My collecting changed immeasurably around 1990 owing to a card show. At one, a fellow had 1948 Leaf cards of Barney Ross and Benny Leonard. I sort of knew that boxing cards existed but seeing these, I was instantly smitten. I bought the pair for a few bucks and took them home to show my father. He looked at the Ross card and said the words that changed my collection forever: “I think my cousin Ray fought him.”
You could have knocked me over with a puff of air.
“Dad,” I said, “if you have a cousin who was a boxer that means I have cousin who was a boxer.”
He then told me about Ray Miller for the first time and I realized that I was related to a world-class athlete, which I would have thought impossible given my athletic performances. At least it gave me a ready answer for when my father asked why I was so pugnacious: it runs in the family.
I later found a cousin in CHI who was a bit of a family boxing historian because her father Bennie Berris was a boxer and close friends with Ray too. We all share a common (at my generation) great-great-grandfather.
