Stanley Ketchel was born Stanislaw Kiecal in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Polish immigrants and became a middleweight boxing world champion. But before that, he was a teenage runaway, worked as a bouncer in Butte Montana, and started boxing in backroom matches. In 1903, he began boxing professionally, at age 16. He famously fought Jack Johnson and in 1910 he fought his last six fights. Stanley was recovering from those fights on a friend's farm in Missouri when he was robbed and murdered by a ranch hand. Read about his short and tragic life story in this well-written book.
Grand Rapids remembers him with a sculpture by Ann Hirsch (erected in 2015) on Bridge Street, part of the Community Legends Project.
The now defunct Rocky's Bar had this hanging on a wall.
Stanley's funeral was the largest in Grand Rapids until Gerald Ford's in 2007. He is buried with members of his family in Holy Cross Cemetery in Grand Rapids. When we first visited the grave some years ago, boxing gloves were hanging on the headstone and the base was clearly crumbling.
Today we visited and found a repaired grave site and members of Stanley's family nearby.
His father and mother:
His brothers, John and Alexander, and Alexander's wife, Ethel.
His brother, Leon, appears to have died in World War II in 1942 but details are scant.
Someone laid flowers on the grave of the "The Michigan Assassin" and boxers who come to town continue to pay their respects. RIP Stanley, the first middleweight champion to regain the world title after losing it. He packed a lot of living into his short life.