TOM GIBBONS
Going to 'relax'
"Did you ever wake up in the morning and wish you didn't
have to go to work?"
Tom Gibbons asked.
'Well, I think from now on I'll remember I don't have to — and relax," said the
67-year-old man who retires Monday after 24 years as Ramsey County Sheriff.
Gibbons, who once fought Jack Dempsey for the world heavyweight boxing
championship, apparently
means what he says.
"I'LL CONTINUE to play handball as long as it's fun," he said. And
there will be
hunting in cold weather and fishing in warm. Then there are his grand-children
to watch grow; he has 25. "The children are even taking advantage of me by
adopting," he said with a grin on his bluff Irish face.
Travel? "I've seen everything I want to see and I
don't even want to go to Florida
again. Give me Minnesota." That means a house in Falcon Heights and a summer
cottage on Lake Osakis |near Alexandria.
GIBBONS EXPECTS to lighten his strenuous speaking schedule, "except the
talks to kids." He loves children; the pope knighted him in 1956 for youth and
church work.
One of his great accomplishments in office, he feels, is the success of his
"junior sheriffs" program—the county schools safety
patrol. Not a single
fatality has occurred in 24 years while the patrol was on duty.
The sheriff is proud that he was elected easily all six terms, twice without
opposition. Another source of
satisfaction: there are no unsolved murders
on his hands.
GIBBONS FIRST ran for the office—and won—in 1934
upon urging
of some St. Paulites weary of widespread
lawlessness. "There
were slot machines and a few killings, and the bootleggers were turning
to kidnapping," he said.
"Don't make a mistake," he cautioned. "The
cleanup wasn't my doing. But I
was in office when the FBI
cleaned up the city."
Gibbons reminisced between
visits and phone calls from well-wishers.
THE FIRST of his 106 fights was in 1911 in Minneapolis. "It was a sneak
fight; boxing was illegal
then."
Last July Gibbons and his wife were guests of honor at the fair and rodeo in
Shelby, Mont., site of his famous fight with Dempsey. It was the 35th
anniversary of the event, which Shelby commemorates every year.
"I always get a kick out of those people. To them, I won the heavyweight
championship."
Many onlookers that hot July 4th thought Gibbons won the fight.
After a knockout in 1925 at the hands of Gene Tunney —his third defeat —
Gibbons quit the ring because his wife was ill.
HE THOUGHT of all the boxers he knew who had lost one eye or
both, including his late brother Mike, who quit the ring when
he began to
lose vision in his right eye.
"I had a relative back in County Mayo, Mocky Dolan, who had an eye poked
out by a stick. He used to say
one eye's good enough for any man. To me,
that's the spirit of the boxing game. But when one eye isn't good
enough, it's time to quit."
He bears the traditional, scars of his old craft --cauliflower
ears and flattened
nose.
Gibbons, was in the insurance business for 10 years before becoming
sheriff. He bought annuities that will make his retirement comfortable.
"I TRIED to sell Dempsey a $100,000 annuity, but at that time he and
his manager, Jack Kearns, were being pushed around by a lot of people
wanting money, and he turned it down."
His first wife died in 1939 and he remarried the next year. "I was lucky to
get someone to move in on my nine youngsters.”
A widow, Josephine had three children herself. Two of
Gibbons children
have since died.
He has advice to youth: “Be fingerprint-shy. It’s
hard enough to get a good
job without trouble in your past.”
To parents: “Companionship makes kids come out all
right. It’s better to
hunt with your kids than hunt for them.”
