Serendipity: Discovering wall drawings of a turn-of-the-century Lancaster prize fighter

Meanderer

Supreme Member
Location
PA
When the boys took a pencil to the walls, one of their favorite subjects was their older brother, Leo, a well-known boxer. The “Lancaster Thunderbolt,” Leo was known for his devastating left triple-jab during his career, which later landed him in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

More than 100 years later, the walls of that room still bear Hauck’s kid brothers’ large pencil drawings of him: Hauck striking a boxing pose, Hauck knocking out a towering opponent and even a diapered Hauck, captioned as “the coming lightweight champion of the world” by one of his brothers.

Also on the walls are a bunch of the brothers’ other artwork: goofy cartoons, jokey family drawings and even what looks like maybe somebody’s spelling list, all remarkably preserved and untouched.

Just this month, Leo Hauck’s youngest son — now 80 — and one of Hauck’s grandchildren saw the drawings for the very first time, climbing two steep, narrow staircases to get to the room in the brick rowhouse on the west side of Lancaster.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,” said Joe Hauck, a gray-haired, retired glass factory worker, as he first gazed on the drawings of his late father. “You have to understand. A world champion boxer was in this room.”
http://lancasteronline.com/news/loc...cle_d05fafdc-49a9-11e5-a296-47252c524dc5.html

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Amazing that they remained intact and undiscovered all those years. The brother that drew on the wall was very talented. Thanks for sharing such a interesting story, Jim.
 

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