Author: Vinny Vella
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin makes proclamation about COBA Day as COBA founder Johnny Callas looks on.
Late Thursday, flanked by city and state leaders, Johnny "Coach" Callas unveiled the first permanent home for his mission since Reagan was in the White House.
It took that long for the Charter Oak Boxing Academy to wind its way back to the city that birthed it. The new academy is built into the bones of a space that once housed a revolving door of different nightclubs on the Pope Park Highway.
"My greatest fight is this building and getting it fixed up over these last few years," Callas said. "This has been my greatest 15-round championship."
It was an momentous occasion for Callas, who opened the academy with little more than sweat equity in 1988.
Back then, in its early years, the boxers it molded hit bags inside the back room of the YMCA at the Charter Oak Terrace housing project. They didn't have much space, Callas said, crammed in alongside a worn pool table.
"But we still produced six state championship teams, and many junior Olympic champions," he said. "Our kids stayed alive, in school, off drugs, out of gangs, and moved onto some form of higher ed. That's the gist of the program."
After the project was shuttered and demolished, Callas and his athletes became nomads: A few years in Glastonbury, a few more in Middletown.
Five years ago, he and his board of directors devoted all of their energies to finding a permanent home. And it had to be in Hartford.
"I'm a Hartford boy," he said. "I love Hartford, and I love inner-city kids — I was one once, and I know what boxing did for me and my life."
He had some other Hartford boys help him make that dream a reality, including Robert E. Ford Jr.
Ford was a member of the inaugural class of fighters at the academy, swinging away in the old Charter Oak Terrace gym.
Three decades later, Ford is now a deputy chief of police in his hometown, and the president of the boxing academy's board of directors.
"It was different back then; every neighborhood had its own boxing gym," Ford said. "But John started something different. It wasn't a gym. It was a family, a community."
Callas, Ford and their colleagues found a powerful partner in Zachary Karas, a figure in the localinsurance community. Karas bought the gym's new home three years ago, and handed the keys to Callas.
"If it wasn't for Zach, we wouldn't be here," Callas said.
Karas was standing in the ring Thursday, watching as Callas and Ford helped snip the ribbon strung across the canvas.
"The main focus here is making the kids champions of life," Ford said, borrowing the gym's unofficial slogan.
"Teaching them to box is great, but getting them to give back to the community, that's the real goal," he said. "In all likelihood, you're not going to get a boxer here that's going to fight professionally. Our objective is to make full adults out of these kids that sustain the community in Hartford."
One of those kids is Isaiah Deas, a 14-year-old who's been training with Callas for three years and fought his way to become the state's silver glove champion.
"He respects him," Deas' mother Heidi said. "He knows he represents COBA in everything that he does. And he knows that he doesn't want coach to get on him."
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