My intention is not to mock the zany 1930s heavyweight contender but to celebrate him. "King Levinsky was a gladiator of the first order until he ran into (really away from) a youngster known as the Brown Bomber. . . " Since nobody at Union County College has gotten around to it for the last 50 years, I'll take it upon myself to revive what was a springtime tradition at the Cranford, New Jersey school in the 1960s and proclaim it "King Levinsky Day." Unlike the Union snooties, however, my intention is not to mock the zany 1930s heavyweight contender but to celebrate him. The annual rite supposedly started at Union in the early '60s, but as late as 1966, reported the Cranford Citizen and Chronicle newspaper, "A committee from the Student Council is now seeking reasons why King Levinsky Day should be celebrated. They have yet to come up with an answer." A year later they found it, designating their special holiday that April 4 as "a day for losers." Explained Student Council President Arne Hook: "King Levinsky, for those who are not up on their important American holidays, was a gladiator of the first order until he ran into (really away from) a youngster known as the Brown Bomber, alias Joe Louis. Our hero (King Levinsky, that is) was knocked from his pedestal and was never heard from again." In conjunction with that year's King Levinsky Day, Union established a "Losers' Fund" to "provide up to $20 for a student who runs into some unusual and unforeseen financial problem." Student Council President Hook, noted the Union bulletin, "said it is appropriate that the King Levinsky Day celebration benefit the Losers' Fund, since King Levinsky was, indeed, a loser." The centerpiece of King Levinsky Day at Union every year was an appearance by Jean Shepherd, "noted radio personality, philosopher, wit, egoist, intellectual and humorist," whose most enduring work is the holiday movie classic "The Christmas Story," an amalgam of several Shepherd stories about his boyhood. He narrated the film, too. I don't know what it cost to have Shepherd, then the popular host of a New York City radio show, headline King Levinsky Day, but they probably could've gotten Levinsky himself at half the price. The onetime fourth-ranked heavyweight contender was in Miami Beach then, selling neckties out of a suitcase and telling customers it was Joe Louis who got him started in that trade. "What's your name?" he'd ask them. "Mine's King Levinsky. I fought Joe Louis. That's why I'm selling ties now." Levinsky was joking about the August 7, 1935 fight that defined him in the eyes of the Union students, as well as most boxing fans and ring historians, when he beseeched the referee to stop it after sampling Louis's firepower in the first round at Chicago's Comiskey Park. ("I'll bet you don't remember when I fought Joe Louis," he'd also say to people. "Well, neither do I." Or he'd say he went on a "sit-down strike" that night at the ballpark.) Contrary to Arne Hook's pronouncement, Levinsky didn't disappear from sight after the Louis debacle. He boxed for a few more years, then wrestled, then became an itinerant peddler, showing up at sporting events to hawk cigarette lighters, then electric shavers and finally neckties. The reported $400,000 he'd earned in 116 professional fights (74-35-7) was kaput. It's purely a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if Union's adoption of Levinsky as their poster boy for "losers" instead of a more obvious candidate (say, perennial Republican presidential candidate Harold Stassen) was the result of an hour-long documentary called "Boxing's Last Round" that aired on the NBC network in 1964. "Anyone who saw (it) couldn't help but feel disgusted with the sport," wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Sid Ziff. "The use of King Levinsky to show what can happen to someone in the ring was particularly unnerving. Levinsky, with his thick tongue, stumbling shuffle, pathetic answers and amiable mumbling, was an obvious choice to create an image of the punchy ex-fighter." Back in 1943 a writer named Jack Cuddy said the same thing about Levinsky to former lightweight champion Benny Leonard, who set him straight: "He's not punchy. He always acted that way. He's got more brains now than he had when he was fighting because he's older and more matured. He's been making a living selling neckties for about a year now. He tried wrestling after he quit fighting. And when he quit wrestling, the only thing he could do was sell ties, or go into one of the rackets. He took the ties. And you've got to respect him for his choice." In 1945, Broadway columnist Earl Wilson asked Levinsky if he was sorry he'd been a fighter. "No, I got myself a name, now I can make a living," answered the King. "Lots of fighters go blind. The old King's a super-salesman. . . I made $400,000 and wound up broke. My managers cut up all my dough. If I got a buck now, it's mine." "Levinsky is doing all right," reported former co-manager Harold Steinman a few years later. "People think he's broke; that he is on the simple side. Actually he's smart as a whip and in the chips. When he quit boxing . . . The King went into the necktie business. He peddled ties at fight shows, training camps and in other spots where the sporting crowds gathered. He had no set price, but would collect what the traffic could bear. Anything from $2.50 up. You know, the mob liked to buy ties from Levinsky. The purchasers felt important, wearing neckpieces sold by a former fighter. Each necktie carried a little label which explained King Levinsky had the ties made especially for his customers. The tourists went for those labels in a big way. The King bought the ties and labels in gross lots. Today Levinsky manufactures his own neckties, owns a custom-made automobile, spends the winters in Miami and has money in the bank. He continues to sell on a personal basis. No branch offices, no employed salesmen for the King. And people used to think Levinsky was daffy as a jaybird." In the mid-'70s Levinsky and his wife Helen spent summers with her family in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Chris Sullivan, now a vice president of the Institution for Savings in Newburyport, was a 16-year-old boxing fan in 1975, working as a busboy at the local Sportsman Lodge when Levinsky came in one day. Chris ended up spending that summer chauffeuring the King and his suitcase full of ties to and from a restaurant in nearby Salisbury. "He had kind of a slurred voice and was hard to understand," he recalls. "But he was a great guy. He had a heart of gold. A gentleman." In his high school graduation photo, Chris wore a King Levinsky tie. "I was just in awe of him," he says. Sullivan was at the King's sparsely attended funeral in Newburyport in 1991. Too bad the organizers of King Levinsky Day at Union Community College weren't smart enough to invite the man himself to their shindig for "losers." Levinsky would've put them in their place with the line he used when anybody looked down their nose at him and his suitcase full of ties: "I'm punchy - what's your excuse?" The King didn't get past the fourth grade. On March 30, 1932, the Sandusky, Ohio Register reported: "Homeless lodgers in Garfield house, an abandoned Chicago schoolhouse, have painted a white circle around the seat where King Levinsky, heavyweight fighter, sat when he attended school there." Anybody at Union County College remember where Arne Hook sat?