THE BIG HEAT : Lee Sentinella Came to the Southland Depending Mainly on His Fists to Provide for Himself and His Two Children

He and his father quit their jobs, sold their cars and abruptly vacated Anchorage, Alaska., for Westminster, where the sun shines, amazingly enough, even on the “cheap side of town.”

The weather astonishes them daily.

“This is warmer than our summers,” says the father, happily basking in the rays that fall on the balcony.

Says the boy: “You don’t need gloves every time you go out.”

This is their promised land, where everything, even winter warmth, is possible.

It is also possible for the boy to become a boxing star, even though he has little more background than roughhouse fighting in Alaska bars, and no more encouragement than the best wishes of the folks at the Pines Club.

It is possible--who ever would have thought it?--to negotiate Southern California on nothing more than a one-speed bicycle. It is possible to move into an unfurnished apartment in an industrial pocket of town, to plan on sleeping on the floor, then suddenly to find it redecorated by neighbors--a bed here, a couch there.

Most of all, it is possible for this boy boxer, himself a single parent, to raise on his own two apple-cheeked children of surprising calm, 3-year-old Dustin and 1-year-old Shara Lynn.

Anything, evidently, is possible. The three generations reflect no doubt of that in their open faces.

Why, the boy boxer’s eyes are filled with no less innocence than Shara Lynn’s. And Dustin, secure in this little family, radiates the same self-confidence of his grandfather, a one-time homesteader in the Alaskan wilds who, you might think, should know better: that anything is not always possible.

The boy is not a boy, really. Though boyish in appearance, he is 24 years old and possibly matured beyond that by the disappointing union that has left him in sole custody of two small children. He is Lee Sentinella, though from the Pepsi sign he has brought from one of the Alaska bars he fought in, it appears he had a following as Lee (Shotgun) Sentinella.

That he is a fighter--Shotgun Sentinella?--certainly doesn’t square with his activities this day. The fighter is in the kitchen of the two-bedroom apartment, fixing lunch for Dustin.

“It’s a waffle sandwich, with honey in the middle,” the Shotgun explains. “You never saw that before, did you?”

Dustin is fed and, almost on cue, Shara Lynn awakes from a nap. Shotgun picks her up out of a playpen and, cradling her, gives her a bottle of milk, trying to smooth her hair for a photograph at the same time.

“Me and their mother,” he says, carefully choosing his words, “we’re not together anymore. I don’t know how to say it. I grew out

of my wild stage. She didn’t. I could never keep her home.”

Hearing talk of his mother, Dustin scoots into a bedroom and brings forth an 8 x 10 photograph of her. The picture is from a modeling assignment. Dustin shows it to all. The woman is beautiful and Lee clearly is not over that.

“The custody was easy,” he says. “She just signed them over to me on a piece of paper. She loves her kids but, for now, she’s more interested in finding a boyfriend. I let her spend as much time with them as she wanted. I’m not going to say how often she came over.

“Me, I like spending time with them. That’s why I had them.”

Nurturing two children alone, even with the help of a grandfather, is adventure enough for most people. Nurturing two children, holding down a bell captain’s job at the Sheffield House in Anchorage and trying to forge a professional boxing career in a state that has very little of it? That makes the movie “Kramer vs. Kramer” seem like a guy just playing house.

All the same, it never seemed adventuresome enough to Sentinella. There was too much unfulfilled promise all around him, in his life and his career. Too much future, somewhere. He had won five state Golden Gloves titles and was certainly destined for greatness but, at 24, was completely stalled in an everyday world of limited opportunity.

“Whenever they had a title fight in Alaska, they called me for the undercard,” he says, proudly. “It was an honor to be called.”

Alas, that happened only three times--he won on a knockout each time--and man cannot live on honor alone.

So, instead, he fought as often as twice a week on roughhouse cards at two Anchorage bars. The matchmaking in those boozy joints was highly arbitrary, verging on a kind of manslaughter by negligence.

Sentinella, because of his experience, was often handicapped and although he’s a middleweight was sent into the ring against heavyweights.

“I fought a guy 235 pounds,” he says, “I knocked him out in eight seconds and he stayed out for three minutes. I could smell the booze on his breath as he was going down.”

He regularly filled either the Pines Club or the Midnight Express the nights he fought. The patrons took him seriously.

Sentinella took all that seriously, too. When he speaks of his pro background, which is really his three knockout wins, he tends to lump in the roughhouse boxing.

“My record,” he says, consulting a small black book, “was 27-4-4 with 14 KOs.”

In the two previous winters, Sentinella boxed as often as twice a week, earning perhaps an extra $100 a week. He accrued little honor, perhaps, but some savings.

But he learned something important, not from his various challengers but from the ringside drinkers who cheered him on. They told him something he had begun to suspect.

“They told me if I didn’t do something, in a couple of years I’d be sitting on a bar stool, just like them,” he says.

That thought sobered Sentinella, at least, and he began planning to secure his greatness elsewhere, or at least to find more opportunities to win or lose it.

Lee’s father, Wally, himself no stranger to adventure, threw himself into the project with enthusiasm, quitting his job on a Prudhoe Bay oil project and cashing in his Teamster pension.

They considered Las Vegas and Atlantic City, too, but decided that Los Angeles offered the best opportunity for advancement, not to mention the best climate. There was a fine gym in Westminster and surely the kind of competition that would help advance Lee in the sport and into the big money.

But beyond making some contacts in the boxing community--nobody was willing to invest more than time in a 3-0 middleweight--there was not much high-level planning. In fact, the entirely unfounded confidence with which they blithely sailed into the unknown is astonishing.

Last month, with only the name of a Westminster hotel in mind--”I looked it up in the library,” Wally says--they boarded a plane in Anchorage and flew into Long Beach.

“We had 15 cardboard boxes,” says Wally. “It cost us $100 air freight but then it cost me $100 more to get it from the airport. I had to find someone with a long van.”

The first order of business was to find an apartment. Wally, who had once homesteaded in the Alaskan bush, bagging elk and canning fish with no more preparation than the streets of Seattle could offer, undertook this feat.

He bought a bike at a nearby store and, classified ads in hand, searched out an apartment, describing a tight radius around the Westminster Gym, Lee’s principal arena of hope.

Wally discovered that landlords can be quite restrictive. The idea that an infant boy and his sister would sleep in one bedroom apparently scandalized some, and second-story apartments were not routinely rented to families with children.

This particular apartment, though spick-and-span clean, is not torn from the pages of Architectural Digest.

“The flusher doesn’t work,” says Wally, explaining the constant whooshing of water in the bathroom. “They’re not so fast fixing things here.”

Even though this is, as Lee says, “on the cheap side of town,” it still costs $540 a month.

If that amount includes the goodness of their neighbors, though, it is probably money well spent because it is neighbors who have largely furnished this apartment. The Sentinellas certainly didn’t count on that but their view of humankind is such that they were not surprised when couches and mattresses began appearing in their apartment.

That is the problem of naivete rewarded. It may be difficult to remember that all is not always possible when things like this keep happening.

Whether Lee can actually box remains to be seen. Don Fraser, on the strength of a videotape trainer Starr Everett made from Lee’s three fights, signed him for the undercard of his show Jan. 20 at the Irvine Marriott, headlined by an Oscar Muniz-George Garcia bout. So we’ll find out.

In the meantime, Lee trains daily. His routine includes an early-morning run, afternoon sparring and an evening workout at an exercise spa.

Not to mention the feeding of two children, the organization of naps, play and even the changing of diapers. At night, in what appears to be the major recreation, the Sentinellas mobilize and, taking the baby stroller, walk the streets of Westminster.

Once, memorably, they strolled as far as the beach, which was a mighty surprise to all.

“All that sand,” recalls Lee, as if struck anew by life’s wild generosity.

Innocents at large, surprised and pleased by everything. Truth be told, you spend much time with these Sentinellas and there is the recurring urge to slap yourself on the forehead.

They just don’t understand. You can’t raise kids single-handedly. You can’t just show up in Los Angeles, with no particular recommendation, and expect to make a living at professional boxing. There will not always be apartments available, or neighbors generous enough to help you furnish them or look after your kids.

Consider that Lee will make just $300 for his four-round fight with Henry Johnson but, in preparation for that, he and his father will have spent more than $1,000 on rent and who knows how much else on food and equipment, not to mention travel and other expenses.

“It could be a beginning,” Lee protests.

They don’t understand the business of boxing or, it would seem, much else.

But, you finally think, maybe this is not so much about business or even boxing as it is about a particularly cheerful and confident passage through life, that the Sentinellas’ baggage of cartons and children really manifest hope and innocence.

As these adventurers challenge cynicism at every turn, it is wonderful to imagine that it could be a beginning, that anything is, in fact, possible. What do we know?