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I had no idea that a site like this even existed. I only stumbled upon it while researching the records of that late, great fighter, Willie Pep. The connecting link had to do with the Punch-drunk Syndrome; you had done an article on Dementia Pugilistica.
We seem to share two interests in common: a long-standing fascination with the noble art and a taste for good writing and the well turned phrase. Having retired from my primary profession I am now pursuing a lifelong ambition to aquire acceptable writing skills.
If you continue with this site I will certainly return from time to time but for the moment would appreciate you response to something of a puzzle. Why has so little been written in appreciation of that outstanding lightheavweight of yesteryear, Harold Johnson? I know he lived in the shadow of the very great Archie Moore, but he also fought and beat some of the best lightheavys and heavys of his era and yet we hear so little about him nowadays. I believe he is still alive although (must be) nearly eighty and lives in sadly reduced circumstances. It seems he also now shows many of the features of the Boxers dementia.

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Hello, Wonderful site! I am currently writing a book, and also blogging excerpts of that book, about a man I knew and loved. He was a Heavyweight during the most amazing era of boxing. His name is ART SWIDEN, and he was out of Pittsburgh, Pa. His aka: The Pittsburgh Phantom. I met him 16 years out of the ring, in 1976 when he was the Manager of a well known Jazz nightclub and restaurant called, “The Encore”, also in Pittsburgh. Art was not only a noteworthy boxer, who fought all the greats in his day, from 1946-1960, but a hell of a guy! He sadly passed to that big boxing ring in the sky in 2004, at age 76. We met when I was waitressing at The Encore, and despite our age differences, I was just 20 and he a handsome 48, which was 28 years, we fell in love. It would be my choice to keep that a secret due to people’s need to gossip but Art, he wanted to tell the world! For many reasons, after a wonderful and very special time with him, I left him in 1979 to go back to college and California. This was not an easy choice, but Art was so needed where he was, I was sure it was the right choice. I saw him once more in 1994, when he was 66, and I was nearly 38. It was bittersweet. So much had changed between us but he asked me to meet him and I did. I moved to back to London where I had been living and working since 1985, with a brief trip home in 1994, which is when we saw each other. Complications and so many issues, prevented us being together again, and at this point, well, I just let it be. But one night in 2005, I had a dream about him, which made me think about him. Art always had press, in Pittsburgh, and now we had Goggle. I decided to see why I had such a strong dream about him, and there, to my utter shock was his obituary. It would be a very sad time for me to come, with contact so far away from anyone who had known him that I had once known. In the end, what can only be called a miracle, I had found some of his friends, who told me this, “he never stopped loving you, Shawn, all his life, he never stopped talking about you, and when he spoke about you, he spoke so highly.” The tears would not stop until I was finally able to go home to Pittsburgh, from London and see his grave. It would be another shock to find him at the cemetary in an unmarked and unpaid for grave! How his family, the family I sent him back to thinking that they needed him more than me at the time when I was younger, the one his friends told me he was not happy in, etc. could do this to him was beyond understanding! I rallied up as much money as I could but in the end I called on the Retired Boxer’s Foundation in California to help me see to it that his grave was paid in full and marked with the distinction that a boxer of his magnitude deserved. We got there in the end, I am so proud to say! When I thought about how many people loved him for his fame…but who was there in the end…Art was funny, clever, tender, called everyone, “Champ” but he was the truest Champ you could ever find. Handsome and protective and loving are just some of the words I could write. So, to honor his memory, and the love we shared, which was so very special, and all his achievements in the Ring, I am writing this book. It is called, “The Pittsburgh Phantom and Me” and I hope to complete it, after nearly 4 years of writing and researching his career, by the end of 2010. I went to every boxing site I could find on the web and noticed he was rarely mentioned, yet most of who he fought were. So I have corrected that when I could. I have gathered over 600 newspaper clippings and articles about his fights, and even when he was the Manager of the Encore. He is listed in Box Rec, and even there I sent corrections. Art should be remembered, in a time when fighters got peanuts for pay, and the world wasn’t connected to the Internet, Art brought in the excitement, even humor to his fights. The New York Times called him a “Master Boxer”, and he was. But to me, who loved him so, he will always be my Soul Mate. Thank you for this site, and hope you include him in some of your articles on the Old Timers who were Great. All the best, Ms.Shawn Cohen , London, UK, formerly of Pittsburgh, Pa. USA

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