JOY RIDE
THE three-and-a-half hour ride from New York to Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 2008, would be one that sealed my fate. I had decided to adhere to whatever Bernard Fernandez wanted. He was stepping down after serving five terms as the President of the Boxing Writers Association of America, and I’d arrived to seek his endorsement as the heir apparent.
That afternoon Fernandez spoke as he wrote, calmly and in a clear and concise manner, making me aware of all I needed to know before giving his blessing. But any thought that the fire in his belly had subsided was later put to rest during the first of my six terms as his successor. Fernandez had instituted an award named after the late Bill Crawford, a war hero who was a Congressional Medal of Honour winner (USA). It was for “Courage in Overcoming Adversity.” As voted by the BWAA membership, one of the recipients was to be Boston’s George Kimball.
Fernandez had gone to great lengths to get another Congressional Medal of Honour winner to present the award, but Kimball who was an anti-war activist, declined, informing me he wanted to receive it from someone else. When I relayed
