Talk:Bud Bruner

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Edgar L. "Bud" Bruner said he taught swimming at the pool in the pavilion building in Central Park which later became a Louisville Police Department substation. One of the young men he taught came back from World War II and thanked him because he had saved his life by teaching him to swim. He spoke of the garbage wagons that were pulled by teams of horses around Portland. He said the bottoms of the wagons dropped down to empty out the trash. Bud earned his living as a realtor. Bud said his chief gripe about Cassius Clay was the entourage that he brought to his gym after Clay won the Olympic title in Havana, Cuba. Bud said Cassius Clay met Malcolm X at a boarding house in Miami where they stayed because Negroes were not allowed to stay at a local hotel back in the Sixties. Malcolm X converted Cassius Clay to a Black Muslim, according to Bruner. Bud said Clay was so sure of himself as a fighter that he couldn't teach him. One of Bud's favorite sayings was he wouldn't train a young man who had never lost a fight. Bud said Rudell Stitch was a great boxer but he lacked "the killer instinct." Bud bragged about what a good guy Rudell was and he called him a friend, not just another boxer, also. Stitch had accidentally killed another boxer during a boxing match. Later, Rudell Stitch would drown attempting to save a man who was drowning in the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky. Bud's gym was on the second floor of a brick building at the intersection of Main Street and 22nd Street. He showed me a used lift chair that he wanted installed in the stairwell leading up to the gym. I never got around to installing it. It might have saved him from injuring himself later. Bud Brunner's boxing gymnasium was a colorful place right in boxing memorabilia of huge portrait pictures of old-time boxers like John L. Sullivan, dusty stacks of boxing magazines, film reels of boxing matches, and folders of boxers that Bud Bruner had taught. It was a major task to caulk the old, tall wooden-frame windows that let cold air in the old gym in winter. It seemed like the boxing coach in the movie "Rocky", starring actor Burgess Meredith, had been modeled on Bud Bruner. Bud wouldn't even talk to a new boxer until the young man had been coming to his gym for some time. His manner was gruff and he didn't spare anyone's feelings when he gave instructions during training. Bud said his daughter married actor Ben Vereen. He could not bring himself to accept his mixed-race granddaughters. Eventually, he did. Tragically, later, one of them would die in an automobile accident. My last memory of Edgar "Bud" Bruner was helping him carry some grocery bags into his apartment he shared with his wife near the Phoenix Hill neighborhood. At this time, Bud was about 80 years old and time had weathered the old man down. He was bent over and his legs bowed noticeably. — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Cockrill 173.191.10.143 (talk) 20:09, 2 July 2012 (UTC)