12 Aug 2024, Monday
12 Aug 2024, Monday
Prioritized Daily Task
Work on Nokbox, Next Of Kin Box
Jami Hobbs 42nd birthday
Up early 3:30 am prayed, took the garbage and recycle containers to the street, answered Elain's text asking about the time and locations of activities around Alex and Carter's wedding this week, and went back to bed. I got up again when Jody called Debbie at 8 am. Debbie and I had prayer and I studied the scriptures. At 9 am MST I called 866-839-2435 and had the $89.00 annual fee reversed so there was a $0 balance. Then I canceled my Barclays FRONTIER Airlines World Mastercard. Debbie and I had a nice breakfast before she left to go shopping for a dress for Alex and Carter's wedding. I did not get a phone call from Humanan's Claims Department at 10 am so I called them about the $39 Debbie and I were charged by Eyecare of Lehi on Friday, 9th of Aug. I communicated with their AI, then a representative, and finally got to speak with Maria in claims. The bill for my and Debbie'e eye exam from Eyecare of Lehi has not been processed and may take up to 7 days. Once the bill is processed Maria said they will then be able to assist. I did some cleaning of the house and put things up from the children and grandchildren staying here from last week. I shined my shoes I will be wearing and started packing for our trip to CA this week. Debbie and I had salad and sandwiches for dinner. We had prayer together before going to bed before midnight.
Notes: I watched some documentaries on world champion heavyweight boxers, Cassius Clay or Muhammad Ali is hailed by many as the greatest boxer of all time. Then there is Mike Tyson, Sonny Liston, Evander Holyfield, Rocky Marciano, Suga Ray Robinson pound for pound the greatest fighter of all time with 201 fights, 184 wins, and 109 knockouts all over the world. As a teenager, he was a Golden Gloves champion. He started his professional career at the age of 19. He was a lightweight champion, a middleweight champion, and fought light heavyweight. Sugar Ray Robinson knocked out Rocky Graziano in April 1952. He died in 1989 at the age of 67 from heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's. Joe Lewis one of the greatest and most influential boxers of all time held the heavyweight title for 12 years, from 1937 to 1949. Jack Dempsey born 1895, was a Mormon (member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). He died in 1983 and was a heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926. He was one of the most popular boxers of all time and the first to draw a million-dollar gate. At the age of 75, he beat up 2 younger guys who tried to mug him while he was entering his car. George Foreman was the Most Powerful Boxer In History. In 1973 he knocked out undefeated World Champion Joe Frazer in the second round. George lost the title to Muhammad Ali. Then after retiring for ten years he ran out of money to support his youth community center. He went back in the ring at the age of 46 and knocked out Michael Moore to reclaim the title he had lost 20 years earlier as the Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the world. These stories are good, very good, but my favorite is about Mosese Lui Muti, a Tongan, born in 1911 and was called and set apart as a missionary by Apostle George Albert Smith. He said in his blessing to Elder Muti that if he served mightily and faithfully as a missionary in the Chruch, the day would come when he would go with his family to the temple in New Zealand without the loss of a single cent of your own money. His family would never suffer from poverty. He also promised he would have opportunities to serve and bless others in numbers he could not even imagine at that time. The young missionary he was to train and work with for two years was Charles "Chuck"J Woodworth. In the area where Elder Woodworth served his mission, he had been a leader of a zone of 7 missionaries. Chuck grew up in post-war Missouri, raised by a single mother, along with his five siblings. It was a hardscrabble life where children didn't just help with the chores, but the older ones, like Chuck and his older brother Richard, worked to help their mother pay the bills.
The national Golden Gloves boxing tournament was created in 1937, preceding the youth sports leagues that dominate suburbia today. There were no movie theaters, malls, no Boys & Girls Club or Little League teams in Joplin, Mo., to create childhood memories — just a musty, old gym with a boxing ring, mismatched gloves, a few jump ropes and a heavy bag. Joplin's second-story gym belonged to a fella named John Grau, who owned the auto parts store underneath the gym.
That's where the Woodworth boys spent their free time.
With no other form of entertainment, the Chuck and Richard Woodworth got pretty good with their fists. Born two years apart and tired of their constant fighting, their mother bought them each a pair of boxing gloves hoping they'd learn to fight fair and learn some discipline.
In the 1950s, before Title 9, boxing was a popular collegiate sport and most of the top schools like Notre Dame, the Ivies and the service academies fielded teams and many offered scholarships. Chuck Woodworth was good enough to attract some offers but his heart was set on going to Utah to attend BYU. Because BYU didn't have a boxing team, Chuck paid his tuition, books, room and board by boxing at club events along the Wasatch Front.
If he was lucky, he'd make $100, but most of the time it would be $10-20 for a three- to four-round match. Once, Chuck was the main attraction as a light heavyweight in the brand new George Albert Smith Fieldhouse on a card that also featured football player Famika Anae, a heavyweight on the undercard, whose sons would play football at BYU decades later.
While at BYU, Chuck shared a room with a young man from Idaho named John Groberg. When Groberg received his mission call to Tonga, the idea of following his friend to serve the Lord intrigued Chuck. Naively, he thought that if he simply submitted his paperwork, he too would get to go to Tonga with his pal. He didn't realize the Tongan government only allowed a total of eight American LDS missionaries in the country a year.
Typically, only two or three a year were ever called to Tonga from the States to maintain the government's quota, making it one of the rarest mission calls in the Church. Despite the odds, Chuck received his call to the Tonga Nuku'alofa Mission a year after Groberg. Chuck was 22, already graduated from BYU and had gotten a year of graduate school in at the University of Utah when his call came in 1955. For two-and-a-half years as a missionary (foreign Elders at that time served an extra six months because of the language barrier), Elder Woodworth never sparred, skipped rope or laced up gloves, fully committing himself to the work. Boxing seemed to be behind him.
However, as his mission wound down, he was offered a unique opportunity to return to the ring that would make him a legend in Tonga and throughout the Pacific.
In April 1958, Pres. David O. McKay dedicated the Hamilton, New Zealand Temple. Earlier in his mission, Elder Woodworth had served on the island of Ha'apai, in the village of 'Uiha with a couple named Mosese (Moses) and Salavia Muti and their four young children. As Branch President, Brother Muti had shared with Elder Woodworth a blessing he had received under the hands of George Albert Smith, when the Apostle visited Tonga 20 years before in 1938. In the blessing, Elder Smith promised Mosese Muti that if he was faithful in his tithes, offerings and keeping his covenants, the day would come when he would be able to take his family to receive their temple blessings — "at no cost to them."
Though he was barely able to support himself as a missionary, Elder Woodworth felt a sense of duty to help the Mutis realize this blessing.
It so happened that the eighth-ranked heavyweight in the world and the champion of the South Pacific in 1958 was a Tongan named Kitione Lave, who was returning from a successful tour of Europe in which he knocked out the British champion in London in 30 seconds. Lave was a short, stout, powerful knockout artist who was deadly with either hand — think Mike Tyson. Rocky Marciano's promoter passed on Lave twice. The thinking was there was nothing for the champion to gain in fighting someone so dangerous and relatively obscure. Though Lave was in the top 10, he was virtually unknown in America.
Agents in New Zealand and Australia were trying to arrange a fight for Lave on his way home, but had no takers. That is, until a promoter happened upon Elder Woodworth while vacationing in Tonga and stumbled upon the former fighter-current Mormon missionary on the island of Niue, where he was finishing his mission. In the pre-Google Internet world, the promoter wired Woodworth's name to New Zealand, where his office did a search of Chuck's fight record, which all checked out.
Elder Woodworth wasn't all that confident he would stay alive, much less win, but he couldn't pass on the possibility of winning a purse that would ensure the Mutis' travel to New Zealand to be sealed in the temple. The idea is hard to fathom because of today's rigid missionary rules, but it was a different time and his mission president actually helped negotiate the deal.
At the weigh-in, Chuck tipped the scales at 187 pounds and the champion, Kitione Lave, was exactly 20 pounds heavier at 207. The fight drew over 15,000 fans to the rugby stadium where the All-Blacks played.
Here is the lede from the Deseret News: "Returning missionary Chuck Woodworth stopped over in Auckland long enough to pound out a decisive 12-round heavyweight victory recently over the best the South Pacific has to offer, defeating Kitione Lave of Tonga before the largest crowd in New Zealand ring history."
It was the first and only time Woodworth would ever fight in a 12-round match. Though he had limited time to train for the fight, Chuck always cited the fact that for six months leading up to the fight, he was on the island of Niue with his companion helping build a chapel on coral rock. His job each day was to dig the foundation using only a pick axe — a task that prepared him physically for the biggest fight of his life.
"My winner's share was about $1,200 American dollars," Chuck once told me.
"Enough to buy a new pair of trousers for my flight home and the rest I sent back to Ha'apai to the Mutis, which allowed them to travel to New Zealand a few months later to be sealed. All at no cost to them, just as Elder Smith had prophesied 20 years before."
Woodworth's courage to fight the most feared man in the Pacific with virtually no training and as an un-released missionary to pay for the Mutis trip to the temple is as well-known among Tongans as the Willie Handcart stories are to American Saints.
Mosese Muti later became the first Tongan called as a patriarch, blessing thousands of his countrymen. His children were all educated at BYU-Hawaii and BYU-Provo, returning to Tonga to become leaders in education, government and the Church. Two sons, Peni and Paula, served as stake presidents and the Mutis contribution to the growth of the Church is incalculable.
Following his mission, Chuck Woodworth finished grad school at the University of Utah, married a pretty co-ed at the U. named Marsha Davis, then returned to Tonga to teach at Liahona High School, the LDS-owned private school. He was called by Pres. N. Eldon Tanner to serve as mission president in Tonga. Charles J. Woodworth, Nov 10, 1932 - Dec 18, 2011, was 79 and buried in Lindon, Utah
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