A Legacy to Some, Painful Reminders of Loss for One

LAS VEGAS -- In a curio cabinet in the living room rests a huge red, white and blue ornamental belt adorned with a massive gold buckle from The Ring magazine proclaiming the late Eddie Futch the greatest boxing trainer of the last century. In the bedroom is a bookcase still reserved for his precious books of poetry, some so worn and old they are bound by a staple of Eddie's corner man's box: tape.

In the garage are white cardboard file boxes, each labeled with sticky notes, stacked neatly on plastic shelving all from floor to ceiling filled with the training logs, contracts and correspondence of each prizefighter Eddie made a champion: Arguello, Berbick, Bowe, Norton, Spinks, Holmes and, of course, Frazier.

"It's what I have left of Eddie," Eddie's widow, Eva, told me as she explained one historic boxing item after another tucked around the modest Vegas home, on a quiet cul-de-sac well off the bawdy strip, where she and Eddie lived for a few years before he died in 2001.

"I felt comforted by the memories for a long time, but now," Eva said, her bright blue eyes glossing over, "they've become a burden."

With that admission, Eva excused herself from my presence for a moment to find her compose. She would do so again before my visit ended three hours later.

"Having a broken heart is every bit as valid as having a broken arm," she said.

Eva isn't proof that love hurts as much as she is proof that lost love can haunt. It has haunted her more and more in the home she and Eddie shared before he died in 2001. There aren't any ghosts that hover, just the physical recollections.

There are the brilliantly colored original paintings on her kitchen wall by Joe Dobbins, Eddie's nephew. There are the countless original boxing posters from decades past of Eddie's fighters and fights Eddie promoted, like one from the early '60s touting a boxer named Cassius Clay.
Eva isn't proof that love hurts as much as she is proof that lost love can haunt. It has haunted her more and more in the home she and Eddie shared before he died in 2001. There aren't any ghosts that hover, just the physical recollections.

There are boxes of boxing gloves from various champions like the ones Michael Spinks used to beat Eddie Mustafa Muhammad for the light heavyweight championship in 1981. There is a menu from Jack Dempsey's restaurant in New York City in 1941. There is the first Ring magazine dated Feb. 15, 1922 -- 20 cents. There is Eddie's I.D. card from the Thrilla in Manila, the third and final match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier on Oct. 1, 1975, in the Philippines that many consider the most epic fight in boxing history, the one in which Futch famously and humanely refused his bloodied and battered charge Frazier to go into the 15th round.

I never thought there was a nicer or more sincere person in boxing than Eddie Futch, and I was hardly alone in that thought. Now I wonder if there was a nicer wife in the game than Eva.

Eva said she's reached a point in her still young life where she wants to -- where she must -- part with the pugilistic chapter in her life.

"I never thought about selling it [the memorabilia] because it can be great comfort," she said, showing me the suit Eddie wore when they were married in 1996. "But I feel like other people can learn from Eddie's life. What he went through was a lot."

Eddie had gone through most of his life when Eva met him in 1991 in Reno, where he was training Riddick Bowe and she was studying and administering holistic wellness techniques. She was 31. He was 80. She was a blue-eyed blond from Sweden. He was a grizzled but quiet-spoken black man from the hard-knock side of African-American life. It didn't make sense to most anyone who witnessed their love life bloom.

"For Eddie and I, there was never a sense of surprise when we got married," Eva said. "Eddie was the fun of my life."

They were married 5 ½ years when Eddie died.

Eva spends her time nowadays working on a wellness center she is trying to start in Vegas and providing comfort to patients at a nearby hospice with her therapy dog Joe-Joe, a German Shepard named after Joe Louis, for whom Eddie worked with in the 40s, and Joe Frazier, Eddie's most-famous pupil.

"It's therapeutic for me," Eva said of her volunteer work at the hospice, "because it helps me forget."

Then she comes home and is reminded all over again of who she said was the only love of her life.

"I feel like a prisoner here sometimes," Eva said of her home, which she's had to fortify in recent years because of attempted break-ins. "It's been difficult."

Eva said she not long ago donated some of Eddie's materials to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., where Eddie was inducted in 1994. There is a World Boxing Hall of Fame in Riverside, Calif., where Eddie also is enshrined.

What Eva has left of Eddie's work over the years is enough to seed a boxing museum on its own. She would like to do so in Las Vegas, which is where whatever is boxing's most-recognized hall of fame should be. What a wonderful gesture it would be for the existing boxing hall of fames to merge in Las Vegas, the epicenter of the fight game for the past 30 or more years, and use it as a depository for Eddie's wonderful life.

Or maybe the University of Las Vegas would be interested in housing the Eddie Futch collection. It certainly is worthy of an academy's library with all the correspondence Eddie had from the years with famous people like, for example, Eddie Rickenbacker, the famous race car driver and fighter pilot, and Roots author Alex Haley.

"I'd like to keep the core of it together," Eva said. "It's about boxing history and African-American history. It's inspiring."

It once even buoyed a young woman who felt so alone after losing her love. Now, if she can find a home for it, it can free her.