Loveland Magazine

LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

Without fear or favor

Since 2004

Tag: World War II

COOL: Episode 3 of Ricky Mulvey’s documentary podcast about Ezzard Charles, Total Fighter, is up RIGHT NOW

Ricky Mulvey’s Podcast: “Total Fighter” about Cincinnati’s Ezzard Charles

This podcast shines a new light on the underrated Cincinnati Cobra; the greatest light-heavyweight of all time.

Ricky Mulvey is a former sportswriter and talking head at Loveland Magazine

Part 3 of Ricky Mulvey’s 5 part podcast series on Ezzard Charles, “Total Fighter” is up now.

In the third episode, Ezzard Charles tries to move on from his tragic meeting with Sam Baroudi and the mafia tightens its grip over his boxing career. A match against Joe Louis becomes more possible after the biggest fight in Cincinnati’s history.

The Man in Front of Me (Part 3)

Total Fighter features interviews with Buddy LaRosa, founder of LaRosa’s Pizza, William Dettloff, author of “Ezzard Charles: A Boxing Life,” and Ezzard Charles II.

Episode 2: “Cobra Strike” covers Ezzard’s tragic and career-defining boxing match, his experience in World War II, and his manager who was “allegedly” connected to the New York Mafia.

Play Episode 2

Featuring interviews with P Man Jones, Ezzard Charles II, William Dettloff, author of “Ezzard Charles: A Boxing Life,” and Buddy LaRosa, founder of LaRosa’s Pizza.

“Total Fighter,” is a narrative, nonfiction podcast about Ezzard Charles, Cincinnati’s heavyweight champion, and hosted by Loveland native Ricky Mulvey.

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42512075

This podcast shines a new light on the underrated Cincinnati Cobra; the greatest light-heavyweight of all time.

The series will ultimately follow Charles to his match against Joe Louis, and the characters who followed him– his family and the mafia.

The premier episode, “More Than a Gym Fighter” is a deep-dive into a very different Cincinnati. Go to a bustling Findlay Market in the 1940s, in between the pool tables and cigar smoke at the American Legion Hall in Newport, Kentucky for Charles’ first boxing match, and a Battle Royale in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Play Episode 1

“Total Fighter” features interviews and stories from Buddy LaRosa, founder of LaRosa’s Pizza, William Dettloff, author of “Ezzard Charles: a Boxing Life,” Frank Wettencamp, one of Ezz’s high school classmates, and more.

This show explores his complex character; why the name “Ezzard Charles” became an insult by Frank Sinatra and an inspiration to the composer George Russell.

You can first hear new episodes and updates right here on Loveland Magazine or by following Ricky Mulvey on Facebook, @rickymulvey on Instagram, and @rickssoslick on Twitter.

You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or most other platforms.

https://blubrry.com/totalfighter/60079865/more-than-a-gym-fighter/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5JTBTxxOvk

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cobra-strike/id1511801112?i=1000475118147

Jul 7, 2020
Part 2 of “Total Fighter” the podcast by Ricky Mulvey is now ready for you

Ricky Mulvey’s Podcast: “Total Fighter” about Cincinnati’s Ezzard Charles

This podcast shines a new light on the underrated Cincinnati Cobra; the greatest light-heavyweight of all time.

Ricky Mulvey is a former sportswriter and talking head at Loveland Magazine

Part 2 of Ricky Mulvey’s 5 part podcast series on Ezzard Charles, “Total Fighter” is up now.

Episode 2: “Cobra Strike” covers Ezzard’s tragic and career-defining boxing match, his experience in World War II, and his manager who was “allegedly” connected to the New York Mafia.

Featuring interviews with P Man Jones, Ezzard Charles II, William Dettloff, author of “Ezzard Charles: A Boxing Life,” and Buddy LaRosa, founder of LaRosa’s Pizza.

“Total Fighter,” is a narrative, nonfiction podcast about Ezzard Charles, Cincinnati’s heavyweight champion, and hosted by Loveland native Ricky Mulvey.

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42512075

This podcast shines a new light on the underrated Cincinnati Cobra; the greatest light-heavyweight of all time. The series will ultimately follow Charles to his match against Joe Louis, and the characters who followed him– his family and the mafia. The premier episode, “More Than a Gym Fighter” is a deep-dive into a very different Cincinnati. Go to a bustling Findlay Market in the 1940s, in between the pool tables and cigar smoke at the American Legion Hall in Newport, Kentucky for Charles’ first boxing match, and a Battle Royale in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Play Episode 1

“Total Fighter” features interviews and stories from Buddy LaRosa, founder of LaRosa’s Pizza, William Dettloff, author of “Ezzard Charles: a Boxing Life,” Frank Wettencamp, one of Ezz’s high school classmates, and more. This show explores his complex character; why the name “Ezzard Charles” became an insult by Frank Sinatra and an inspiration to the composer George Russell.

Play Episode 2

You can first hear new episodes and updates right here on Loveland Magazine or by following Ricky Mulvey on Facebook, @rickymulvey on Instagram, and @rickssoslick on Twitter.

You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or most other platforms.

https://blubrry.com/totalfighter/60079865/more-than-a-gym-fighter/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5JTBTxxOvk

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cobra-strike/id1511801112?i=1000475118147

May 19, 2020
The Unending Night of Auschwitz

Hints that tiny shafts of light can pierce the seemingly unending night

by David Miller

I took the photo above in 1994 at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. To get from floor to floor, I and my family had to walk through this cattle wagon.

As World War II erupted, the Nazis deported millions of victims to ghettos, concentration and extermination camps, and gas chambers in railroad cars like these – beginning their state-sponsored program of the genocide of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), gay men, Soviet prisoners of war, the disabled, and religious opponents. Nearly the whole Jewish population of Poland was forced into these cattle cars and later died in these camps.

Elie Wiesel, in his book Night, described his experience when he was liberated from Buchenwald as a sixteen-year-old. His mother and his youngest sister had already been sent to the gas chambers, and Wiesel became his father’s caregiver at the concentration camp and watched him die, just weeks before the Allies liberated the camp.

The cattle car was so crowded there was no room to sit or lie down, room was made for the living by throwing the dead onto the tracks. Out of 100 Jews in Wiesel’s cattle car, only twelve survived

In his book, Wiesel wrote about the cattle car:

The doors were closed. We were caught in a trap, right up to our necks. The doors were nailed up; the way back was finally cut off. The world was a cattle wagon hermetically sealed. With every groan of the wheels on the rail, we felt that an abyss was about to open beneath our bodies.

When liberated from the concentration camp, he said, “I wanted to see myself in a mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.”

Robert AcAfee Brown writing in the preface to Night, talks about breathing life into that corpse. “Most will want to continue with Wiesel on his painful journey through the darkness, through false days, until there are hints that tiny shafts of light can pierce the seemingly unending night that Auschwitz has imposed upon the earth.”

My family and I were able to exit the cattle car, but the emotion of walking where others like Elie Wiesel had been, was burned into my subconscious by that blinding shaft of light that day.

And now, as still more families are on the painful journey through a hateful darkness… might we see that we are all on this cattle car together. And, even though we must squint to see even the tiniest shaft of light – can we show each other where it is at?

– David Miller is Publisher of Loveland Magazine

Jan 28, 2020
[Video Interview] Scouts, Tattered Flags, Stars, and Honor Flight

David Miller is the Publisher and Editor of Loveland Magazine and a Vietnam combat veteran.

by David Miller

Back in early 2011, I heard that the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 649, from the Batavia area, were collecting torn and tattered American flags. They would have a proper retirement ceremony for the flags they collected. I contacted the organization to see if Loveland folks could participate. As much as anything, it was a selfish question because I had several old flags in my own basement that I never knew what to do with. When they said, “Yes of course.”, I began to think of a way to collect flags in Loveland.

Union Savings Bank is right next door to our office on West Loveland and I had known the Branch Manager for many decades so decided to ask that if I put a collection bin in the lobby of the bank, would it be OK. Marla Simiele thought it would be a great service to offer her customers, and over the last 4-years we have collected perhaps 500 old, torn, and tattered flags. The first batch was taken to the Veteran’s group and those flags were then taken after a retirement ceremony to the Tufts Schildmeyer Family Funeral Homes Cremation Center in Goshen where they were turned into ashes. The ashes were buried in a Goshen Township cemetery.

Simiele and I decided that because of the popularity of the program we would do it year-round and although they have never been counted, I estimate we have collected more than 500. Simiele says it has been very popular with bank customers.

Over the years, every time I spoke to a scout leader I would ask if their troop would like to conduct a flag retirement ceremony to help me properly dispose of all the flags. I put pleas on community bulletin boards and still had no takers until I met a local leader this winter who I was buying a record turntable from. As we talked, he mentioned his son was in scouting and that he would ask at their next scout meeting about doing a retirement ceremony for the flags. After another couple months, I finally got a call from Kirk McCracken a local Cub Master, who said he would like some flags for a project. Kirk visited Loveland Magazine and he told me the story of taking his father on an “Honor Flight” and that one of the favorite things about the trip was when his father received a star from a retired American flag when he returned from Washington D.C. and was greeted at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Kirk wanted local scouts to have a supply of stars for projects like Honor Flight.

“A nice picture of some of the boys with all of the stars we cut out for the Vets! 2750 Stars in all, and more to come!” – Kirk McCracken

In this LOVELAND MAGAZINE TV interview, I spoke to McCracken and his son Liam, Bob Solimeno and his son Tanner, and Dee Daniels an Ambassador with Honor Flight Tri-State. Both Liam and Tanner helped cut out about 2,800 stars from the flags from only a portion of the flags that have been collected by Loveland Magazine and Union Savings Bank.

Daniels talks about the purpose of Honor Flight, and how local folks can get involved. You can support their trips to the Nation’s Capital as they take Veterans to see the war memorials, and how you may honor your own loved one with a free flight to visit their memorials in Washington, D.C. All World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War veterans aged 65 and older, who served either stateside or overseas, are eligible for the free flights.

Loveland Magazine and McCracken are arranging for a flag retirement ceremony conducted by the local scouts to be held soon in Loveland. Stay tuned.

Union Savings Bank is located at 510 WEST LOVELAND AVENUE.

Apr 8, 2019