Archdeacon: ‘He saw the good in everybody’

He was 76 and a Vietnam veteran who for decades had dealt with the effects of Agent Orange, among other things.

“Vietnam was a bad time,” he told me one afternoon in a rare, candid moment about that part of his past. “I saw a lot of stuff. We went by the rules of the Geneva Convention, but they didn’t when they caught our guys.

“War is a terrible thing.”

While he hated that type of fighting, he loved another sort of fistic exchange. The kind conducted between the ring ropes.

“He loved God, he loved his family and…oh did he ever love boxing!” Billie said.

To Daniels, it wasn’t just about who won and lost. It was about the lessons his boxers got from the fight game.

And that’s why so many of those he trained reached out to Billie the past few days:

He called and said he and his wife would be flying in Monday night, so they’d make Tuesday’s wake (4 to 7p.m., House of Wheat, 2107 N. Gettysburg Ave.) and Wednesday’s Celebration of Life (9:30 am at the funeral home.)

“After that I’ll be flying along to Dayton so I can get there in time for the funeral.”

He was prepping a sermon that focused on his old trainer.

“I wouldn’t be the man I am today if it wasn’t for Ron Daniels,” he said.

“He was my second daddy. I loved that man,” he said Thursday as he stood shirtless and drawn on the porch of a beaten-down house in the Westwood section of town.

He was distressed because someone had stolen his bicycle and he had no transportation to take the gray suit and white shirt he still owned to the cleaners so he’d be presentable at the funeral.

Craig Thurmond, the former Patterson Coop basketball standout who became a training protege of Daniels and now works for Community Action, understood the commitment all these fighters felt toward him:

“He was more than a boxing coach to these guys. Coach Ron talked about life. He was quick to give you a bible verse, a pat on the back, some good sound advice. He was a giver and he always believed in the best in everybody.”

While his lessons were valuable far beyond the fight game, they often were golden in the ring.

Chris Pearson is one of the most accomplished boxers to come out of Dayton in a generation. The Trotwood Madison grad fought close to 200 amateur fights around the world, was a national champion and part of the U.S. Olympic training program.

Mentored by USA Boxing’s best cornermen and as a pro in Floyd Mayweather’s stable and then fighting for Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, he’s had access to the best trainers in the game, but said “Coach Ron was the best ever.

“His imagination, the way he prepared you for what you’d see in the ring, was uncanny. I’ve been with a lot of great people in boxing who are true connoisseurs and really know their craft in and out.

“But I’ve never run into anyone who really knew it like Coach Ron did.” Chris’s dad, Milt Pearson – who’s now a family specialist at Trotwood Madison Middle School and often has guided his son’s career, promoted fights and, for a while, ran a gym in Trotwood – was just as effusive:

“With Coach Ron, Old School was the only school. He built everything from the foundation up. Nobody in my gym would be where they are if it wasn’t for him. He had no ego, no agenda, just a true love of the sport.

“He had that low rumble of a voice and he’d say, ‘We just gotta put the good work into these guys.’

“We’d go over to Indianapolis (for tournaments) and the other coaches would come over and watch and take notes.” Thurmond saw it in gyms here in the Dayton: “I called him The Wizard. Someone could walk in with no coordination, but after working with Coach Ron for a week, it looked like they’d been training for a month.

“He transformed people. He saw the good in everybody and made them believe it too.”

It was that trait — beyond the ring — that brought Branch close to tears when he talked about Daniels the other afternoon:

“If you had a son or daughter and they were lost or in trouble and needed help, that’s the man you wanted them to run into.

“He was just an incredible human being.”

The toll of Vietnam War

Daniels was drafted into the Army soon after he graduated from Dunbar High School in 1967. A year later he was in Vietnam.

He was part of the 561st Transportation Company providing support at Utah Beach, the U.S. logistics and supply base on the coast, east of Quang Tri, 12 miles from the DMZ.

“I used to take a box the sandbags came in, turn it on its side, and sleep in it. It was the size of a coffin, and it was quiet in there,” he told me one afternoon as he shared photos and stories in the living room of his home in Dayton’s College Hill section.

“One night they hit us with a rocket attack and blew me right out of that box. I went flying through the air, and got all mangled up. That’s why my leg’s messed up now.”

He quieted as he thought back on that night and when he finally spoke again, his emotions overtook him:

“Some guys got really hurt that night. Some didn’t have their weapons and they were running around in a panic in the dark. Some were killed. The explosions kept coming and I heard guys calling out for their mamas.”

He said he was attached to a Marine Corps unit for a while and one night he pulled guard duty with a couple of Marines.

He remembered telling them about Dayton and how he and his brothers learned to box in the basement of their home and how they’d stuffed rags into their dad’s old green World War II duffel bag and turned it into a heavy bag.

The soldiers all had talked about the hometowns they’d return to.

“The next morning I went back to LZ with the Army guys, but the two Marines stayed in the bunker,” he said.

“A little while later I hear ‘wooof…wooof…wooof.’ It was a bunch of rockets coming down and pretty soon a guy came running to me yelling:

“‘Dan!...Dan!...They hit the bunker you were in last night. They killed all of ‘em out there.’”

Those Marines were among the 16,592 American troops killed in Vietnam in 1968.

Once he got back to Dayton, the war still took a toll. He said his brother Gerald, also a Vietnam vet, died in his 20s from Agent Orange complications.

Daniels often wore shaded glasses and once said he had had 26 surgeries on his eyes. He had a kidney transplant a few years ago and several other recent health issues.

One thing he brought back from the service was his excellence as a boxer.

“He was undefeated in the Army and he often fought out of his weight class and in smokers, too,” said Kevin Patillo, his stepson.

As Kevin was talking, Billie pulled out old newspaper clippings of Daniels’ ring heroics when he was in the service.

His pugilistic talents here were nurtured by his dad — Vernon Daniels had served in the Pacific in World War II and boxed in the service — and especially by trainers Bob Jackson and Ted Crosby, who eventually convinced him to help them guide young kids.

Because of his commitment to basics and his love of the sport, they believed he’d be a good trainer.

They were right.

‘You could believe in Ron Daniels’

Daniels worked at the Moraine Truck and Bus plant for 30 years. That’s where he became friends with Willie Dixon, another Vietnam vet, and they began training boxers.

While their stable would include dozens of boxers — guys like Davis and Carter, heavyweight LeDon Allen and Springfield’s Billy Young — one of the most accomplished was Dixon’s son Terry, who, as a teenager, was fighting around the world for the U.S. national team. At one time he was the fifth-rated 125 pounder in the world.

He eventually ended up in the service and was deployed in Desert Storm.

After Willie died suddenly in 1993, Ron soldiered on as a trainer.

Billie remembered the first time she saw him: “He’d come into this carry out on Salem Avenue every day and pick up juices and different drinks for his boxers.”

She was raised in Beaumont, Texas, and after a divorce — she had four children — she came to Dayton, where her sister lived.

“Ron had a real quiet demeanor, he was very laid back, but you could see he moved confidently. I liked that,” she said. “And he was good with kids.”

He had the same traits around his boxers. They all talked about the positivity he showed every day.

“For him, the cup was always half full, not half empty,” Chris Pearson said.

Daniels remained supportive of his boxers, even if they stumbled.

Michael Evans, who is currently serving his fourth stint in prison, was the most accomplished amateur boxer in Miami Valley history.

He fought and won across the world, won two national Golden Glove titles, a U.S. National Championship, was an alternate on the1996 U.S. Olympic team in Atlanta and, as captain of the Team USA boxers, a front-runner to make the 2000 Olympics in Australia.

But he was arrested for selling crack cocaine to an undercover cop at the Northwest Plaza just two days before he was to lead the U.S. Olympic hopefuls on a tour of Russia.

Each time he was released from prison and tried to resume his career. Coach Ron was there to train him and try to guide him.

“Mike just couldn’t walk the line and that hurt Ron’s heart,” Billie said. “Mike would call collect from prison and apologize. He said he felt ashamed he’d let Ron down.

“Ron told him not to think like that. He still loved him and would be waiting for him.”

All the boxers said they never heard Daniels curse or even speak disparagingly about another person.

“I never saw him get mad, even when they were talking stupid,” said Billy Young, who’s now 57, is a boxing referee and runs his own business, Young’s Home Improvement.

“He made me a better person, just seeing how he interacted with people and staying under control.”

Branch had a similar assessment: “What you saw from him was the real deal. There was nothing fake, nothing phony. Nothing put on.

“You could believe in Ron Daniels.”

And his boxers did whole-heartedly.

When LaMark Davis, who withstood the Hizballah bombing of the USMC barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 U.S. Military personnel, fought Wilson “Honeyboy” Smith for the Ohio junior middleweight title at UD Arena a decade later, he was trailing on two of the three judges’ cards going into the final 12th round.

That’s when Dixon and Daniels looked their fellow soldier in the eye and gave him a stirring pep talk.

Daniels urged Davis to “jump on him with both hands!”

That’s what Davis did, and he backed Honeyboy onto the ropes and connected with a right uppercut, followed by a straight right that crumpled him onto the canvas.

When Davis won, Daniels leaped into the ring and lifted him by the waist toward the heavens.

Billy Young remembered a similar situation:

“I was fighting John McKinney on one of John Drake’s cards. Coach Ron was there and said, ‘What are you doing? He’s a southpaw. Just use straight right hands and left hooks.’

“I did that the next round and knocked the boy out! If you did what Coach Ron told you, it worked.”

Drake agreed:

“Everybody, we all benefitted from being around Ron Daniels. He was such a rock. Such a steady guy. He was just such a good man.

“A good, good man.”