Barney Ross Was Ring Champ And WWII Hero
By Joe Guzzardi
Born Dov-Ber Rasofsky on December 23, 1909, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents, Barney Ross would become a world champion in three different weight divisions and a decorated World War II hero. His journey from Jewish enclaves to boxing’s elite tells of his determination and toughness that transcended his three world championship titles—welterweight, light welterweight, and lightweight.
Ross was one of several Jewish boxers who anglicized their names to fend off antisemitism, gain wider acceptance, and sell more tickets to boxing matches. Benjamin Leiner, also known as Benny Leonard and considered one of the best lightweights ever, became a dominant champion in the 1910s and 1920s. Vincent Morris Scheer adopted an Irish-sounding name, Mushy Callahan, and won the junior welterweight title in the 1920s.
Known in boxing circles as “The Pride of the Ghetto,” Ross spurned his family’s religious lifestyle and instead, during his troubled teen years, ran with gangsters like fellow Jew Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald’s murderer. The pair of young hoodlums did Al Capone’s bidding. Ross’s father, Isidore “Itchik” Rosofsky, was a Talmudic scholar who had emigrated to America from his native Brest-Litovsk after barely surviving a pogrom. After the family moved from New York to Chicago, Isidore became a rabbi and owner of a small vegetable shop in Chicago’s Maxwell Street neighborhood, a Jewish ghetto like 1920s New York’s Lower East Side.
Ross’s life changed forever when his father was murdered while resisting a robbery at his small grocery. Grief-stricken, his mother Sarah suffered a nervous breakdown, and his younger siblings—Ida, Sam, and George—were placed in an orphanage or farmed out to other members of the extended family. At age 14, Dov was left to his own devices and turned to boxing.
In his 81-bout professional career, Ross won 74—22 by knockout—against four losses and three draws. Remarkably, Ross, famous for his relentless pace, sharp footwork, ring savvy, and ability to absorb punishment while dishing out precise combinations, was never knocked out.
Retired from the ring at 32, Ross enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he eventually fought in the Pacific Theater’s Battle of Guadalcanal. During one battle, he and three fellow Marines were trapped under enemy fire. All four were wounded; Ross was the only one able to fight. Ross gathered his comrades’ rifles and grenades and single-handedly fought nearly two dozen Japanese soldiers over an entire night, killing them all by morning. He survived 30 shots that ricocheted off his helmet. “The ring is kid’s play compared to the battle out here—this is a finish fight with no holds barred and no referee to break up the clinches,” Ross said. His heroism earned Sergeant Ross, the Silver Star, and a Presidential Citation, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered to him in the Rose Garden.
During his service in Guadalcanal, Ross began an enduring friendship with Catholic priest Frederic Gehring, a wartime chaplain. Gehring considered Ross a national treasure and the only soldier on Guadalcanal who could play the pipe organ. On Christmas Eve, before the Marines were about to go into battle, Gehring asked Ross to play “Silent Night” and other Christmas songs for the troops. After Ross played a Christmas carol medley, Gehring asked the champion for a Jewish song. Ross played “My Yiddishe Momme,” about a child’s love for his self-sacrificing mother. Many of the gathered Marines knew the song from Ross’s boxing days, when it came over the loudspeaker as he entered the ring. When the Marines heard Ross play the song, newspaper reports said that they all wept.
While recovering from malaria and his wounds suffered at Guadalcanal, Ross developed a dependency on morphine. Upon his return stateside, Ross replaced morphine with heroin, an addiction on which he spent $500 a day. Ross went to a recovery center and overcame his addiction. He gave lectures to high school students about the dangers of drug addiction. Ross’s struggle against morphine addiction, which he labeled his life’s toughest battle, is detailed in his autobiographical book, No Man Stands Alone.
In January 1967, after a long struggle with throat cancer, Ross passed away, a champion to Jews and Christians alike.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org
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