If you were a young man living in Bangor a century ago, you most likely were familiar with Ernie McIntyre, the Aroostook Demon, and a host of other regional “masters of the mitts” with outrageous monikers.
More than McIntyre perhaps during that spring of 1915, you had certainly heard of Jack Johnson and Jess Willard and their upcoming punch fest in Havana for the heavyweight championship of the world.
Johnson had Maine ties, too.
Among the pugilistic heroes actually walking the streets of Bangor then, you might have met up with local legend Jack McAuliffe, who was making a stopover in his hometown to “look over a number of local boys … to see if any of them look promising.”
Aside from his Bangor background, McAuliffe’s claim to fame was that he was “the only man in pugilistic history who had the ability and the brains to leave the ring an undefeated champion,” the Bangor Daily News said on June 23.
McAuliffe had been one of the boxing world’s former lightweight champs for several years. Like John L. Sullivan and “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, he had appeared on local vaudeville stages to cash in on his fleeting fame.
Boxing was more popular than horse racing at the moment.
Perhaps more people played on local baseball and basketball teams or bowled at the new Bowlodrome downtown than boxed, but the romance of the “squared circle” reigned supreme for folks who preferred to demonstrate their athletic prowess in the audience.
“It is perfectly safe to say that more boxing shows were held in Bangor during the past year than for many years previous,” the Bangor Daily News reported in its end-of-the-year sports roundup. Seven shows had been held at the Nickel Theater (later the Olympia) on Union Street across from the Bangor House, and three others had been featured at the Pastime Club on Main Street.
The biggest fight that year, however, and certainly the one that would be remembered the longest, could only be followed in Bangor by ear from the middle of Main Street. Hundreds of men in the popular caps of the era gathered in front of the Bangor Daily Commercial offices on April 5 to hear the results of the Johnson-Willard fight all the way from Havana. Even if you don’t care for boxing, this event is a lesson in how the mass communications of the era worked.
The Johnson-Willard contest was a social touchstone with titanic racial implications. How long could a black man hold the much venerated title of heavyweight champion of the world? Willard was the latest “great white hope” to go up against the African-American powerhouse who had broken one of the racial barriers of the era by threatening the athletic hegemony of the white man.
The local press coverage began when prominent businessman Edwin N. Miller of the Miller & Webster Co. returned to Bangor from Havana after a vacation with his wife. Miller had watched Willard work out with his sparring partners at training quarters near his hotel. His interview with a Bangor Daily News reporter gives some idea of the seriousness with which the upcoming fight was regarded.
“It seems to me that Willard is a sort of eleventh hour favorite. His claims were not taken very seriously at first, but in Havana as elsewhere, the tide is turning in his favor. Certainly nobody could see him train, as I did several times, without being impressed,” Miller told the reporter in a story on April 5.
“I confess I’d like to have stayed over and seen the fight, and would have done so if business hadn’t made it necessary for me to be here,” he said.
Another story the same day outlined some of Johnson’s activities in Maine going back to the winter of 1906 before he was a famous fighter. Johnson had first come to Maine looking for a job. He had tended a log sled for Great Northern Paper Co. at Sourdnahunk Lake camp.
When he returned the next year, it was by invitation of Billy Dunning, an acquaintance he had met working at GNP. Later nicknamed “the Sawmill Champ” by one of the newspapers, Dunning was a well-known figure in the region’s boxing fraternity. Johnson was paid $50 to return to Millinocket and fight Dunning.
The contest was declared a draw, and Dunning developed an inflated idea of his skills. Johnson said later that he had been warned by local officials, including the chief of police not to knock out Dunning or hurt him in any way, thus explaining Dunning’s spectacular survival.
Johnson enjoyed a meteoric rise to ring fame after that, and Dunning boasted how he had fought him to a draw. Billy’s skills had been much exaggerated, however. He died after a match against a much superior fighter in 1910 at the Presque Isle Opera House.
About the same time, after he defeated Jim Jeffries in Nevada in another “great white hope” engagement for the heavyweight championship, Johnson returned to Bangor with his own vaudeville act, appearing at the Bangor Opera House. Many of Bangor’s boxing fans would have remembered this event as they prepared to follow the Johnson-Willard contest in Havana.
On the afternoon of April 5, 1915, hundreds of men gathered in the street outside the Bangor Daily Commercial, where the results of the contest were flowing in on the Associated Press wire.
“The Commercial gave the crowd that thronged the street in front of the office the full service, announcing the rounds by megaphone, and finally 1,500 filled the roadway from sidewalk to sidewalk, blocking the [trolley] cars and almost suspending traffic while the news of the big fight was coming in,” the paper reported that evening.
A “special squad of police” took care of traffic. The sidewalk was roped off so pedestrians could get by. Most of them stopped to listen, however.
Meanwhile, dozens of phone calls from all over eastern Maine flooded the newspaper’s two phone lines, and two staffers spent the afternoon informing callers of the fight’s progress.
The next day the newspaper ran a photograph of the “animated scene” in front of its building. There was lots of cheering, but no fights as the results were announced round after round until Willard was declared the winner after knocking out Johnson. White men everywhere could reclaim their manhood for the time being.
The Bangor Daily News, located down on Exchange Street, also received many calls.
“Undoubtedly, popular sentiment favored the white man — as naturally anticipated,” a reporter commented. “There seemed no very violent partisans on either side, however, in marked contrast to the day when Johnson won the title from Jeffries, and it is a safe bet that very little money was wagered in Bangor.”
The only violence reported in the Bangor papers occurred in Bucksport where two Portuguese dock workers slashed each other with knives in a dispute over the outcome of the fight, according to a Bangor Daily Commercial report on April 7.
Wayne E. Reilly’s column on Bangor a century ago appears in the newspaper every other Monday. His latest book, “Hidden History of Bangor: From Lumbering Days to the Progressive Era,” is available where books are sold. Comments can be sent to him at wreilly.bdn@gmail.com.