by Sandy Wells
Charleston Gazette Mail (in a new window)
July 24, 2005
Page 1B
AS A young girl in Braxton County, Annette Frey would sit on the tractor in the garage and watch her father punch the speedbag. "I was mesmerized. He was so fast. I would watch how his body moved. I saw the rhythm. It looked so smooth."
Jimmy Merzouk fought professionally in the late '40s and early '50s. Blessed with astounding speed, agility and a ferocious left jab, he usually won by knockouts.
Annette loved to watch her father run. He ran everywhere, through the countryside, up and down hills, through the town for miles and miles. Dogs trying to keep up with him limped home, exhausted.
"Bus drivers used to drive along the road and pace him to see how fast he was going," she said. "He could run 20 miles an hour in his 60s.
"Anybody who knew him was in awe of him. He was always doing amazing things."
She watched him catch flies with his hands.
He taught a dog to box.
She watched him write with both hands at the same time in two languages.
He could open a Bible, read a chapter, then close the book and recite the entire chapter, word for word.
Her father had two great passions, she said. "One was boxing. The other one was education. He wanted to be educated, to be smart like other people."
An immigrant from North Africa with only two years of schooling, he enrolled in Braxton County schools in the eighth grade, a mature 23-year-old in a sea of fresh young faces.
Her father attacked learning with the same vigor and vengeance he brought to boxing. He zipped through school with double promotions, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Bible, Greek, French, Spanish and Latin and taught languages in Braxton County for 44 years.
"Everything he did was unbelievable," she said.
And so, after his unexpected death three years ago, she knew she had to do something to preserve his memory. "The story had to be told."
A Roane County teacher, Frey has created a Web site dedicated to her father, www.jimmymerzouk.com. A DVD she commissioned, "James Boudjema Merzouk: A Boxer, a Teacher, a Legend," traces the story of his life.
Directed and edited by Sandy Sowell and Gerry Collyard of Beside The Point Productions in Culloden, the DVD tells about Merzouk's early life in Algeria during World War II, the American soldiers who mentored his boxing and helped him get to America, his years here in the boxing ring and the respect he earned as a teacher.
Frey spent a summer gathering information, filming interviews with people who knew her father when he arrived in West Virginia, people who watched him fight, students and colleagues. She visited boxing gyms, talked to ex-boxers, found the son of her father's trainer. A sparring partner supplied pictures and newspaper articles about his fights.
She verified tales about things he did. "I had to find people who actually saw these things or nobody would believe it," she said.
She heard he once lived under a rock cliff and caught rabbits for food. "A family he lived with moved away. He wanted to stay in Braxton County, but he didn't have a home. He lived under a rock cliff at Laurel Creek that summer. I found a woman who could tell me about the rock cliff. She saw him chase rabbits and catch them."
Along the way, Frey discovered some things that surprised her.
"I didn't know about the violence," she said. "I didn't know about the scars on his body until after he died."
As a boy in Algeria, he supported the family through street fights arranged by his father. "From the time he could stand, his father trained him to box. He forced him to go on the streets and fight for money.
"If he won, there would be food on the table that night. If he lost, his father would beat him. He used to cut the top of his legs with scissors. He never wore shorts, so I never saw the scars on his legs."
Finally, she understood his will to win, the drive to succeed that spilled into every facet of his life.
"Believe in your dreams and make them happen," he wrote once in a message to students. "Never give up and never settle for less. Put all of your energy in your goals."
The journey to America
At 15, Jimmy Merzouk left home. He boxed his way into the hearts of American soldiers stationed in Algiers. They cheered for him at his fights. They would carry him from the ring on their shoulders. His ring name was "American Boy."
A friendly lieutenant got him a job in the Army PX where he met Homer Cobb, a G.I. from Napier in Braxton County. "Look me up in Napier if you ever get to America," Cobb told him.
An American colonel eventually helped him land a job as an oiler and wiper on a ship bound for the U.S. He arrived in Charleston, S.C., on July 10, 1947. He knew enough English to ask for a sandwich and a glass of milk and how to get to a place called Napier, W.Va. Helpful ticket agents showed him the way.
After a stop here in Charleston, he caught a bus to Napier, found the Cobb family and started school. A woman Frey interviewed verified stories her father told her about the prejudice he endured. "The local boys used to call him 'nigger.' He would take them on, sometimes five at a time, and beat them all. They soon learned to leave him alone."
He earned money boxing. In 1949, his ring skills caught the attention of Cpl. Johnny Gum, a state trooper and a former state welterweight champion. He started training Merzouk at the Boys Club gym in Gassaway. His first five fights ended in knockouts.
Guys in the gym marveled at his diligent training, how he sucked raw eggs for strength and wore out hinge pins on the speedbag. No one could believe how fast he jumped rope. After a workout, he would break through the ice on the Elk River and bathe.
On New Year's Eve 1949, Gum was shot in the leg while serving an arrest warrant. Two weeks later, Merzouk received a letter from a New York promoter asking to groom him for fights in Madison Square Garden. "Here the boys get $50 for four rounds and $100 for six rounds," promoter Nat Forman wrote.
But Merzouk no longer had a trainer. "Johnny Gum was injured. He was the only one around who could handle my father. That was the turning point, the downfall of my father's boxing career," Frey said.
Gum advised him to turn down the New York offer and go to college. In 1951, he enrolled at Anderson College in Anderson, Ind., and got a bachelor's degree in French and Bible. He boxed until 1953 when the lure of graduate study persuaded him to hang up his gloves for good.
Over the years, the insatiable hunger for knowledge won him scholarships to 10 different colleges, including a soccer scholarship to Middlebury College in Vermont. "That's the Harvard for foreign languages," Frey said. "It costs $30,000 to go there. They wouldn't let him in, so he worked there and got a scholarship as the goalie on the soccer team."
"He regretted not going to Madison Square Garden," Frey said. "But he would say he did the right thing. He always said that an education was the one thing nobody can take away from you."
After teaching stints at Sutton, Burnsville and Gassaway high schools, he taught French, Spanish and Latin at Braxton County High School from 1969 until he retired in 2002. The county named him teacher of the year in 1977 and 2003.
On Christmas morning six months after he retired, he died unexpectedly, presumably of a heart attack. He was 78.
Working on the DVD about her father inspired Frey to start a book expanding the story of his life. Two people have contacted her about doing a screenplay.
"My father was one of the most incredible people I ever knew," she said. "I want to make sure he will be remembered."