Cultured Commissioner

No matter who became boss of New York's State Athletic (boxing) Commission, there was sure to be a typical grunt from Manhattan's fight fraternity: "What's this bum ever done?" Last week, Governor Tom Dewey picked Edward Patrick Francis Eagan for the job. Eager Eddie Eagan, who speaks softly but carries a fighting face, had done a lot of things : he had been an artillery officer, Rhodes scholar, friend of maharajas, globetrotter, assistant U.S. district attorney, Olympic bobsled champion, lieutenant colonel in the Air Transport Command-- and quite a boxer.

As a boy, Denver-born Eddie Eagan was a Frank Merriwell fan: at 46, he has achieved a carefully cultivated Merriwell career. In search of the better life he went after culture as if it were a championship, soaked up education at Denver University, Yale, Harvard Law and Oxford, struck up a two-fisted friendship with the Marquess of Clydesdale, with whom he made a world tour. But he rang the bell loudest in the amateur boxing ring.

After World War I, Eagan won the A.E.F. middleweight, the Olympic (Antwerp) light heavyweight, the U.S. and British Empire heavyweight amateur crowns--and held out against all persuasions to turn pro. As heavy puncher of Oxford's boxing team, he once flattened a Cambridge man, who guardedly remarked from the canvas: "I'll get up --eventually -- but not until that man has left Oxford." Eddie Eagan knew what it was like to be horizontal himself: once, in the pride of his Denver youth, he boxed an exhibition against Jack Dempsey. In his book Fighting for Fun Eagan described what happened: "Soft brown cushions like fairyland balloons were making circles before my eyes. . . . One came toward my nose and halted lightly on it, then fell like a bomb on my neck. . . . The lights went out." The next thing he knew, Dempsey was holding him up and whispering, "Take it easy, kid."

Eddie Eagan was just the kind of man Dewey wanted for commissioner. Manhattan's fight family would think twice before arching a cauliflower eyebrow at his decisions.

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