BILLY MOORE CARRIES OUT MISSION TO HELP OTHERS
While he would rather be on a Harley-Davidson riding across the country with a bunch of other guys, Billy Moore loves talking about his legendary father — boxing icon, Archie Moore.
But the real father and son legacy was the handoff Billy received almost 40 years ago to continue the champ’s humanitarian work through Any Body Can Youth Foundation (ABC) launched in 1957 with a mission to help youth step off in life with their best foot forward without cowardice but with courage and dignity.
ABC has been in existence for 63 years. “I’m sitting in the dining room one night 40 years ago, and something said, ‘You have the mantel now.’ At that time, I didn’t know about hearing the voice of
the Lord and things of that nature, and so hearing that is what brought me to do what it is that we do,” Billy Moore recalled.
In 1968, the ABC Foundation received the Freedom Foundation’s Patriotism Award, and in 1981, the elder Moore became the Presidential Appointee of Ronald Reagan to work under the secretary of Housing and Urban Development to teach boxing to underprivileged youth in and around the housing projects in California.
“Right now, we’re working on projects that are going to be carrying us across country. We are in the process of taking ABC to Jackson, Miss., where they got in touch with me about the Hall of Fame in Mississippi after they realized that my dad was born in Benoit, Miss. I went back with my wife Florence to receive the award, and since then it’s grown into a seed to establish a birthplace for ABC.”
But the “foundation” of the ABC Youth Foundation will always be in San Diego at 3131 Market St., where the recognition continues every day from all who walk through the door.
Lemar Slater was 8 years old when he arrived at ABC. “The Moore’s (Archie and Billy) had a gym next to a sandwich shop downtown. I can remember being a young kid and looking up to these giants of men and learning about boxing but also life skills. There was always wisdom being popped in, and they taught us the simple basic rules and balance of life. I give credit for them helping me stay on the right path to get through school and be able to graduate with honors.”
That right path helped Slater navigate schools and neighborhoods, where gangs and drugs were the norms, to graduate as the class valedictorian at Gompers Academy before advancing to historic Morehouse College as an honors graduate in mathematics.
“Lemar is just one example of a student who left for college but came back to give back,” Moore said.
Another is Isabel Garcia, who just graduated from UCSD.
“This is a kid that came to ABC when she was 11 years old. There was a time her family could not turn on the lights at nighttime when living at the John Adams Apartments. Isabel would crack the curtain in her bedroom to get some light from the parking lot while teaching herself how to draw. Today her murals are all over the city,” Moore said.
In an era when most might not know the legacy of Archie Moore, son Billy has built a championship reputation of his own. “It seems like we find it so easy to skip over the kid. We don’t put enough attention catching a kid when they are six, seven, or eight years old in a preventive mode opposed to rehabilitation.
I would like to see somebody at the top who would take the lead in helping young people who fell by the wayside.”
Billy Moore believes in the basics of life. “Don’t lie or cheat. Don’t steal, don’t smoke. Don’t drink, don’t gamble. Don’t talk back to your parents, don’t gang bang. All the simple things of life you heard every day. Go to church, go to school, go to junior high school, go to high school, get a high school diploma, go to college, and get a college degree. After you get the degree you’ve got to do something. Those are the things that we do with ABC. We just teach the simple basics of everyday life because that’s what our kids are missing today.”
With Billy Moore in your corner, it’s easy to see how champions are made, not born at the ABC Youth Foundation.