George Hernandez remembers when facilities for his sport were so threadbare, he took his classes outside, then had the kids hold hands and form a ring.
The perimeter was not a bad setup for ring-around-the-rosy. But that’s not George Hernandez’ game.
When he puts two people inside the ring, whether it’s formed by humans or ropes, the pair is there to fight.
For the last dozen years, Hernandez, 46, has been the boxing instructor at Garfield Park Fieldhouse, part of the Chicago Park District’s popular free-of-charge boxing program.
From June through December, it is showcased in Mayor Daley’s Inner City Games Boxing Shows in various parks. Of 19 shows this year, seven are in August.
But the program operates year-round at 24 Park District fieldhouses, and draws more than 3,000 participants throughout each year.
And at Garfield Park’s distinctive golden-domed fieldhouse on the West Side, where the “city of boxers” has a population of about 200 at any given time, Hernandez’ workspace has improved considerably.
Now, he’s got warmup rooms with light and heavy punching bags, weight machines and mirrors. He has an office, with a couch, TV set and hot plate, all of which he admits are testament to spending far too many hours at this part-time (supposedly 35 hours a week), salaried job. It is a labor of love.
In the big center room of his corner of the fieldhouse, he has a raised boxing ring with red, white and blue ropes.
Without hesitation, although without documentation, he states: “Tony Zale and Rocky Graziano fought in this ring.”
That would have made the ring part of Chicago’s halcyon boxing days. Among ring classics were Gene Tunney beating Jack Dempsey in Soldier Field in 1927, Sugar Ray Robinson beating Carmen Basilio in the Chicago Stadium in 1958 and Sonny Liston knocking out Floyd Patterson in Comiskey Park in 1962. Other great Chicago fights include Graziano knocking out Zale at the Chicago Stadium in 1947. (Zale KO’d Graziano in two other fights .)
Most participants in Park District boxing are males aged 9 to 18, but adults up to senior citizens can and do join, citing the training as good exercise. Hernandez trains both amateurs and professionals.
Over the years, the training has repeatedly beckoned newcomers from other countries. And in recent years, girls and women have come into the program–almost all calling it a challenging diversion from aerobic exercises.
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Born Jorge Alexis Hernandez DeRuiz, he was one of five brothers whose parents separated and sent three of their children through the court system into boys’ homes and boarding schools. Hernandez, one of the three, grew up learning to fight for survival and status among peers.
Because he was a ward of the state, his “family” included other children from broken homes, but frequently not his own brothers, as they weren’t always sent to the same places.
Hernandez has never fought professionally. But in the Illinois State Training School for Boys (now Illinois Youth Center) in St. Charles, he recalls, “I beat up the guy who was recognized as the lightweight champion in their program, so I was the champion. And I got extra food as a celebrity.”
At age 18, he found a home with an uncle, who took custody of him and helped him find work. He split the next dozen years between Western Electric, where he was a foreman of the division that produced relay cables for telephones, and the military, where he served a stint in Vietnam.
When he returned from military service, he went back to boxing gyms, whether to spar with his brother, Hector, a club fighter, or to train a cousin who entered the Golden Gloves amateur boxing tournament.
He began studying fine arts at Loop College and Loyola University, where he met Carmen Santiago, his bride-to-be. She is now an admissions coordinator for Loyola.
What brought Hernandez into the Chicago Park District boxing program was the charisma of one man.
“Stanley Berg convinced me to take a fieldhouse boxing program,” Hernandez says. After a brief stint as a volunteer for three hours a week at Clarendon Community Center, he quit so he could focus on his job as a linen company salesman.
But, he says, anyone who knew Stanley Berg–which is almost everyone who knew and knows boxing in Chicago–knew he wouldn’t let Hernandez walk away from the sport he loved . . . or from the Park District.
“Boxing was his passion, and if you were interested at all, he just assumed it was your passion,” Hernandez recalls. “Stanley didn’t care if it was Saturday, Sunday, Mother’s Day, Christmas–he always wanted to have a boxing show.
“If you didn’t share his enthusiasm and get the show organized, he would cuss you out. Of course, he’d apologize a few minutes later.
“I remember, when he was dying, I pulled his oxygen tank to Columbus Park for him so he could have a show.”
Like Hernandez, Berg wasn’t always Berg. Born Stanley Fineberg, he learned to box in the Franklin Park gym and became welterweight champion in the Coast Guard during World War II. He never boxed professionally, but his 99-6 amateur record included two victories over Johnny Bratton, who turned pro and became a top welterweight contender.
Berg quit boxing, but not the sport. He became a top referee, working pro title fights around the world.
He devoted ever more time to the Park District where, at the time of his death in 1993, he was a coach, referee, director of boxingand mentor to disciples such as Hernandez.
Alumni of the Park District’s school of hard knocks include boxers who have tasted success as Olympic team members and/or professionals-including Montell Griffin, Oliver McCall, Lee Roy Murphy, Danell Nicholson, and, from last year’s Atlanta Olympic Games, David Diaz and bronze medalist Nate Jones.
On June 28 in Las Vegas, the climactic Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson title fight ended in Tyson’s disqualification and degradation of the sport. Early among the undercard bouts, however, Jones won his third professional heavyweight fight.
Like Tyson, Chicagoan Jones grew up on mean streets and got into trouble that landed him in jail. But he has survived. And the seeds of his ambition were planted first in the Park District, then in the Matador Boxing Club. Both feed into Chicago’s storied amateur Golden Gloves tournament
Trainers such as Tom O’Shea of the Matadors and Park District veterans Eddie Davis of Clarendon Park, Bill Heglin of Hamlin Park and Frank Smith of Stateway Park share a boxing bond with Hernandez.
They are keeping alive Berg’s legacy of a Park District program that still operates as an inviting alternative to street braggadocio and cowardly violence.
“You’ve only got 18 square feet to debate in inside the ring,” Hernandez says. “You lose your attitude.”
For Hernandez and his trainer-peers, teaching discipline and sportsmanship includes trying to help parents keep their kids out of trouble, and trying to help teachers keep them in school.
“Boxing is not the most important thing here. It’s building character,” Hernandez says. “For starters a boxer has to wear headgear, and cannot be abusive in language or in fighting.
“Olympic-style boxing is what we teach, along with conditioning. I like to do this to help kids get proper training and learn boxing skills.”
Beyond the ring, beyond the fieldhouse, is where Hernandez can only hope to succeed.
His program does not have access to therapists, he says. “But I don’t have to send a kid to a psychologist to see he’s suffering at home. I can see it in his eyes.”
He can only complement what he does for the body with doses of caring supervision.
It doesn’t always work.
Sometimes, the demons of childhood return even after amateur boxing has brought someone to a better financial life as a professional.
Witness ex-champion Tyson biting a piece out of Holyfield’s right ear. Witness ex-champ McCall’s sudden refusal to continue fighting Lennox Lewis in a match arguably too soon after McCall was in drug rehabilitation.
Or, much closer to home for George Hernandez, witness the police arrest of boxer Eddie White. He was charged with possession of cocaine with intent to deliver last June in Country Club Hills. White was International Boxing Organization super-middleweight world champion. And he was trainer Hernandez’ top professional prospect.
While Eddie White’s future remains in doubt, another of Hernandez’ particularly talented pupils has none.
Among boxers’ photos covering the walls of Hernandez’ office is one of teenager Tony Darnell Carter. A glance at the inscription shows it’s from Hernandez, not Carter. It reads, “In loving memory. Miss you. Love, George.”
For Carter, nicknamed “Ice Pick,” the Garfield Park gym and boxing ring were refuge only until he stepped outside the door.
Hernandez looks over at the preteens selecting red gloves from neat rows on a ringside table. Suddenly, as it does every three minutes when the gym is being used, a buzzer sounds, its intervals signaling a round of boxing.
Hernandez’ spoken epitaph for Carter is harsher than what he wrote on the photo: “He got into dealing drugs. He was shot to death in the head.”
It’s a round lost in the trainer’s fight against forces he cannot see. But now, he’s looking at fresh, expectant faces. Every one represents a new round he has a chance to win.
