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  Fillmore knew of an empty one-story building at 1905 Tenth Avenue. They purchased it. Sugar Ray wrote state officials asking for more money. He wrote the TV and film stars he knew. Bob Hope would drop by, and so would Muhammad Ali, who lived in Los Angeles. He’d hit them up for financial contributions. “Everybody wanted to come by and just be around Sugar Ray,” recalls Ken Bristow, Robinson’s nephew. Millie would claim she had never seen him so happy.

  In 1969, the Sugar Ray Robinson Youth Foundation received its charter. By 1972, when it received state funding, it had implemented year-round programs drawing youth from elementary and junior high schools throughout the Los Angeles area. Bob Hope joined the board of directors and was named honorary chairman of the foundation. Carroll Rosenbloom, owner of the Los Angeles Rams, also became a board member. Former California governor Edmund G. Brown became legal counsel. Actor Glenn Ford and his wife, Cynthia, were big supporters. The annual teen pageants began in 1974, hundreds of teens gathering in honor of their accomplishments. It was as if Sugar Ray Robinson—and all those hired to work at the foundation—wished to impart a semblance of style and class and etiquette to each of the children. The 1975 teen pageant took place at the Hollywood Palladium. (Hope and Sugar Ray used their contacts to secure the venue.) Lee Meriwether, a former Miss America, served as mistress of ceremonies. Hope cracked some one-liners from the stage. Toward the end of that night’s program, there was a fashion tribute to Sugar Ray; he and Millie looked resplendent. The presentation was called “A Touch of Class.” At its conclusion, applause washed over them. Nancy Sinatra and O. C. Smith were the featured entertainers at the 1977 Miss Sugar Ray Teen Pageant. For the 1978 pageant, Sugar Ray called in Howard Bingham—the great photographer who took so many scintillating shots of Muhammad Ali—to take the pictures.

  The teens who participated in the program became noticeably more poised and confident. Their teachers complimented them. They were grateful. “I’ve always felt withdrawn from everyone else, but when I joined Sugar Ray’s and associated with other girls,” recalled thirteen-year-old Teri Ogata, “it proved to me that I was just as good as the next person.”

  “Sugar Ray understands us and our needs for fun, character building, entertainment and the need for someone to care about us kids,” said twelve-year-old Geraldine Manuel.

  “The foundation provides a lot of love, friendship, and kindness,” said fifteen-year-old Florence Griffith. Griffith would go on to run in the 1988 Olympics—as Florence Griffith-Joyner—and win three gold medals. Her style—colorful outfits, long and lovely hair—seemed as captivating to the watching world as her speed.

  “I thought only the wealthy had the opportunity to take advantage of special programs,” said thirteen-year-old Anita Trevino. “With Sugar Ray’s, anyone and everyone is welcome.”

  On many afternoons, a not-so-old prizefighter would join the kids on the playground of his foundation headquarters, his husky laugh floating over them. They’d rush up to him, tugging at him. The littlest ones hopped right up into his arms. The kids wore T-shirts that said “Sugar Ray’s Youth Foundation.” They were white kids and black kids and Latino kids. They came from the barrios and they came from Watts and they came from Pasadena. Standing there, he would look around at the kids and feel proud. “It meant so much to him because of his own youth and how the church had saved him,” says Ken Bristow, who visited the foundation when in Los Angeles.

  Fighters often see themselves in children, keenly feeling the echoes of who they were. Sugar Ray’s growing-up idol, Henry Armstrong, also devoted his post-fight life to helping children. Two world champion sluggers, young again and at peace.

  By the late 1970s there were more than two thousand kids involved with the program on a yearly basis. Every year there seemed to be challenges meeting the program budget, but Sugar Ray would just start making his rounds, hat in hand: He’d go to Motown, to Capitol Records, to Warner Brothers; he’d glide by the stores on Rodeo Drive, throw a little shadowboxing, give them his spiel about the kids; he’d go over to UCLA and to USC asking for contributions. There were those who felt such glad-handing was beneath him, but he said anything he did for the kids made him feel larger. Somehow he always managed to make up for the budget shortfall. And he kept going, year to year, the kids going off to high school or college, then coming back over to the foundation, looking for Mr. Robinson, looking for Mrs. Robinson, wrapping their arms around both of them all over again. It was like having a large, extended family.

  Life often intruded. Robinson’s father, Walker Smith, died in 1969. He flew back East in 1981 for the funeral of George Gainford. George had spent his last years traveling up and down the East Coast, looking for another great prizefighter. He’d cough and wheeze in small hotel rooms, then in the morning get himself over to the local fight gym. His long association with Sugar Ray Robinson still netted him respect and entrée—but he never found another Sugar Ray. Robinson’s mother, Leila, died in 1987.

  He never complained, but Sugar Ray Robinson was fairly broke. There never was enough money to move into one of the more upscale neighborhoods of Los Angeles, like Hancock Park. He told people he felt richer than ever: the kids, the youth work. “I’ve got friends” is how he explained his financial survival. “I borrow five grand, I pay back three. I borrow three, and pay two. Then something drops in, and I pay everybody.” The days of the pink Cadillac with the “RR” license plates were gone. He now drove a little red Pinto. He damn near had to squeeze himself into the thing. Every Sunday, though, he’d take Mrs. Robinson out to dinner at Mateo’s, in Westwood. Movie stars, lovely china, white cloth napkins, soft conversation.

  In 1979, Sugar Ray Robinson traveled to Washington, D.C., where he received an award from the Congressional Black Caucus for his work with youth. He felt mighty proud, regaling the politicians with stories of the kids in his program. It wasn’t until 1982 that he dropped in on Manhattan. He and Millie took a room at the St. Regis. Autumn in New York; he used to drive it with the top down. Dave Anderson, his cowriter on the autobiography, threw a party for him. The guests swirled around the champion.

  “Where the fuck is everybody?” he asked New York Post reporter Pete Hamill. (Millie had politely asked the reporters to refrain from trying to do long interviews.)

  Many had moved to the warmer climes in Florida. For every Manhattan fight gym that had closed, there was another one that had opened in Philadelphia, in Detroit, and some of the young fighters and managers had gone where the opportunities were. He went up to Harlem and shook his head: a lot of decay, a lot of misery. No lasting memory of what he had done in the community; no reminders of the days when he was bringing home Golden Gloves trophies, winning all those world championships. An apartment building had replaced his nightclub and barbershop. They were calling it urban renewal. He flew back home to Los Angeles.

  Millie was after him about his blood pressure medication, about the hypertension. His ailments all seemed to worsen beginning in the early 1980s. He didn’t want her to worry so much. He was put on various medications, but he loathed having to pop pills of any kind. Just as he abhorred visits to the hospital. It was a fear, rooted in his fight psyche: If he had been hurt in the ring, he’d plead with a doctor to follow him to his house and take care of him there. He feared being stuck in a hospital, being given bad news. Neighbors would still see him walking around the neighborhood, trying to get in his five miles; they turned to four miles, then three. He’d go get his out-of-town newspapers. Did he ever think, on those long walks, of Jimmy Doyle, the boxer he had killed, the young fighter who hailed from Los Angeles, who’d lived just a few miles away?

  His old friend Mel Dick sensed something amiss on a visit. “I went to look for him over at the youth foundation,” he recalls. “They told me he was shopping with Millie, over at Ralph’s Market. He was down an aisle, and he was wearing a red satin jacket. He said, ‘Hey, Mel,’ soon as he saw me. But he was slurring the words. And I knew something was up. But no one let on
.”

  Millie certainly wouldn’t let on; it was as if his strong pride had settled inside of her. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1984. Mel was worried enough that he came back a few months later with Bobbi, his wife. They all went to dinner at Mateo’s. “He asked me, three times, ‘Hey, Mel, what are you doing now?’” says Dick. Millie asked Mel to persuade Sugar Ray to go to the hospital. He kept complaining about the foundation—that they needed him. “When we tried to get him to go into the hospital, he wouldn’t listen,” says Mel.

  He finally relented, and was in and out of the hospital several times in 1987. Kids from the foundation came by, dropping off little get-well notes. Dave Anderson was out in Los Angeles in 1987 to cover the Super Bowl. He phoned and Millie invited him over. “As I came in, Ray was sitting in a chair,” Anderson recalls. “And Millie leaned over to him and said, ‘Ray, Ray, it’s Dave.’ He bounced up. He looked at me. Then he sat right back down.’ It was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen.” Still, Millie cooked dinner; she had invited a few guests to meet Anderson. “Every now and then someone would say something, and Ray would look up. But then, just like that, he’d go right back into a cocoon,” says Anderson.

  Reporters would come by the house, trying to get interviews, having heard word that the great prizefighter was ailing. Greg Moore was a young journalist with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He’d been an amateur fighter in his youth, and Sugar Ray was an idol. He found himself out in California, on vacation, so he went over to West Adams, having found out Sugar Ray’s address. He went up and knocked. Millie opened the door. He introduced himself and asked if he could meet Sugar Ray; he wanted to do a story. “She said she’d have to charge money for the interview, and I told her I couldn’t do that,” recalls Moore. He left without his story, but he did get some souvenir brochures and a few pictures.

  Sugar Ray spent much of January through April in bed, a sick man. Then Millie noticed something; it had begun in April. He would fold his arms across his chest and his fists would be balled. Every night, those charcoal-colored fists laid across his chest. She couldn’t bear to open them.

  On the morning of April 12, she heard some labored breathing. She checked on him, then found herself trying to revive him. Unable to, she rushed for the phone. The ambulance arrived within minutes. He was taken to the Brotman Medical Center in Culver City. But there was nothing they could do, and fifteen minutes after his arrival, the great prizefighter died. It was 10:09 in the morning, Pacific time. The final autopsy would show he died of heart failure. There was also the Alzheimer’s and the hypertension. He was sixty-seven years old.

  By early afternoon of the day he died, a great many of the children from his foundation were seen out on their porches in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, openly weeping.

  Tributes came from all over the world. The great fighters, his foes, sent condolences. Photo spreads in newspapers provided a cumulative portrait, a figure both dazzling and ferocious: in high hat and tails, in tailored gabardine suit; or in the ring, firing a muscled left hook into Bobo Olson. The obituary writers strained to find comparisons for his sartorial splendor, his fighting prowess, but they came up short no matter how they turned their memories inside out. He had been an original—at once vintage and new.

  “Let’s sing a song for Sugar Ray Robinson,” Pete Hamill wrote on the front page of the New York Post. “Get Miles on the horn and Max on drums, and play it in all the night places of the world.”

  How many children, in the end, had he saved? How many dreams had his foundation set loose? He’d wondered about such things on his daily walks. Sometimes he would knock on Wright Fillmore’s door with another idea, something for the kids. “The best,” Sugar Ray Robinson had started saying toward the end of his life, “is always fragile.”

  The funeral took place at the West Angeles Church of God and Christ in Los Angeles. The limos were parked deep; among the two thousand in attendance were former governor Edmund G. Brown, Motown founder Berry Gordy, California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, singer Lou Rawls, and actresses Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara McNair. The sun was shining. The former fight champions Bobo Olson, Archie Moore, and Ken Norton were easily recognized.

  Inside the ornate church, flowers covered the sides of the beige coffin. Children from Robinson’s youth foundation wept some more. Many wondered if the foundation would continue. (It would.) Elizabeth Taylor—there had always been a good seat for her and Richard Burton at Sugar Ray’s nightclub—walked down the aisle holding Millie’s hand. “Elizabeth loved Ray,” says Mel Dick. Mel tried to find Edna Mae; he knew she was there somewhere. Then someone told him she was indeed there, sitting toward the back. She was wearing a blonde wig, trying to disguise herself. Lou Rawls picked up a microphone during Jesse Jackson’s eulogy and started singing “My Buddy,” a plaintive ballad.

  In the months and years to come—she died in 1995—an elegant lady was often spotted crossing the grounds of the Evergreen Cemetery. She had a lovely little sway to her stride, as if she were listening to some jazz melody playing in the recesses of her mind. It was Millie Robinson, flowers in hand, going to meet her prizefighter.

  Langston Hughes died May 22, 1967, without ever having been able to get Sugar Ray to appear in one of his musical plays. (He thought Robinson would have been perfect for Tambourines to Glory.) His poetry and prose had swept across oceans, explaining a sepia world in such jubilant and expressive tones. Miles continued to struggle mightily with drugs. Still, in his later years, he could be spotted at boxing gyms from Manhattan to San Francisco, going a couple rounds with some young pugilists. He’d regale them afterward with tales of Sugar Ray. One of his last recordings was with Shirley Horn: You Won’t Forget Me. Miles, like Sugar Ray, had fallen in love with the West Coast; he died in Santa Monica in 1991. Lena Horne opened on Broadway in 1981 in a one-woman show. She looked luminous, her voice shatteringly strong. She won many honors for the engagement, among them a Tony. In 2008 she celebrated her ninety-first birthday in Manhattan. Call them all—Sugar Ray coming out of retirement to reclaim a championship belt—great Second Acts that possessed magic and made their America take notice.

  Imagine them, once again, in front of that long mirror inside the great prizefighter’s nightclub, setting off on their unknown journeys.

  epilogue

  I AM DRIVING into Sugar Ray’s Detroit, around some of the very streets he knew as a child. Another world champion prizefighter lives here. His name is Hilmer Kenty. In 1980 he became world lightweight champion by defeating Ernesto España. Kenty first arrived in Detroit from Columbus, Ohio, on New Year’s Eve, 1979. He was raised by a single mother; his Black Bottom in Columbus was the Windsor Terrace housing project. When he landed in Detroit he had five hundred bucks to his name and a run-down automobile. “They used to talk about the Brewster Recreation Center and Sugar Ray and Joe when I first got here. All the old-timers remembered them,” he says, sitting in his television room. He still looks fit. His red championship belt is in a nearby glass case. He fought a lot of his early fights at the old Olympia, the venue where Sugar Ray fought so many times. Hilmer Kenty was such an underdog in his championship bout that bettors out in Las Vegas didn’t even draw odds. Howard Cosell called the Kenty-España fight and seemed stunned like everyone else. “One of my trainers had said to me, ‘All you can do for a fighter is teach him the basics, then you have to let him go.’” He says in big fights the world, the audience, tends to go silent. “You don’t hear anything but your cornerman because you’re used to hearing his voice a lot.” Over the next couple of hours we sit watching Sugar Ray on a screen, studying some of the old fights in their glorious black-and-white texture. Sugar Ray is going after Basilio just now. “You see how Robinson throws the combination? That’s what Ali got from Robinson. Robinson got power from each of his punches. I’d have power maybe behind four of my punches. Robinson had power behind each punch.” (There is a story that, in Kenty’s mind, explains the power of the middle-weigh
t. One day during training, with his manager away on the road, he itched to get some work in. There was no one at the gym but a middleweight. A manager would never allow a lightweight to spar with a middleweight. “He threw a punch and broke my collarbone,” Kenty says of that middleweight.) He says a key to Robinson was his legs. “If you don’t have legs, you don’t have anything. There is nothing like having a guy come at you with punches and your legs are gone. Take a look at his legs. They’re bent. That’s why he can punch with movement, because he’s in a good boxer’s position. His legs are underneath him. Plus, he looks pretty doing it. It’s a different thing to win and look pretty doing it. You gonna get paid more.” Before he turned pro, Hilmer had an amateur fight out in Las Vegas. After one victory, he got to shake the great prizefighter’s hand. He just stared at Sugar Ray. Another video: Robinson and Rocky Graziano. “You can’t teach people how to put themselves in the right position to land that kind of uppercut,” he says of a just-delivered blow. For years Kenty wondered how Sugar Ray could knock someone out while backing away from them. “I really can’t explain that.” Hilmer stands up, takes a fighter’s position. “I guess he had his foot planted just right. You think someone taught him that? Didn’t nobody teach him that.” He also says: “One of the things Sugar Ray was so successful at is he put a lot of punches together. Punches in bunches. A lot of times the guy never saw the punch that knocked him out. One of the mistakes I made is that I didn’t watch his filmed fights while I was training. That’s a big regret of mine.” A not-so-old world champion stands in the driveway, waving goodbye.