Jack's Boxing Class
Jack's Boxing Class
By Seamus M. McCarthy, Times Record Staff
22 April 2009
Bath - Almost 80, Jack's days in the boxing ring are long gone. All that's left are memories, and the lessons learned when those memories were earned the hard way.
Jack's ready
He waits for us.
He teaches a "cardiovascular boxing" class at the Bath Area Family YMCA a few months each year. It meets on Saturday mornings. For Jack, it's a chance to pass on his love of boxing to a new generation.
"I feel like I have something to impart," he says. "So that when I'm gone, others will be able to carry on."
Judging from how quickly the class fills up each year, it's clear that in Bath, if nowhere else, there's something of a boxing revival happening under Jack's watchful eye.
"It took me a long time to convince them to have boxing here at the 'Y,'" Jack says. "That's why we call it 'cardio-boxing.' It's a good way to get some exercise."
Jack was introduced to boxing at age 12 or so. He was a kid growing up in the greater Boston area in a neighborhood without a playground or organized sports. A time when kids organized their own fun and games on vacant lots or in the streets.
"One way or another I got involved in the Catholic Youth Organization," he recalls. "They used to encourage boxing. They'd give us the old-time 'Mickey Mouse' boxing gloves - they had so much padding they were big enough to smother someone with - and let us go at it."
Jack says his CYO training in boxing was supplemented by his mother's brother, his Uncle Ralph, a "hellion" who looked like the tough guy actor Wallace Beery. Ralph would go down to the local store, talking up his nephew "the boxer" and unbeknownst to Jack, line up local toughs for his nephew to box.
"Jack, I know you can take 'em," Jack remembers his uncle telling him. He learned later that his uncle was placing bets on him to win those arranged neighborhood matches.
Such was his early apprenticeship in boxing...which was closer to the street-fighting variety than the more formalized Marquis of Queensbury style he teaches in his weekly class at the Bath YMCA.
The formal training came later, courtesy of the Army at the time of the Korean War, when Jack was a physical education instructor at Fort Bragg. Every week, there'd be "a card," a lineup of boxing matches pitting Army recruits in various weight classes against each other for entertainment and the bragging rights that would last at least a week if they'd won their match.
Although there was a prohibition against professional boxers in those matches, Jack recalls that it was never strictly enforced: The draft tapped men from every background imaginable to serve their country, including professional boxers, who obviously were drawn to the weekly matches in the boxing ring.
"They'd try to get into those matinees," Jack says, noting that more often than not they'd succeed. "You learned fast."
Boxing under the ring name of "Jackie Perry," Jack gained experience in all aspects of the sport, alternating weeks as a manager and timekeeper for the matches.
His favorite professional boxer was - and still is - Rocky Marciano, the Brockton, Massachusetts, heavyweight who held the boxing title for four years in the 1950s, and is the only boxing champion to ever retire undefeated.
"He was a Palooka," Jack says. "What they call a 'Palooka' is a boxer who keeps coming at you, coming at you. I was a 'Palooka' too. Rocky Marciano was flat-footed, he had no rhythm, but he knew how to punch. It's too bad his plane crashed (in Iowa in 1969). He was quite a guy."
As for his own boxing career under the ring name Jackie Perry, Jack admits he was not quite the caliber of his hero.
"I did 33 fights," he says. "I tell people I lost every one...But I held my own. At that point in my life, it was my daily thing. I enjoyed it. When I got married, that was one of the things I gave up."
After getting out of the Army, Jack raised a family, worked a variety of jobs, saw professional boxing's reputation steadily decline and the neighborhood boxing clubs, frequently run by local CYOs or YMCAs, slowly disappear.
But the boxing bug never really left him. In his retirement years, he decided to stage a revival and the Bath Area Family YMCA gave its blessing to a weekly "cardio-boxing" class...with "cardio" being the operative word.
In other words, boxing as exercise, not as a martial art.
And yet, as students in Jack's class uniformly attest, it's more than that. There's a viewpoint, an ethic rooted in simpler times: A working class, democratic understanding of boxing as a sport in which social divisions based on class and wealth disappear inside the ring. A sport in which "David" often does beat "Goliath." A sport in which the intangibles of "heart" and "will" can overcome superior talent or strength.
That's the kind of class Jack teaches. That's what keeps many of his students coming back for more.
Mitt Work
Linda & Warren do mitt work under Jack's watchful eye.
Part I
Bobbing and weaving to Glenn Miller & His Orchestra at the Bath Area Family YMCA
By Seamus M. McCarthy, Times Record Staff
23 April 2009
Bath - It's a few minutes after 0800, a time on Saturday morning when many are just finishing breakfast, and Jack's students, their hands wrapped in tape, are in a conga line, bobbing and weaving their way through a maze of punching bags, rubber torso dummies, ropes strung across the workout room.
Bob and jab. Sidestep. Jab, jab. Shuffle forward. Bob. A flurry of punches. Sidestep and shuffle. One by one, the boxers make their moves, loosen up, and build a sweat - all to the tune of "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anybody Else But Me." It's the Glenn Miller and his Orchestra version, circa February 1942, recorded just a few months after Pearl Harbour:Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me
Anyone else but me, anyone else but me, no, no, no
Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me
'Til I come marchin' home.
It seems an odd piece of music to be practicing boxing moves to, but Jack, who is a month shy of turning 80, has a ready explanation.
"I put on the music that I trained to," he says, explaining that the distinctly 1940s and 1950s soundtrack teaches his students the rhythm of boxing, the essential skill of not being flat-footed in the ring (comment: we listen to Benny Goodman too).
For the next two-and-a-half hours, Jack is at the hub of all the activity taking place inside the workout room. Sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, he watches closely as students punch body bags and rubber dummies or engage in three-minute sparring matches, in which the student designated as the "boxer" throws punches at padded mitts or padded body vests, under the direction of the sparring partner who calls out where the next punch is to land, or whether a simulated punch is about to come at the boxer.
"Don't open up your wings," Jack calls out. "You keep your guard up! Slide 'em up...always keep 'em up, because some day, if you don't, you'll get creamed and you'll find your nose in the back of your head."
His commentary is supplemented by shouts of encouragement from the students themselves.
"Strike out, Al! Strike out. He may be a big dog, but you're no pound puppy!"
Jack calls out to one student, who had just landed a nice flurry of body punches to the padded rib cage of his opponent, "Hit 'em in the 'xylophone' (comment: ribs)! It takes the wind right out of him. You want to do that before they go back to the corner. That way they'll sit in that corner, out of breath, and not want to come back into the ring. It always worked for me."
One student, a slender woman in her early 30s named Sita, puts on her pink gloves and steps into the sparring space. Light on her feet, she wastes no time in jabbing the padded mitts held out by her partner, who calls out where her next punch is to land.
"There's my 'Million Dollar Baby,' right there," Jack says aloud.
Then he calls out to Sita, "Keep your guard up. Keep your guard up! Good boy...I mean, good girl!"
Jack points out how well Sita bobs and weaves as she throws her punches. She's focused and quick on her feet and seemingly possessed of limitless stamina, with a punch count double that of some of the other boxers in the class.
"If I had her as a student 20 years ago, I'd have opened my own gym," he says. "I would have had my 'Million Dollar Baby.'"
Watching the next three-minute sparring round, Jack calls out another reminder about keeping one's guard up: "When your ears come around and meet your nose, you'll know you got hit."
"Just like Picasso," quipped one student (comment: me!).
Sitting in the middle of the workout room, Jack clearly enjoys the easygoing camaraderie that has developed among his students, who've been boxing together since November (comment: I've been with Jack five years; Warren has been with us four years; and most of the others two or three years. We only had four new students this year). They shout out encouragement and observations as much as he does.
"There are good guys here," he says. "Good guys. A lot of talent here. Some good gals, too. I can speak well of every one of them. When they started, they didn't know how to bob or weave or how to throw a punch. They didn't know anything about boxing."
Throughout the workout, Jack calls out bits of boxing wisdom, mixed in with encouragement:"There's no such thing as an accidental blow in boxing."
"When the towel goes in, everything stops."
"Always keep your gloves clean. Take care of your gloves and they'll last a lifetime."
"Don't say Jack's crazy...Jack's not crazy."
"Good job. Good job."
For much of the two-and-half-hour class, Jack sits in the center of the gym, watching, calling out encouragement. The boxers move around him, sparring, punching body bags, timing the matches, counting punches.
Their instructor doesn't say much, but when he does, everyone listens. It's clear to anyone watching the class, Jack is the hub around which everything else revolves. He's the "old-timer" showing the "kids" how to be respectable inside a ring.
Hello Kitty!
I once teased Sita that I was going to get her "Hello Kitty" boxing gear. She got pink gloves soon after that. Mike, Al, Steve, me, & Jack are in the background.
Part II
It's graduation day and Jack's boxing students reflect on what they've learned
By Seamus M. McCarthy, Times Record Staff
24 April 2009
Bath - It's the final Saturday of his five-month class. Jack is testing his students, calling out questions from a printout of the Marquis du Queensbury rules of boxing. It's a pass-fail test. No one seems worried about failing - except a late arrival, who Jack greets with a gentle verbal jab.
"We're taking the test," he says. "You just failed it."
He wraps up the test and tells the students to get ready for their final workout.
"We're going to do three on three," he says, meaning three minutes of sparring, alternating against three different opponents. "Anyone want to do 'punch counts?'"
There's a good feeling in the workout room. The boxing students joke with each other between rounds, throw jabs at the rubber dummy known as "Bob the Bully" and compare notes about what they've learned in Jack's class (comment: we have two dummies actually, named "Cuff" and "Link").
"It's hard," says Chris, a first-time student, who's competed in wrestling, football and rugby. "It's a lot harder than football. There's a lot of techniques you've got to be thinking about. It's not about strength. It's about technique and speed."
Linda, also a first-time student, is one of two women in the class. An emergency room nurse at Mid Coast Hospital, she admits it took her awhile to build up confidence to sign up for the class.
"I'd see them practicing," she says. "I just came in to check it out and they welcomed me with open arms. I love it."
A self-described "girly girl," Linda says taking Jack's class has helped her realize that boxing is not just a man's sport. It's boosted her confidence, and she finds herself more willing to try things she might have previously seen as "impossible."
"I have a new motto," she says. "I'm a woman. I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm a nurse. And I'm a boxer! You don't scare me."
Linda says the diversity of the class is one of its strong points. The boxing students come from a wide range of professions, their abilities ranging from rank novice to serious amateur. She credits Jack with creating an atmosphere in which no one's a star. They're all in it together.
"This class has the potential of getting someone on the road of getting confidence in themselves," she says. "This class can do that for people."
"It's a family," agrees Warren, a coach at Wiscasset High School. "Like Jack always says, 'Everybody watches out for each other.'"
"It's also a really good workout," adds Mike. "I'm not so concerned about speed. I'm concerned about agility."
"It's the camaraderie I enjoy the most," says Sita, who, while doing speed-bag-punching, starts slow and gradually builds to a blur of both fists pummeling the "tear drop" (so-named, says Jack, because many a boxer has cried, unable to master it due to its small size) (comment: the "tear drop" is an extra-small speed bag that moves faster and is harder to hit compared to a regular speed bag).
"She's a $1.5 million baby," another student calls out as Sita works the tear drop speed bag. "The stock is going up."
"Doing good," Jack tells Sita at the end of her workout. "That was excellent. Excellent."
Lessons learned
As the final class winds down, people linger in a tight hallway. They've already received their diplomas from Jack - a tiny leather boxing glove with his ring name, "Jackie Perry," signed in a silver ink - and it's time to get back to their every-day lives.
But before they do, they line up to share with a reporter what they've gotten out of the boxing class.
"I've been studying martial arts for 20 years," says Leon. "I'm not drawn to young cocky guys, I'm drawn to the old salt-of-the-earth guys. They are not doing it to make a name for themselves. They are doing it because they want to give something back to the community. I admire Jack, I admire what he's done. He's old-school: Good old-fashioned values. That, to me, is the reason I was drawn to his class. Everything else is just hard work."
Warren, who's been coaching high school sports since 1992, considers Jack "one of the best, if not the best, inspirational coaches" he's encountered.
"What Jack brings to every situation is compassion and an understanding of what it takes to motivate people," he continues. "He brings out the best in people. No matter what kind of week you had at work, you come into this class and Jack makes you feel special...A measure of greatness is how much you can share your greatness and make other people great. Jack does that. He leads by example."
"Everybody is here to help each other," adds Al.
For stealthdozer, who broke his arm in three places a year ago, the boxing class has helped his rehabilitation greatly. He credits Jack with teaching him how to do the speed bag properly, and now has a 55-minute (heavy) bag routine built around the songs of Sinead O'Connor.
"I don't think about anything," he says. "I find it's an opportunity to put away the daily distractions."
"I like how it's a very traditional class...that the knowledge has been passed on for a long time, that it's an old sport," says Mike.
Compassion, helping each other, truth, making others feel special, tradition, giving back to the community...not a person spoke about being able to deliver a knock-out punch or wanting to test their boxing skills in a local bar.
Jack wasn't around to hear any of these tributes. He had already given everyone a passing grade, so no one had anything to gain by singing his praises. It was heartfelt, truthful, direct - not unlike his teaching style.
A week later, asked what he felt was the most important lesson he had to teach in the weekly boxing class, Jack replies: "I tell my students, 'Don't ever go into a joint braggin' you're a boxer. Someone in that crowd is going to challenge you to a fight, guaranteed. Always be a gentle person. Don't be a bully. You've got to be a good person. You've got to care for people. Most boxers are that way. Most guys who box, you'd never know it.'"
Part III
Tear Drop
An extra-small speed bag that, according to Jack, can make a grown boxer cry with frustration.
Our speed-bag back-board is between 100 and 150 years old. A thick, solid, and well-varnished hardwood, it's worth at least $700 dollars according to Jack. It's priceless to us. Jack rescued it from the basement of Bath's old YMCA before it was thrown away.
When Jack first introduced the tear-drop speed-bag to us we were surprised. He'd already taught us the how to use a regular speed-bag, challenging enough. I pawed at the tear drop tentatively, then announced "This feels wrong - like hitting a baby wrong." It seemed like a baby speed-bag.
Some busy-body half-overheard me and was horrified - she complained to people that I hit babies. My friends set her straight.
We've a dozen regular students this year. One class had 18 people, another time there were just six of us.
In the off-season, and on Tuesday and Thursday nights, it's usually just me pounding away on the heavy bag to Sinead O'Connor.
Leon, Sita, Steve, Jon, and Al have martial arts backgrounds. Lately Jon and Warren have been joining them on Wednesday nights.
I'm not against martial arts - obviously - but I do recognize its limitations. Leon is an especially good instructor, and he often tries to help me and the others with our technique.
Leon has a good heart, and he means well. One day I'm going to have to sit down and tell him what I was. A fight is a world of adrenalin, fear, and pain. The minutiae of technique has no place there.
Many martial artists talk about "real" fights, "real" training, and such. They've not been in many real fights though - usually they are like virgins giving sex advice.
Shadowboxing
Jon, Sita, Linda's pants, & Al at the mirror.
Cuff Link I
Jay named our two dummies "Cuff" & "Link." Here Jay cuffs Link, held by Warren. Jon punches a bag in the background, Linda, Sita, & Mike look on.
Cuff Link II
Chris jabs at Cuff, held steady by Steve. Mike, Linda, & Al are in the background.
Dragonslayer
Joel faces Cuff. Mike, Leon, Jon, Al, Seamus, Sita, me, & Jack are in the background.
Heavy Bag
Leon works the heavy bag held by Chris. Jack, Steve, Linda, Al's foot, Jay, & Mike are in the background.
By Seamus M. McCarthy, Times Record Staff
22 April 2009
Bath - Almost 80, Jack's days in the boxing ring are long gone. All that's left are memories, and the lessons learned when those memories were earned the hard way.
Jack's ready
He waits for us.
He teaches a "cardiovascular boxing" class at the Bath Area Family YMCA a few months each year. It meets on Saturday mornings. For Jack, it's a chance to pass on his love of boxing to a new generation.
"I feel like I have something to impart," he says. "So that when I'm gone, others will be able to carry on."
Judging from how quickly the class fills up each year, it's clear that in Bath, if nowhere else, there's something of a boxing revival happening under Jack's watchful eye.
"It took me a long time to convince them to have boxing here at the 'Y,'" Jack says. "That's why we call it 'cardio-boxing.' It's a good way to get some exercise."
Jack was introduced to boxing at age 12 or so. He was a kid growing up in the greater Boston area in a neighborhood without a playground or organized sports. A time when kids organized their own fun and games on vacant lots or in the streets.
"One way or another I got involved in the Catholic Youth Organization," he recalls. "They used to encourage boxing. They'd give us the old-time 'Mickey Mouse' boxing gloves - they had so much padding they were big enough to smother someone with - and let us go at it."
Jack says his CYO training in boxing was supplemented by his mother's brother, his Uncle Ralph, a "hellion" who looked like the tough guy actor Wallace Beery. Ralph would go down to the local store, talking up his nephew "the boxer" and unbeknownst to Jack, line up local toughs for his nephew to box.
"Jack, I know you can take 'em," Jack remembers his uncle telling him. He learned later that his uncle was placing bets on him to win those arranged neighborhood matches.
Such was his early apprenticeship in boxing...which was closer to the street-fighting variety than the more formalized Marquis of Queensbury style he teaches in his weekly class at the Bath YMCA.
The formal training came later, courtesy of the Army at the time of the Korean War, when Jack was a physical education instructor at Fort Bragg. Every week, there'd be "a card," a lineup of boxing matches pitting Army recruits in various weight classes against each other for entertainment and the bragging rights that would last at least a week if they'd won their match.
Although there was a prohibition against professional boxers in those matches, Jack recalls that it was never strictly enforced: The draft tapped men from every background imaginable to serve their country, including professional boxers, who obviously were drawn to the weekly matches in the boxing ring.
"They'd try to get into those matinees," Jack says, noting that more often than not they'd succeed. "You learned fast."
Boxing under the ring name of "Jackie Perry," Jack gained experience in all aspects of the sport, alternating weeks as a manager and timekeeper for the matches.
His favorite professional boxer was - and still is - Rocky Marciano, the Brockton, Massachusetts, heavyweight who held the boxing title for four years in the 1950s, and is the only boxing champion to ever retire undefeated.
"He was a Palooka," Jack says. "What they call a 'Palooka' is a boxer who keeps coming at you, coming at you. I was a 'Palooka' too. Rocky Marciano was flat-footed, he had no rhythm, but he knew how to punch. It's too bad his plane crashed (in Iowa in 1969). He was quite a guy."
As for his own boxing career under the ring name Jackie Perry, Jack admits he was not quite the caliber of his hero.
"I did 33 fights," he says. "I tell people I lost every one...But I held my own. At that point in my life, it was my daily thing. I enjoyed it. When I got married, that was one of the things I gave up."
After getting out of the Army, Jack raised a family, worked a variety of jobs, saw professional boxing's reputation steadily decline and the neighborhood boxing clubs, frequently run by local CYOs or YMCAs, slowly disappear.
But the boxing bug never really left him. In his retirement years, he decided to stage a revival and the Bath Area Family YMCA gave its blessing to a weekly "cardio-boxing" class...with "cardio" being the operative word.
In other words, boxing as exercise, not as a martial art.
And yet, as students in Jack's class uniformly attest, it's more than that. There's a viewpoint, an ethic rooted in simpler times: A working class, democratic understanding of boxing as a sport in which social divisions based on class and wealth disappear inside the ring. A sport in which "David" often does beat "Goliath." A sport in which the intangibles of "heart" and "will" can overcome superior talent or strength.
That's the kind of class Jack teaches. That's what keeps many of his students coming back for more.
Mitt Work
Linda & Warren do mitt work under Jack's watchful eye.
Part I
Bobbing and weaving to Glenn Miller & His Orchestra at the Bath Area Family YMCA
By Seamus M. McCarthy, Times Record Staff
23 April 2009
Bath - It's a few minutes after 0800, a time on Saturday morning when many are just finishing breakfast, and Jack's students, their hands wrapped in tape, are in a conga line, bobbing and weaving their way through a maze of punching bags, rubber torso dummies, ropes strung across the workout room.
Bob and jab. Sidestep. Jab, jab. Shuffle forward. Bob. A flurry of punches. Sidestep and shuffle. One by one, the boxers make their moves, loosen up, and build a sweat - all to the tune of "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anybody Else But Me." It's the Glenn Miller and his Orchestra version, circa February 1942, recorded just a few months after Pearl Harbour:Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me
Anyone else but me, anyone else but me, no, no, no
Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me
'Til I come marchin' home.
It seems an odd piece of music to be practicing boxing moves to, but Jack, who is a month shy of turning 80, has a ready explanation.
"I put on the music that I trained to," he says, explaining that the distinctly 1940s and 1950s soundtrack teaches his students the rhythm of boxing, the essential skill of not being flat-footed in the ring (comment: we listen to Benny Goodman too).
For the next two-and-a-half hours, Jack is at the hub of all the activity taking place inside the workout room. Sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, he watches closely as students punch body bags and rubber dummies or engage in three-minute sparring matches, in which the student designated as the "boxer" throws punches at padded mitts or padded body vests, under the direction of the sparring partner who calls out where the next punch is to land, or whether a simulated punch is about to come at the boxer.
"Don't open up your wings," Jack calls out. "You keep your guard up! Slide 'em up...always keep 'em up, because some day, if you don't, you'll get creamed and you'll find your nose in the back of your head."
His commentary is supplemented by shouts of encouragement from the students themselves.
"Strike out, Al! Strike out. He may be a big dog, but you're no pound puppy!"
Jack calls out to one student, who had just landed a nice flurry of body punches to the padded rib cage of his opponent, "Hit 'em in the 'xylophone' (comment: ribs)! It takes the wind right out of him. You want to do that before they go back to the corner. That way they'll sit in that corner, out of breath, and not want to come back into the ring. It always worked for me."
One student, a slender woman in her early 30s named Sita, puts on her pink gloves and steps into the sparring space. Light on her feet, she wastes no time in jabbing the padded mitts held out by her partner, who calls out where her next punch is to land.
"There's my 'Million Dollar Baby,' right there," Jack says aloud.
Then he calls out to Sita, "Keep your guard up. Keep your guard up! Good boy...I mean, good girl!"
Jack points out how well Sita bobs and weaves as she throws her punches. She's focused and quick on her feet and seemingly possessed of limitless stamina, with a punch count double that of some of the other boxers in the class.
"If I had her as a student 20 years ago, I'd have opened my own gym," he says. "I would have had my 'Million Dollar Baby.'"
Watching the next three-minute sparring round, Jack calls out another reminder about keeping one's guard up: "When your ears come around and meet your nose, you'll know you got hit."
"Just like Picasso," quipped one student (comment: me!).
Sitting in the middle of the workout room, Jack clearly enjoys the easygoing camaraderie that has developed among his students, who've been boxing together since November (comment: I've been with Jack five years; Warren has been with us four years; and most of the others two or three years. We only had four new students this year). They shout out encouragement and observations as much as he does.
"There are good guys here," he says. "Good guys. A lot of talent here. Some good gals, too. I can speak well of every one of them. When they started, they didn't know how to bob or weave or how to throw a punch. They didn't know anything about boxing."
Throughout the workout, Jack calls out bits of boxing wisdom, mixed in with encouragement:"There's no such thing as an accidental blow in boxing."
"When the towel goes in, everything stops."
"Always keep your gloves clean. Take care of your gloves and they'll last a lifetime."
"Don't say Jack's crazy...Jack's not crazy."
"Good job. Good job."
For much of the two-and-half-hour class, Jack sits in the center of the gym, watching, calling out encouragement. The boxers move around him, sparring, punching body bags, timing the matches, counting punches.
Their instructor doesn't say much, but when he does, everyone listens. It's clear to anyone watching the class, Jack is the hub around which everything else revolves. He's the "old-timer" showing the "kids" how to be respectable inside a ring.
Hello Kitty!
I once teased Sita that I was going to get her "Hello Kitty" boxing gear. She got pink gloves soon after that. Mike, Al, Steve, me, & Jack are in the background.
Part II
It's graduation day and Jack's boxing students reflect on what they've learned
By Seamus M. McCarthy, Times Record Staff
24 April 2009
Bath - It's the final Saturday of his five-month class. Jack is testing his students, calling out questions from a printout of the Marquis du Queensbury rules of boxing. It's a pass-fail test. No one seems worried about failing - except a late arrival, who Jack greets with a gentle verbal jab.
"We're taking the test," he says. "You just failed it."
He wraps up the test and tells the students to get ready for their final workout.
"We're going to do three on three," he says, meaning three minutes of sparring, alternating against three different opponents. "Anyone want to do 'punch counts?'"
There's a good feeling in the workout room. The boxing students joke with each other between rounds, throw jabs at the rubber dummy known as "Bob the Bully" and compare notes about what they've learned in Jack's class (comment: we have two dummies actually, named "Cuff" and "Link").
"It's hard," says Chris, a first-time student, who's competed in wrestling, football and rugby. "It's a lot harder than football. There's a lot of techniques you've got to be thinking about. It's not about strength. It's about technique and speed."
Linda, also a first-time student, is one of two women in the class. An emergency room nurse at Mid Coast Hospital, she admits it took her awhile to build up confidence to sign up for the class.
"I'd see them practicing," she says. "I just came in to check it out and they welcomed me with open arms. I love it."
A self-described "girly girl," Linda says taking Jack's class has helped her realize that boxing is not just a man's sport. It's boosted her confidence, and she finds herself more willing to try things she might have previously seen as "impossible."
"I have a new motto," she says. "I'm a woman. I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm a nurse. And I'm a boxer! You don't scare me."
Linda says the diversity of the class is one of its strong points. The boxing students come from a wide range of professions, their abilities ranging from rank novice to serious amateur. She credits Jack with creating an atmosphere in which no one's a star. They're all in it together.
"This class has the potential of getting someone on the road of getting confidence in themselves," she says. "This class can do that for people."
"It's a family," agrees Warren, a coach at Wiscasset High School. "Like Jack always says, 'Everybody watches out for each other.'"
"It's also a really good workout," adds Mike. "I'm not so concerned about speed. I'm concerned about agility."
"It's the camaraderie I enjoy the most," says Sita, who, while doing speed-bag-punching, starts slow and gradually builds to a blur of both fists pummeling the "tear drop" (so-named, says Jack, because many a boxer has cried, unable to master it due to its small size) (comment: the "tear drop" is an extra-small speed bag that moves faster and is harder to hit compared to a regular speed bag).
"She's a $1.5 million baby," another student calls out as Sita works the tear drop speed bag. "The stock is going up."
"Doing good," Jack tells Sita at the end of her workout. "That was excellent. Excellent."
Lessons learned
As the final class winds down, people linger in a tight hallway. They've already received their diplomas from Jack - a tiny leather boxing glove with his ring name, "Jackie Perry," signed in a silver ink - and it's time to get back to their every-day lives.
But before they do, they line up to share with a reporter what they've gotten out of the boxing class.
"I've been studying martial arts for 20 years," says Leon. "I'm not drawn to young cocky guys, I'm drawn to the old salt-of-the-earth guys. They are not doing it to make a name for themselves. They are doing it because they want to give something back to the community. I admire Jack, I admire what he's done. He's old-school: Good old-fashioned values. That, to me, is the reason I was drawn to his class. Everything else is just hard work."
Warren, who's been coaching high school sports since 1992, considers Jack "one of the best, if not the best, inspirational coaches" he's encountered.
"What Jack brings to every situation is compassion and an understanding of what it takes to motivate people," he continues. "He brings out the best in people. No matter what kind of week you had at work, you come into this class and Jack makes you feel special...A measure of greatness is how much you can share your greatness and make other people great. Jack does that. He leads by example."
"Everybody is here to help each other," adds Al.
For stealthdozer, who broke his arm in three places a year ago, the boxing class has helped his rehabilitation greatly. He credits Jack with teaching him how to do the speed bag properly, and now has a 55-minute (heavy) bag routine built around the songs of Sinead O'Connor.
"I don't think about anything," he says. "I find it's an opportunity to put away the daily distractions."
"I like how it's a very traditional class...that the knowledge has been passed on for a long time, that it's an old sport," says Mike.
Compassion, helping each other, truth, making others feel special, tradition, giving back to the community...not a person spoke about being able to deliver a knock-out punch or wanting to test their boxing skills in a local bar.
Jack wasn't around to hear any of these tributes. He had already given everyone a passing grade, so no one had anything to gain by singing his praises. It was heartfelt, truthful, direct - not unlike his teaching style.
A week later, asked what he felt was the most important lesson he had to teach in the weekly boxing class, Jack replies: "I tell my students, 'Don't ever go into a joint braggin' you're a boxer. Someone in that crowd is going to challenge you to a fight, guaranteed. Always be a gentle person. Don't be a bully. You've got to be a good person. You've got to care for people. Most boxers are that way. Most guys who box, you'd never know it.'"
Part III
Tear Drop
An extra-small speed bag that, according to Jack, can make a grown boxer cry with frustration.
Our speed-bag back-board is between 100 and 150 years old. A thick, solid, and well-varnished hardwood, it's worth at least $700 dollars according to Jack. It's priceless to us. Jack rescued it from the basement of Bath's old YMCA before it was thrown away.
When Jack first introduced the tear-drop speed-bag to us we were surprised. He'd already taught us the how to use a regular speed-bag, challenging enough. I pawed at the tear drop tentatively, then announced "This feels wrong - like hitting a baby wrong." It seemed like a baby speed-bag.
Some busy-body half-overheard me and was horrified - she complained to people that I hit babies. My friends set her straight.
We've a dozen regular students this year. One class had 18 people, another time there were just six of us.
In the off-season, and on Tuesday and Thursday nights, it's usually just me pounding away on the heavy bag to Sinead O'Connor.
Leon, Sita, Steve, Jon, and Al have martial arts backgrounds. Lately Jon and Warren have been joining them on Wednesday nights.
I'm not against martial arts - obviously - but I do recognize its limitations. Leon is an especially good instructor, and he often tries to help me and the others with our technique.
Leon has a good heart, and he means well. One day I'm going to have to sit down and tell him what I was. A fight is a world of adrenalin, fear, and pain. The minutiae of technique has no place there.
Many martial artists talk about "real" fights, "real" training, and such. They've not been in many real fights though - usually they are like virgins giving sex advice.
Shadowboxing
Jon, Sita, Linda's pants, & Al at the mirror.
Cuff Link I
Jay named our two dummies "Cuff" & "Link." Here Jay cuffs Link, held by Warren. Jon punches a bag in the background, Linda, Sita, & Mike look on.
Cuff Link II
Chris jabs at Cuff, held steady by Steve. Mike, Linda, & Al are in the background.
Dragonslayer
Joel faces Cuff. Mike, Leon, Jon, Al, Seamus, Sita, me, & Jack are in the background.
Heavy Bag
Leon works the heavy bag held by Chris. Jack, Steve, Linda, Al's foot, Jay, & Mike are in the background.