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1thLife of Tex Rickard One of Adventurela-ef-iveHo?litillyMl-/astoIser-to id y of d's rd. ho t-al It on (uInICCi’shnenleer,inirsassi-lientnl,dsLC-Episodes Of Career Captured Popular Fancy.New York. Jan. 7—(rXS)— Tex Rickard's death has cut short a career as colorful as any that is to he found within the covers of roinuiillc fiction. The man so lived Jii3 lifo In a series of glamorous episodes that it captured the popular fancy and made of him a figure almost unreal to tlib ken of commonplace existence. The hero never dies Id the pages of a novel, hui Tex Rickard is dead today and, somehow, the fact seems not quite credible. He was an Institution and, In our minds, institutions last forever.There is no doubt, however, that. In leasing this life, Rickard has Usied to the full of its sweets lt;and of Its hitters, ile crowded sevor.11 centuries of experience into the fiftyseven years he knew 011 earth.Cow puncher, town marshal in the tough days of the West's hadHe HasslesOils Sonnenbcrg was one of Dartmouth's bc?t foothnll players hut when he left college he didn’t go Into the pro football game, lie hrcftine a professional wrestler i.) get a slake to start him in business and lie went right to theway across llic pin Ini Into the gicnl unknown —these were some of Rickard's onrlv experience;?. He ran a gambling house in Dawson where gold and the lure of the Yukon alike held men In a vivid. Icy grip and lie ran It into the ground, broke. It wasn’t a new experience.men, Alaskan prospector, driver• top of the class, in the picture of a covered wagon pioneering its i above he is iho'sn as he complet-Itl*y.nir-lylieorodmy-li-ldd-lCid miinlnc for u recent match in Boston against Strangler Lewis for the world's championship.Wood chopper for the river steamers, odd-jobs man—just doing the best he could. Sixty thousands dollars, his all, blown in that Dawson gaming venture. At this junciiire. it looked like a life of unremitting tod and obscurity for Rickard. How '’iffcrenl the actuality!Came other years and other gold rushes. One of them took Rickard to GobKield, Nev.. where he opened n not her Palace of ChauccM and began to prosper. Old timers referred to Rickard's place as being on the level always and, if the man eked out a comfortable income thereby, he undoubtedly deserved 11.]Then the inspiration! He would bring the Gans-Nelson lightweight championship to Goldfictd. .Tnst a hunch, but it was to alter the tide of a life time beyond all recognition and carry Rickard into the world of men and big things as the greatest boxing promoter of the ages. This one fight didn’t do it; it was only the start.And the finish? Nine million dollars In gate receipts on heavv-weight championship alone within the last eight years. A million dollars in his own right, a chateau in Miami. Florida, a private yacht, the proprietor of a gilded palace of sports, the associate of men famous in the arts, in the professions and in finance. A man admired, respected, sought after, his favors regarded as the largess of royalty. Of a certainty, fiction is defied!Tex” Rickard was bom fifty-seven years ago on January 2, at Kansas City, Mo.Barely out of his swaddling elo'hep. the young Rickard, one o’r five children, migrated from Kansas City to the great Texas plains, and there with his family, settled in Sherman, Texas.The elder Ricknrd. a millwright 1)3' trade, found it hard to support his family in Sherman, and when he heard of glowing prospects further west, huddled his family into a covered wagon and pushed on to Henrietta. Tex.In 1SS0, when Tex was eight years old, his father was stricken and It was necessary for the boy tomaterially contribute to the port of his family.sup-When Tex was sixteen he was engaged to go with a herd of cattle all the way up to Montana, and several years later he was electedtown mnrrhnlt of Wcnrieltu, Texas, the scene of his boyhood.The year I8D5 saw Rickard in j Alaska. He struck gold, and when ho sold out his interest In the lead” he had some $30,000 ingold dust. Then he got thegambling fever, and opened a gaming house at Dawson where he also acted as banker for the miners.This venture in Alaskan gamhl-ing cost Tex every nickle he owned, and he left Dawson flat broke. And. not having the wherewithal for further prospecting, he cut cord wood for the river steamers. which paid the magnificent sum of 513 a cord.July ith, ]S$n. was a red letter day in the lifo of Tex Rickard and Id the social life of the Yukon, for it was on this dnv lli.iL Tex. fn company with a man named Murphy, opened up a gambling house and sold liquor nt fifty cents a drink. Here the men played faro and roulette, and Ricknrd recalled that the receipts on the opening day wore In ex-ces* of $000. Tiring of tlio Yukon. Rickard headed for San Francisco. landing in California withlittle better than $€0,000 in golddust.The lust for adventure took him down Into the Tonapah and Coldfield country.With his feet propped up on his desk, scanning a newspaper in his office at Coldfield, Nevada, the Idea of promoting a prize fight first occurred to Tex. Impulse. and nothing more, inveigled Tex Rickard into the fight game. The Item which caught Tex's eye In the local newspaper referred to a possible fight between Joe Gaus and Battling Nelson and of the chances of finding a likely place to hold the exhibition.Almost before ho knew what lie was about ,hc had sent a mes-sa',T over to*Nolan, Bat Nelson’s manager.‘‘How much would you want to hold the Gans-Nelson fight In Gold field. read the wire.(The price was $30,000. To make a short story shorter the Gans-Nelson fight, as every fight fan knows, was held in Co'ldficld. And Rickard was on his way to permanent fame and fortune. ,c11His career as a promoter was a brilliant one including such outstanding exhibitions as the Demp-sey-Willard, the Derapsey-Carpen-Her, the Dempsey-Firpo, ihe Flrpo-Wllls. and the two Tunncj'-Dcmp-sey fights.In 1002 Tex married his first wife. Mrs, Edith .May Haig, and after twenty-three years of perfect domestic felicity, Mrs. Rickard passed away In October 1025.In the following year the promoter married Miss Maxine Hodges nt White Sulphur Springs, W. Vn.As a living memorial to the memory of lids famous sport promoter stands Mndlsor. Square Garden, little old New York's home of pby-fair and fair-piny—an Indoor arena of great magnitude made possible by the Ingenuity, the resourcefulness. the clean'ambitions of a quiet man whom the world affectionately called Tex/1I1 ho lenders of w Inter-season pro motion.If the fight In declared on. other hands will attempt to seize the strings that guide the destiny of a big event. They may even sue ceed, as Rickard would have succeeded, and If they do. it will be a further tribute to the man's genius of organization. Some day, loo, a hand other than John McGraw’s will have to guide the New York GInnts. But neither institution ever wilt seem quite the same.The chances will be dead against it. In both cases. Inspirational genius such as Uicknrd's Is seen once In a century. U isn't created again with a snap of the fingers. The kingdom he built still lives hut the king is dead and nono fit to don the roynl robea Is available. So today we have the insistent qucftllon without an answer, after this; \vh«t. frankly, anythingla possible.
Newspaper Details
Olean Times
Olean, New York, US
Mon, Jan 07, 1929
Page 13
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 27 Sep 2018
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