Pubdate: Wed, 15 Jan 2003
Source: Temiskaming Speaker, The (CN ON)
Copyright: 2003 The Temiskaming Speaker
Contact:  http://speaker.northernontario.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2389
Author:  Diane Johnston

FORMER CANADIAN HEAVYWEIGHT NOW CHAMPIONS DRUG FIGHT

NEW LISKEARD -- A son addicted to heroin, who took his own life.

Two more sons dead of drug overdoses, after years in prison for robberies 
to support their drug addictions.

A wife in despair over her sons' deaths, also lost to suicide.

Former Canadian heavyweight boxing champ George Chuvalo describes the toll 
as "my own personal family holocaust."

He now travels the country, sharing his story with students in hopes of 
deterring other young people from the same path.

The 65-year-old Toronto man who stood before more than 1,000 Tri-Town area 
students earlier this week was old enough to be their grandfather.

But he hoped his young audience would heed his message as coming from a 
loving grandfather.

"You're all beautiful, you all have a chance," he told students at 
Timiskaming District Secondary School Monday, January 13.

To boxing fans, Mr. Chuvalo may best be known as the tough Canadian boxer 
who fought Muhammad Ali in 1966. And during a professional boxing career of 
97 fights, he was never knocked out.

But it's been a series of highly publicized personal tragedies that have 
marked his life over the past decade and a half.

"By me speaking to young people, I'm saying to myself, 'my sons are helping 
somebody, my wife is helping somebody,'" he said after speaking to students.

Tragedy

Tragedy struck the family in the early 1980s.

Mr. Chuvalo said his youngest son, Jesse, had been injured in a dirt bike 
crash shortly after his twentieth birthday in 1984.

After one week in hospital on the powerful painkiller Demerol, his doctor 
- -- who was worried about possible addiction -- prescribed a less potent drug.

His father recalled the doctor saying, "'Don't worry about Jesse. Jesse 
will be just fine.' But Jesse wasn't just fine."

His son continued to complain of pain and, at a party a month later, was 
offered illegal drugs. He quickly became addicted to heroin.

Less than eight months later, in despair over his addiction, he shot himself.

Over the next 11 years, Mr. Chuvalo watched his two older sons also succumb 
to heroin addiction.

His son George Lee spent ten years in jail for crimes supporting his drug 
addiction. His brother, Steven, was jailed a total of seven years.

In a two-month period in 1986-87, he said Steven overdosed 15 times.

He recalled rushing him unconscious to an infirmary on New Year's Eve, and 
on another occasion finding him in a snowbank and close to death by exposure.

Then, in 1987, he was startled to hear his own name on a newscast. That was 
how he learned that his two sons had been arrested for an armed robbery in 
which they stole a gym bag full of prescription drugs.

George was released from jail in 1993. Only a few days later, his body was 
found in a Parkdale hotel. He was slumped in a chair, a syringe sticking 
out of his arm.

Four days later, Mr. Chuvalo's wife, Lynn, committed suicide in their home, 
taking pills from one of the boys' drug robberies that she had hidden in a 
hope chest.

Mr. Chuvalo discovered her body. When he told Steven, he said his son ran 
outside, "screaming his pain into the wind."

By August, 1996, Steven too was dead.

But he appears in a video that Mr. Chuvalo continues to show to school 
audiences. Steven had been interviewed in jail in 1995 where he was serving 
a sentence of two years less a day for a drug store robbery.

"I have a hard time watching this video," his father said.

Eleven days after Steven's release from jail, his body was found in his 
sister's apartment in Guelph, a syringe in his arm and a cigarette in his hand.

Mr. Chuvalo said his son died before he had a chance to light the cigarette 
- -- death by overdose can take only seven seconds.

Education and Love

But while he was in prison, Mr. Chuvalo said he and Steven had discussed 
touring schools together, telling their story to audiences who are making 
pivotal decisions about the rest of their lives.

If Steven had been here, Mr. Chuvalo said he would have told students about 
the importance of self-esteem and a loving family, and the early stages of 
addiction.

Mr. Chuvalo said addiction is reached in steps.

It may begin with smoking tobacco, and progress to alcohol. He said it's 
then not a big leap to marijuana, harder drugs like ecstasy, and finally 
heroin and cocaine.

But he said the real story of drug use -- the stomach pumping procedures 
after an overdose, painful and sometimes fatal withdrawals, the lack of 
self-control -- is not shown on film or television.

Heroin addicts don't look like the character played by John Travolta in 
Pulp Fiction, he said. (Ironically, he himself appeared in that film, via a 
photograph of one of his fights on a poster in a character's room.)

Real addicts are "thin emaciated, ugly," he said.

"If my sons could have had a glimpse of the future," he told the packed 
gymnasium, "my sons would never have done drugs."

He said Steven would also have stressed the significance of education.

He considers it his failure as a parent that he permitted his son to quit 
school.

It was not until Steven was imprisoned that he completed his high school 
studies and then went on -- still in jail -- to study the Russian 
literature he had grown to love.

"Education is the single most important determinant in how successful 
you'll be in life," Mr. Chuvalo said.

He said his two surviving children, Mitch and Vanessa, were both strong in 
school, and his son was also heavily involved in sports.

He said his son would also have spoken about love -- the factor that he 
credits for helping him survive the loss of so many in his family.

"I talk about love -- imagine that, me talking about love. If it wasn't for 
love, I wouldn't be here today."

After the death of his son George and his first wife, he said he did not 
leave his bed for six weeks. He can recall little of that period except for 
the visits of his surviving family and close friends.

"I know how important family is," he said, as he urged students to tell 
their parents daily that they love them.

He said it's the love of family that makes one feel "connected" and "whole."

"Love makes you feel strong, love makes you feel tender, love makes you 
feel secure, love makes you feel appreciated, love makes you feel important."
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MAP posted-by: Alex