REMEMBERING MARK ROWE
READING your moving tribute to Mark Rowe in last week’s edition (January 13) of Boxing News
reminded me of regular Friday morning meetings when both of us arrived at the newspaper stall outside The Wellington pub in Waterloo to collect our copy of BN. This was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after Mark’s retirement from the ring when he was a successful pig farmer.
I had seen him box both as an amateur and a professional and he came across as a tough fighting man, but always very friendly and sporting a very friendly smile; this is how I also remember him from our regular Waterloo Road encounters. Very sad to learn of his passing with dementia, great fighter and a great man too. RIP Mark, you were truly one of the best. Christopher Kempson
THE AMERICAN FRIEND
I READ your very kind article about Mark
Rowe. I am his American friend from Florida. We met at age 16 when I was in high school at Lakenheath, East Anglia.
We were best friends from the first meeting. We talked often, by phone or in person, in Florida and at the farm. Finally dementia caused our phone conversations to be too sad. Now I am an attorney in Vero Beach, Florida and live in Bend, Oregon. Let me know if there is a gathering. I would like to buy a round. Russ Peterson
HOORAY FOR THE BOOKAZINES
I HAVE been a reader of Boxing News since 1985 and this is the first time I've ever sent in a letter. It's to thank you for the bookazine series, BN Presents, that you have been publishing lately. They have been brilliant so far. Very informative and a must buy for any true boxing fan. I hope that this year there will be issues on Larry Holmes, Roy Jones Jnr and Nigel Benn, to name just a few of my favourite fighters. Ian Brett
WRITE ANOTHER NOVEL, BUNCEY!
AS a retired coach and English teacher, I say Steve Bunce should write a novel.
His latest column, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant concerning Jake Lamotta, was wonderfully written, as usual. For example, in the closing sentence of the paragraph about Jake’s wayward behaviour, when Steve writes ‘It’s the truth, sorry’ he sums up the less cute side of our sport, with light understatement, in just those four words.
Back in the 1980s and '90s, fiercely underrated novelist Timothy Mo worked also for BN. I taught his highly respected work on the A-level syllabus, and it was taught in the universities too; it’s superb, and Buncey has enough knowledge, eloquence and empathy to be BN’S
second revered novelist. Tim Fredericks