Vernon Forrest One of True Good Guys

The truth is that, often times, those of us in this business find ourselves struggling to say only good things about a recently deceased personality whose acts in life demanded that we make him or her known to the public. With Vernon Forrest, it seemed to be the opposite.

It is not manufactured hyperbole for the purpose of being polite that you are hearing and reading such wonderful things about Forrest, a three-time boxing champ who we learned Sunday was fatally shot Saturday night in a carjacking attempt in Atlanta. A more famous Atlanta fighter, Evander Holyfield, may be most well-known as the Real Deal, but there was absolutely nothing phony about the good guy who was Forrest. As HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg, whose network carried many of Forrest's bouts, told the Associated Press on Sunday of Forrest: "He was one of the most gracious and charitable fighters in boxing and he will be missed by the entire boxing community and all of his friends at HBO."

Forrest will be missed most, however, by people beyond the ring -- people who need people, as the old Barbra Streisand song goes.

Forrest told this story any time he was asked. It goes that he was hanging out at the home of a friend who worked with the psychologically and emotionally challenged. (How novel is that? He wasn't hanging out at the strip club or dogfighting ring.) He watched one of those in his friend's stead, an autistic child, who Forrest said struggled for an hour to tie his shoes.

Forrest said he became so frustrated watching the child fight to do something most of us take for granted that he could no longer take it for granted. His friend refused to help the child because the friend hoped the child would break through alone. The child's battle broke Forrest, however, and Forrest eventually helped the child tie his shoes. Then Forrest set out to help others with similar struggles.

"If you sit there and watch a person take about an hour to tie his shoestrings, then you realize that whatever problems you got ain't that significant," Forrest recounted to the New York Times in August 2006 before a match against Ike Quartey. "A light just turned on in my head."


It was the mid-'90s when Forrest had his epiphany. He was closing in on 20 professional fights without a loss but didn't have much bank or accolades to show for it. A native of Augusta, Ga., Forrest had planned to jumpstart his pro career in 1992 like Oscar De La Hoya with an Olympic gold medal from the Barcelona Games, but he was easily upset in his opening match and said afterward that he'd been stricken with food poisoning.

Nonetheless, Forrest scrapped together around $80,000 with some other easily touched people, like his hip-hop video friend Ki Toy Johnson, and formed a company called Destiny's Child Inc. Their idea: to provide long-term care to people like the autistic child whose shoestrings he helped tie.

Forrest, who studied business administration at Northern Michigan University, and his partners purchased a suburban Atlanta home in 1996 and retrofitted it for the demands of their business. Destiny's Child, which took in patients from institutions or families that were no longer able to care for them, didn't get any cheaper to finance than it was to start up. This was healthcare, after all, the very industry President Obama and many others are saying is too costly to meet the needs of everyone who should have it and, as a result, needs to be reformed. Forrest was experiencing all of that.

Forrest's payroll grew to include as many as 25 caregivers, coordinators, and administrative staff. There was a $5 million insurance policy as protection against malpractice that he had to pick up. And in 2000, the state of Georgia requested that Forrest's company take in 17 patients who were enrolled in a competing firm that folded. Forrest couldn't say no to the extra patients anymore than he could sit idly by as that autistic kid fought to tie his shoes.

It didn't matter that the increased patient load nearly bankrupted Destiny's Child.

The story continues that, with Forrest at the helm, Destiny's Child picked up the clothing and medical cost for the new patients. Forrest was said to have financed the entire $100,000 rescue operation. It would be six more months before Medicaid payments kicked in.

"One of the things that I always wanted to do is help people out," Forrest told Black Enterprise magazine in March 2003. "But I didn't want to do something cosmetic. I want to know what I do is going to make a difference in somebody's life."

"I didn't want to do something cosmetic. I want to know what I do is going to make a difference in somebody's life."
-- Vernon Forrest By 2003, Black Enterprise stated that Forrest's altruistic venture had 30 patients and generated just over $1 million in annual revenues that were derived mostly from Medicaid reimbursements.

"Our objective as a whole is to make sure nobody is abused or mistreated, and so we try to do right by the people we have there," Forrest told the magazine.

Forrest was standing out in the ring by then, too. He was 35-0 at the end of 2002 after beating Shane Mosley in back-to-back fights to win and retain the World Boxing Council's welterweight title. He was Ring magazine's Fighter of the Year.

That proved to be Forrest's zenith in the ring. He lost for the first time in 2003, twice to Ricardo Mayorga. After battling his way back to a light middleweight title in 2007, he lost it to a star from the boxing reality show The Contender, Sergio Mora, in 2008. He got the belt back in a rematch.

But ultimately Forrest will not be remembered by what he did as a prizefighter. He'll be recalled for what he did as a fighter for people not as fortunate as he was.

Vernon Forrest didn't just sound like one of the good guys in the sport of boxing. He sounded like one of the good guys in sports, period.