Remembering a hero from Tough Man
Roger “Cookie” Wallace passed, a longtime friend I met through his brother, Richard “Dick’ Wallace, who was a Brooke County school bus driver who listened with encouragement about my aspiration to be in the fight racket. When I was working in Wellsburg back in the late 1970s, his brother would come from a long day’s work at Eagle Manufacturing to do his banking when I was a teller. But Cookie enjoyed unclaimed fame in the glove game having been the wheels in 1980 for the Ohio Valley Tough Man contest at what was then Wheeling Civic Center.
In what was a rather tense drive, Cookie provided a comic sigh of relief for Dick; Garey, his nephew; and myself. This was all new and none of us knew exactly what to expect. Cookie, Dick, and I had been regulars in bar room boxing at Aquanaut Lounge near Toronto. It was where I met the owner of the Columbiana County ambulance service and Salineville funeral home boxing, matchmaker Ray Manning, who would open the door for me to climb the ring steps. Garey was still in high school at that time so he was not of age.
The Wallace brothers began boxing at Web’s Pool Hall on 8th Street between Charles Street and Main Street in Wellsburg, encouraged by their father and a fellow named Johnny Durbin, who, in the early 1970s, hung a green duffel bag stuffed with blankets in the back room where Dick’s oldest son, Richard Jr., and Garey pounded on the old army canvas. The Pittsburgh newspapers were on strike during this period so very little documentation survives.
Dick, Richard, Garey and I traveled to the famed Center Avenue YMCA in Pittsburgh in the early winter of 74 it was Cliff Sachini of Follansbee, who fought at the YMCA under the guidance of Leo Paugh. He also boxed at Sullivan Hall at St. Marys’ Parrish in Mount Washington a week later. Not long afte,r Scotty Cross and Richard, under the guidance of Paugh. boxed in the preliminaries of the Pittsburgh Diamond Belt in 74 at Sullivan Hall. Scotty won the 132 sub-novice title at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. Scotty’s parents took me to the preliminaries at Sullivan Hall, where Scotty won the sub-novice diamond belts. Richard Jr provided a spartan education to his younger brother Garey, known effectively as Geese.
In between Garey won the Pittsburgh Golden Gloves 132-pound sub-novice title under the guidance of Paugh. Later, Garey fought on a card in Salineville where I served as chief second.
Back in Wheeling in 1980, Garey prevailed, but it was Cookie who remain the unsung hero of that first night standing by his brother Dick’s side with a certain amount of reassurance, as Dick wrapped Garey’s hands with white gauze and surgical tape. I can see Cookie face looking like his brother’s whose face was red as the gel was applied on Garey’s skin.
Gloving up the champion prizefighter for the evening’s first battle, I wore a white medical lab coat filled with an assortment of supplies. Tommy Shaffer, the Uniontown barber had brought his boxing ring with three burgundy ropes and canvas that was blood stained. Cutie Pie Chambers, an African American boxer who had once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard in an amateur show near Pittsburgh back in the early 1970s, was serving in some official capacity sitting on the east of the arena at rind side.
I wanted to lift the stool in a timely fashion and lift it before the buzzer and Chambers said I had never seen someone so anxious to get the stool in the ring, but Cookie barked back in my defense leave him alone, that he was just doing his job. I remember walking back to the locker room holding the bucket of ice that was melting the water with small blood spots from the mouthpiece on the surface and Cookie carrying the towel.
My memory is clear on this point: He was saying, “We have done good…really good…”
Cookie was so proud of both Garey and Dick, and, on the ride home, he just bubbled over. Cookie came up to me years later at the Wellsburg Banquet Hall this past winter asking me if I still remembered him. Because our paths had not crossed for several years. I said Cookie I ain’t that old yet. People who chew the fat say that in the fight game you meet the same people going up the ladder as coming down. To quote Angelo Dundee, “I just carried the spit bucket.”
It was a thrill to have been part of that first Toughman all those years ago and a pleasure to have known Cookie and his brother, Dick. They were truly very good men.
(Traubert is a resident of Wellsburg)