid a glove on me."

And forever after, I'll believe Joe was right.

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OTAY MESA — Montgomery High School Principal Lee Romero sees the $24 million deficit the Sweetwater Union High School District is trying to close in its $320 million budget through layoffs and wonders if there isn’t a better solution.

Such as salary cuts.

Romero said he and his wife, who is a teacher, along with others would be willing to take a pay cut if it meant saving the four instructors slated to be laid off at his school if class sizes grow from 31 to 34 students, as proposed by the district.

“At what point do we do the right thing and take the cuts away from the classroom, because it is going to hurt our kids? Nobody including the district, including the unions, are talking about taking a pay cut,” Romero said. “If we go this route (by increasing class sizes), it is going to be bad for everybody.”

Alex Anguiano, president of the teachers union, said it was premature to discuss the possibility of salary cuts because negotiations on a new contract have not formally begun. But did express dissatisfaction with other areas of the district’s budget.

“Our district is spending money like there is not an economic crisis at all, so if we evaluate economy based on what school board has been approving, then there is not an economic crisis,” he said. “There are already less teachers. Classrooms are pretty overcrowded. That was our contribution to this fiscal crisis. We have already paid significantly.”

Among the teachers Romero expects to lose under seniority rules that come into effect during layoffs is special education teacher Juan Carrillo and county Teacher of the Year nominee Rhea Walker. They have been teaching for four years and 11 years, respectively.

According to Romero, those who could lose their jobs have contributed to his campus seeing an 85-point increase on the state’s performance index.

“To have more students in a classroom means more special ed students in a classroom, and it almost seems impossible,” Carrillo said.

Romero said no one should be laid off.

“In my 24 years of education, I have never seen a teacher released due to their ineffectiveness,” Romero said. “To lose some of the people who work the most or are effective, that’s just not right.”  (True for my 15 years, nor any rotten DO level administrators)

Walker can see both sides of the tenure system. (I can see both sides of a traffic wreck doesn't mean I advocate for causing one)

“Time and again you have proven your worth, but the bottom line is still the dollars,” Walker said. “You are thankful and grateful to have something there to guarantee you have a job, but at the same time it’s a double-edged sword.”

Romero said pay cuts need to be addressed.

“There’s 10 percent unemployment in California and people are taking cuts, but we have not,” he said. (much higher for Socal in general)

About 110 pink slips were issued last year; all but six Spanish teachers were called back to work. Administrators are taking four furloughs this year.

Anguiano said the union will defer to the will of its members in matters such as class size and salary reductions. The bargaining team for the union will be seeking member input through a series of open hearings and a survey, he said.

The district cut $11 million from this year’s budget to help close a more than $23 million deficit. The shortfall was covered with stimulus funds and previously restricted money that the state freed up for use in other areas.

For more than 40 years educators have stated the obvious: for students to be successful in school...

BY P.E. STAFF WRITER   DAYNA STRAEHLEY dstraehley@pe.com
Published: 28 October 2011 10:24 PM


EDITED for this site October,30 2011 by I, Praetorian


For more than 40 years educators have stated what in the classroom is obvious; for students to be successful in school, they need their parents to be involved. Towards that end, the Riverside County Superintendent of Schools said Friday it is opening the second annual Parent and Family Engagement Summit.


The event, which attracted hundreds of parent volunteers to Palm Springs, is part of an effort to raise awareness of and support for parents to be involved in their children’s education, he said.


“There’s only so much the school can do without the parents,” Superintendent Kenneth Young said, adding he includes other caregivers in the word “parents.” “There’s not much a school can do without the parents.”


He cited a University of Arizona study of high school dropouts, who had missed an average of 124 days of school, about three weeks per year, by the time they got to eighth grade.


“They essentially dropped out before they ever got to high school,” Young said. Teachers could see the pattern starting in kindergarten.


“If parents knew what life was going to be like for a high school dropout, they would have made a greater effort to get that child to school and improve attendance,” he said.


More education is the only way to improve the area’s economy, said Angel Meraz, a leader of Pathways to Success as part of the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership.


Those who go to college in Inland Southern California lags the state average and the problem is even more acute in the Coachella Valley, which has one of the nation’s lowest college-going rates, he said. Some 75 to 80 percent of public school students live in poverty, so college seems financially inaccessible, Young said.


Pathways to Success had a contest last year to see which high schools could get the most students to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which also determines eligibility for state grants and low-interest college loans. Indio High won, with 65 percent of seniors filling out the FAFSA, based on parents’ income tax returns, in early spring. Meraz said she hopes to increase the application rate 10 percent this year. Young said he wants to spread the competition countywide.


Parent involvement in education has to start well before it’s time to figure out how to pay for college. It starts when babies are learning to tell which person is mommy and which one is daddy, said keynote speaker and educational consultant John Antonetti.


Empathy at home is the No. 1 predictor of whether fourth-graders will be mathematical problem solvers, or “how often do they before age 6 explain what they are doing and thinking.”


People learn best when they think for themselves. He reminded educators and PTA leaders to give children time to figure out answers themselves. Telling them the answer too soon steals the opportunity for learning, Antonetti said.
Friday’s summit in Palm Springs, attended mostly by parents, followed a county summit Thursday attended mostly by educators.