Wright Thompson's search for "Sweet Jimmy" Robinson

That piece is why I haven't given up on the profession.

 

"On my final Sunday morning in Miami, I show up for my shift volunteering in the Camillus House kitchen."

This is the most fascinating sentence in the story. Poking around Overtown, sending photos to a lab in England, tracking down the history ... that's all great reporting. But this guy did more than that. He gave himself to the story, like John Berendt gave himself to Savannah. I so look forward to reading Wright's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" one day.

 

Awesome.

 

That was a good story.

FWIW:
Tunney Hunsacker, the guy who spent nine days in a coma after fighting Clay, went on to become police chief in a small town in W.Va. The local paper would periodically do articles on him, recalling his fight with Clay. He was beaten to a pulp. Ended up with a metal plate in his head.
Hunsaker later, years later, met Ali again to revisit the bout.
Tunney died a few years ago, after spending decades as the town's only cop.



I love these kind of the stories.. about the also ran who was stepping stone immortality or the almost famous guy who could've .. if only. ... if only. I love doing those stories. And I enjoy reading them as well.

 

great story. couldn't stop reading it from the second i clicked over to it. makes me wish there was a sports magazine that had stories like this every week. delivered to my door with great photos and such. like when i was a kid. my unemployed self would shell out the cash for it. and i wouldn't even need a football shaped phone...sigh.

 

I would probably rather read Wright than just about anybody in the business, but he's gotten a lot of assignments lately that leave me shaking my head. I don't know if that's his doing (probably) or if he has an assigning editor who is steering him this way.

Just my opinion.

 

But that's why the story is fascinating. 49 signatures and only one missing. You wouldn't be curious as to where that 50th person is? It's one thing if he just ended up in some obit. But the fact he just slipped off the face of the earth is what makes the story fascinating.

 

Completely agree, Songbird. I think having just one of the 50 boxers unaccounted enhanced the story even more, because it's so compelling to find out what the deal is behind that one person. And quite frankly, the fact that Wright was never able to find Sweet Jimmy even made the story more interesting to me.

Maybe it was just me, but was anyone else reminded of "Resurrecting the Champ" while reading this? Particularly near the end, when Wright finds some conflicting stories about who Sweet Jimmy really was, and has to get the photos analyzed.

Not at all saying that any correlations take away from the uniqueness of this piece, just something I happened to notice.

 

Yes! Good call on the Champ comparison.

 

You didn't read the piece, did you?
This one had nothing to do with an assignment.

 

Great story.

 

I'll bet Jimmy was in The Overton Starbucks