The two men are the late Joe Kiss, who co-founded the popular Hickory Bar-B-Que restaurant on Brown Street, and Lorenzo Harris, whose Ren’s Markets were a beacon of black enterprise in West Dayton.
They sculpted much of Donnie Branch. Not the bulging biceps and chiseled physique he still sports at age 56, but the inner fiber that, back in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, made him one of Dayton’s best amateur boxers, that later helped him raise two kids on his own through the Centerville schools and college degrees, and now has him training boxers — not only elite young fighters, but inner-city kids in need — at Prodigy.
The 55,000-square-foot sports complex — which teaches wrestling, boxing, mixed martial arts and fitness — got into the fisticuffs business because of Branch.
Walk into the foyer of the massive facility on South Pioneer Boulevard and — just across from the large framed picture of a triumphant Muhammad Ali standing over a fallen Sonny Liston — is a gallery of photos featuring Branch.
There’s one of him boxing in Ireland, another of him getting his hands wrapped by famed Olympic boxing coach Pat Nappi. There are other shots of him with George Foreman and Smokin’ Joe Frazier and one with Mike Tyson.
The folks at Prodigy convinced him to return to the fight game — he works for the Montgomery County Juvenile Court as a supervisor of troubled youth at a Dayton treatment center — to build a boxing program.
And while he’s now developing some promising young boxers — especially 13-year-old Elijah Cunningham, who has already won two national titles and will fight Saturday night — he’s also using boxing as a carrot-and-stick strategy for reaching and mentoring other kids who are in need and, in many cases, flirting with trouble.
Kids like he once was.
Branch said he grew up poor in West Dayton. His mother raised him, his alcoholic father was mostly out of the picture and male role models were scarce.
And then he met Harris.
“I used to steal from his grocery store,” Branch said quietly. “But then I found out he would give me whatever I wanted. And after a while I even lived with him and his family. God has put some incredible men in my life. They have really guided me.”
With a bit of reluctance, Branch told a story from when he was 13 and had gone to the Salem Mall at Christmas time, tried to steal some presents with some other kids and was nabbed by a store detective.
Nadine Harris — Lorenzo’s wife — made financial amends with the store and brought Donnie home to face her husband.
As Branch re-enacted the scene — and told of the disappointment he felt from Harris — tears filled his eyes.
“His words went through me like a pitchfork,” he whispered. “And from that day on, I learned I never would take anything that didn’t belong to me.”
‘A real pugger’
As it turns out, while he was no longer prone to take, he sure was quick to give away what was his.
After graduating from Roosevelt High in 1972 and going to play baseball at Spring Arbor University in Michigan, Branch returned to Dayton and tried his hand as an amateur boxer.
His first big fight was at the Ohio State Fair, which in those days, he said, drew 1,400 boxers from across North America and had featured guys like Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns and Aaron Pryor.
“I fought a guy named Gerald Gillard from Philadelphia,” Branch said. “The bell rang and that boy hit me with everything but the kitchen sink. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ I went back to the corner and Bob Jackson said, ‘Oh Donnie, you look good.’
“I said, “I’ll tell you something, you can say whatever y’all like, but after the fight, I’m done with boxing.’
“But in the middle of the second round it started to change. He’d hit me, but then I’d hit him, too. And in the third round it changed for me. I was in great shape.
“When the fight ended though, I took off my Everlast boxing shoes. They were just like the white ones Muhammad Ali had worn against Joe Frazier, ’cept I dyed them blue to match my trunks.
“Before the fight this kid I’d met from Chicago, Leonard Church, said, ‘Donnie, I want them shoes.’ I’d told him no way, but afterward I still decided I was done, took the shoes off in the ring and tossed them out to him.”
When Branch headed for the dressing room — after losing the decision — he was applauded by the crowd. Someone stopped him, he said, and gushed, “Great fight.”
“I said, ‘What fight did you watch?’ and he said, ‘Do you know who you just fought? He’s the No. 1-ranked junior welterweight. He’s been doing this 15 years.’ ”
He said someone else called him “a real pugger.”
And that’s when Branch asked for his shoes back. He had decided to give boxing another try.
That’s when he met Joe Kiss, who with Mike Mantia, put on the Golden Gloves shows here.
Kiss told him one day he was going to be a champ and if he ever needed a helping hand to come see him. And from that grew one of the most unique sporting bonds this town has seen.
Lessons live on
“I went by the Old Hickory when I needed a sponsor for the state fair and Joe Kiss was good on his word,” Branch said quietly, his eyes again filling with tears. “From that day on, he sponsored me.”
Branch went on to win five Dayton Golden Glove titles, fight for the U.S. national team both here and abroad and make it to the U.S. Olympic Trials, where he just missed making the team for the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
The man he credits most for his success was Kiss, who provided far more than financial support. He was the guiding light in his life.
“Here was this Hungarian immigrant who made good — and me a kid from the west side — and he doesn’t know me from anybody,” Branch said. “But there wasn’t ever a finer man born, you hear me.
“He was my godfather. He treated me like I belonged to him, like I was a son. And he never wanted anything in return.
The two would eat dinner together at Kiss’ restaurant. Branch would go to a fishing lake with him and they’d sit and talk for hours.
When he was boxing in Europe, Branch said he went back to trace Kiss’ “Old Country” roots in Hungary and Romania. He knew Kiss’ family — his three daughters, his wife — and was with Joe right before he died in 1995. He was asked by the family to speak at the funeral.
“He was an amazing man,” Branch said. “He gave to everybody. To me, his life exemplified Christ’s giving. I don’t know if I could love anybody more as a man than I did him.
“He taught me about honor and respect and those are the things I try to bring to our program. The lessons of Joe Kiss — and Lorenzo Harris, too — are still alive in our gym.”
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