Gzeta_MARZEC_SKLAD 27.p65

A “FINAL FAREWELL FOR AN
ASSASSINATED WORLD CHAMPION”
- BY JEFFREY R. PORTKO, ESQ.
When told that boxing champion Stanley Ketchel had been shot and
was dead, Nat Fleischer (future editor of “The Ring” Magazine), said
in disbelief, “Tell you what, boys; start counting over him, and he’ll get
up before you get to ten”. Nobody could believe that the dashing young
Polish-American boxing champion had been killed.
tanislaus Kiecal, better known to the world as
the great Stanley Ketchel, was born September
14, 1886, of immigrant Polish parents in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. By 1903 young “Steve”, as
he was called, had changed his Polish family name to
“Americanize” it for accurate pronunciation purposes.
He was a practical joker, snappy dresser, bawdy bachelor
and an intense contestant with a heart of gold who, from
1903 to 1910, earned an enviable ring record of 50
knockouts in 60 recorded fights, not
including exhibition matches. Ketchel was
the first boxer inducted into the Boxing
Hall of Fame. His only formal match in
Grand Rapids was a 3-round exhibition
bout with Tony Caponi, on January 15,
1909, for a hometown tune-up. His
meteoric rise to the World Middleweight
Boxing Championship included winning it,
losing it and winning it back again. He lost
an overly-ambitious mismatched fight for
the World Heavyweight title against the
renowned undefeated boxing champion
Jack Johnson, in the 12th round, on Oct.
16, 1909.
One day less than a year later, Steve
lost his life at age 24. On October 15th,
1910, he was shot in the back, robbed of
over $2,000 cash and left for dead by a stable hand, after
sitting down for breakfast at his training camp in Missouri.
(Shortly after, the murderer was caught on the run, tried
and convicted, sentenced to life in prison.) The country
and the whole sports world mourned the tragic loss of
this ethnic working class celebrity. Grand Rapids’ shocked
Polish immigrant community felt an even deeper personal
loss.
Suddenly, their flamboyant “hometown hero”,
inspiration and champion, was dead. An especially gloomy
day greeted an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 people attending
his funeral for the famous fighter’s last “exhibition” as
the big bells of St. Adalbert Church tolled. The entire
Polish community turned out to mark this occasion.
Furniture factories had to close because only a few
workers came to work that morning.
On Oct. 20, 1910 on Grand Rapids’ West Side in
honor of the “Murdered Ring-General”, according to the
“Grand Rapids Herald”, by 8 a.m., a huge crowd had
gathered around St. Adalbert’s Basilica (then Kościół św.
Wojciecha) at Fourth and Davis NW, the
epicenter of Grand Rapids’ Polish
community. The Herald reported that
thousands flooded the area to pay their last
respects to the young man who really went
west to seek his fortune.
Over on the East Side, just across the
Grand River, during a drizzling rain on that
cool morning, the Pulaski Silver Coronet
Band played Polish hymns and American
military tunes. Carriages containing many
young Polish girls resplendently dressed in
white, carrying large bouquets of red
flowers, waited for hours at Leonard and
Canal (now Monroe NW). Finally, the
elegantly draped white hearse and the
cortege drawn by four white horses, from
the family farm home on Pine Island Lake
in Belmont, arrived at the old city limits. It was met there
and formally escorted by Ketchel’s fellow members of the
Loyal Order of Elks, the Knights of St. Casimir and
various other Polish Societies in their ornate uniforms
and regalia. Led by the deliberate dirge of the musicians
playing Chopin’s Funeral March, no funeral of its kind
has ever been seen in Grand Rapids since.
All along the route of this solemn procession the
curbs were lined with hundreds of spectators. Undeterred
by the weather, children and adults spontaneously
followed the parade to the church on foot or joined it in
page 62
Gzeta_MARZEC_SKLAD 27.p65
www.polishnews.com
62
3/12/2006, 2:27 PM
carriages, in honor of the
slain fighter. They arrived at
the church about 10 o’clock
in the morning. The service
was delayed because it was
immensely difficult for the
pallbearers to make their
way with the casket through
the dense crowd and into
the church building.
Outside, people boosted
themselves high into trees,
climbed utility poles, and stood on rooftops, garages, cars
and porches, and even others’ shoulders, just to catch a
glimpse of the gloved gladiator from Grand Rapids.
Requiem Mass was celebrated by local Polonia’s
foremost religious leader, The Rt. Rev. Monsignor Casimir
Skory, Pastor of St. Adalbert’s Catholic Church, and silence
fell for over 2 hours, as each person strained to hear a few
words of the liturgy. When the service ended about 12:30
p.m., the crowd outside did not diminish. The casket was
quietly delivered from the church steps back into the hearse
and the formal procession continued on to Stocking and
then Walker NW to Holy Cross Polish Cemetery on
Richmond NW. Along with the band and thousands of
mourners, the hearse made its way to the small hilltop
gravesite and his final resting place, which is marked by a
huge tombstone, erected by
Ketchel’s promoter and manager, Col. Dickerson.
After the graveside internment rites, the Kiecal family
announced that they were all changing their legal family
name to Ketchel (Kiecal is pronounced exactly the
same in Polish) in Steve’s honor, and it has been
Ketchel ever since, through all the later family
generations.
Interest in the Ketchel saga continues. A rare
book about Ketchel, “The Michigan Assassin” was
written in 1946 by Nat Fleischer, the Editor of Ring
Magazine. Fleischer knew and had interviewed Stanley
Ketchel personally, as a young sports reporter. Later
Ring Magazine declared Ketchel the greatest
middleweight boxer in modern history. In 2004 a Grand
Rapids author, retired teacher Gene Skazinski,
published an updated biography. The funeral itself
simply confirmed Ketchel’s historic fame and glory. To
this day, true boxing fans, champions and curious
visitors from around the world still come here to honor
“Steve”. An official Grand Rapids City Historical
Marker in memory of Stanley Ketchel was placed by
the Polish Heritage Society (paid for by donations sent
in by Ketchel fans from all around the world) near his
St. Adalbert Church funeral site at the corner of Third
and Stocking NW, across from the Arsulowicz Brothers
Mortuary.
NOTE: If anyone is interested in exploring a special tribute to Ketchel as we approach the centennial of his death,
less than four years hence, please phone 616-456-5353, or email [email protected], or write to the author at P.O.
Box 1298, Grand Rapids, MI 49501.
Grand Rapids Attorney Jeffrey Portko, as the then President of the Polish Heritage Society, led the successful fundraising
campaign to erect the Ketchel Historical Marker in 1990. Former President of Grand Rapids Sister Cities International, he
writes on various legal, historical and Polish subjects and was recently appointed to the Board of Directors of The American
Center for Polish Culture in Washington, DC as its Legal Counsel.
page 63
Gzeta_MARZEC_SKLAD 27.p65
63
3/12/2006, 2:28 PM