The Great Joe Louis

Added: Feb 02, 2017
Taken from an interview with Hattie's grandson, Howard Lee Ball, Jr in 2008:
Now, Grandma lived until 1947. She was a friend of Joe Louis, the boxer. She would sit on the front porch here, in her rocking chair, and Joe Louis and his group ran every morning. ... He would stop and run in place and talk to her, and she called him, "young man." "Are you all right, young man? Are they hitting you? Don't let them hit you." ... He really liked her, ... and he really made it his business to stop here, and, if she wasn't here, he'd run around the block one more time and make sure she was there. So, we loved him. ... I'm going to do a piece on him in another couple of weeks, from the standpoint of how he treated us kids, because ... he was a wonderful man and, unfortunately, the government gave him a bad deal in many ways. ... [Editor's Note: Joe Louis trained at Dr. Joseph Bier's Health Farm in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. The borough later built the Joe Louis Memorial Park on the site in his honor.]