ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611260016
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
WILLARD BARBOUR has been helping youngsters practically his whole life. It's what he does best.
Willard Barbour has developed a habit since relocating back to Roanoke this year.
Young people who hang out on street corners or on stoops know about it. They're a part of it.
Barbour, 70, drives his black Toyota Camry around the city's neighborhoods looking for new friends, ideally ones that are one-fourth his age. He makes new ones every day.
``They holler at me,'' Barbour said. ``I've never met them before in my life. They know me now.''
Once he parks his car by the curb, they talk about jobs, they talk about school, and inevitably the conversations turn to Barbour's field of expertise, boxing.
They listen closest when the topic turns to former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. They love to hear the story about Barbour and Tyson sharing a dressing room in Atlantic City, N.J., in the mid-1980s before Tyson had won anything. Lately they've wanted to know why Tyson lost to Evander Holyfield.
Training boxers is how Barbour, a native Roanoker who spent the past 50 years living and working in Philadelphia, made his name. He trained Pinklon Thomas, the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion from 1984-86, and also handled Ken Lakusta, a former Canadian heavyweight champion. Barbour wants this city's youth to know him and remember him for more than that.
``Some of the guys want to be fighters and some don't,'' he said. ``But you have to have something to interest them, to give them goals and direction.''
With help from the city and the Roanoke City Boxing Association, Barbour has found that something here, just as he did for so many years in Philadelphia. He will be the head trainer at Victory Gym, the city's fledgling boxing facility in Victory Stadium.
It is Barbour's first job in Roanoke since his childhood, when he pulled an ice cream wagon around his 9th street Northwest neighborhood and later near 4th street and Kimball Northeast. His days began by carrying newspapers, then manning the produce stands of the City Market. In the afternoon, he shined shoes on Campbell Avenue before he had to get to his other job of washing pots and pans at Hotel Roanoke.
Barbour said he felt an obligation, and a personal desire, to work, partly because his father, Levi Barbour, died when he was 7 years old.
``I was the one who always looked like I was leading other kids around,'' Barbour said.
Barbour has had the same way with boxers for the past 30 years. He reads various books related to the human body and stresses knowledge of anatomy when training his fighters. His boxers, mainly super-heavyweights, are told their minds are just as important as their left jabs.
Thomas was a fighter who understood that. It helped him beat Tim Witherspoon for the WBC title on Aug.31, 1984 in a 12-round bout in Las Vegas. Lakusta, Thomas' old sparring partner, listened too. It paid off when he beat Conroy Nelson for the Canadian heavyweight belt. Lakusta was so confident in Barbour's ability, he worked out in public in the largest mall in Edmonton, Alberta.
Barbour began meeting boxers nearly a half century ago. He left Lucy Addison High School and joined the Navy, where he boxed briefly while sailing in the Pacific. ``I'm a better trainer than I am a boxer,'' he said.
After two years, he was discharged, and used the G.I. Bill to get a degree at the Berean Business and Vocational School in Philadelphia. He went to work for Sears Roebuck, where he stayed for the next 37 years until his retirement. His spare time was spent at North Philadelphia gyms, first at Joe Frazier's, then at Champs Gym, where he got a reputation as someone who could take young heavyweights to great heights.
Steve Pannell, a William Fleming High School graduate who is fighting on the Thomas Hearns undercard Nov.29 at the Roanoke Civic Center, said Barbour gave him a foundation of knowledge that helped him get a spot training with Oliver McCall and Tony Tucker in Martinsville. At that time, Barbour would commute from Philadelphia to tend to his ailing mother, Nannie Haynes, and work out with Pannell on the side.
``Before I got down here with Oliver, all I had was Mr. Barbour,'' Pannell said.
There are legions of other fighters in Philadelphia who say Barbour still is all they have. Every night he finds himself on the telephone with young fighters he had to leave behind to come back to Roanoke. Some beg him to come back to Philadelphia. Others ask him to bring them to Roanoke.
``I'm a friend as well as a coach or trainer,'' Barbour said. ``A child can't raise itself. It has to be guided and directed.''
Barbour said that is his greatest talent. Along with his wife, Margaret, a teacher in Philadelphia for 37 years, he raised a daughter, Yvette. He has many more sons, although none of them share his bloodline.
Barbour wants to add to the family by combing the streets of Roanoke and getting youngsters into the gym. He doesn't want the area's young people to have the disadvantages a boxer like Pannell had in the beginning, when he trained in a local health spa and had to spar on a racquetball court.
Barbour's new old home will help him reach that goal. Just as young people call on him, he will keep calling on them, helping them to find work, stay in school, or get their GED. When he makes new friends, he makes a habit of asking where they see themselves in three or four years.
``They don't have an answer,'' he said.
Barbour will try to give them a hint and a gentle nudge into a positive, successful future.
``You have to meet the young people where they are,'' he said. ``Every corner I pass, I'm looking.''
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON\Staff. Willard Barbour, who has trainedby CNBboxers for 30 years, hopes to develop a stable of fighters in the
Victory Gym. color. KEYWORDS: 2DA