As tough as he was, my dad Shamus carried around an inspirational poem in his wallet until the day he died.

Poems can be tough, too.

My dad’s namesake James J. Corbett, boxing’s first heavyweight champion under Marquis of Queensbury rules, wrote the poem called “One More Round.”

 “Fight one more round.

When your feet are so tired that you have to shuffle back to the center of the ring,  fight one more round.

When your arms as so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard, fight one more round.

When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired that you wish your opponent would crack you on the jaw and put you to sleep, fight one more round—remembering that the man who always fights one more round is never whipped.”

When World War II ended in 1945 Shamus brought home two pair of 16 oz. boxing gloves, one of which is pictured above, that he used to train for the Armed Forces Heavyweight Championship he won as an Army soldier in Bermuda.

At 6-foot-1, 172 pounds, Shamus could box and he could hit.

When we were 16 years old, Sonny Drake and I spent hours pounding each other in the back yard with these gloves, dancing around the coal ash pile in which I used to hide whiskey I stole from where my father stored his liquor bottles beneath the kitchen sink. Throwing jabs, hooks and straight, short right hands, through busted lips and bruised eyes, Sonny and I learned to go one more round.

Sonny’s gone now.

And I’m aging at 73 like a chewed up mouthpiece.

Despite being cracked, worn and 80 years old, these gloves symbolize perseverance.

Always did.

Always will.