He Fed Spark, but Didn’t Live to See the Fire

Beyond the grave site, in the stands of trees rimming the grassy field bordering the cemetery, birds are singing in the early morning chill.

Cus D’Amato died at 77 in 1985, one year before his protege, Mike Tyson, won his first heavyweight championship. D’Amato lived the last 17 years of his life in this Hudson River town of 2,500, about 100 miles north of New York.

He lived in a 14-room Victorian home, owned by Camille Ewald, on a bluff overlooking the Hudson.

D’Amato, who in the 1950s guided Floyd Patterson to the heavyweight title, and later, Jose Torres to the light-heavyweight championship, set up a boxing gym two floors above the Catskill police station. There, in his last years, he happily taught young, wayward boys to box.

One day in 1979, D’Amato received a phone call.

It was from a friend, Bobby Stewart, a physical education teacher at a state juvenile facility in Johnstown, N.Y. Stewart told D’Amato he wanted to bring a 13-year-old boy to Catskill for a meeting.

The boy’s name was Mike Tyson.

After watching the unskilled but quick, powerfully built Tyson spar, the feisty, argumentative D’Amato told another trainer: “This boy is going to become the heavyweight champion of the world.”

After he was released from reform school, Tyson moved into the house on the hill with D’Amato, Ewald and another D’Amato boxer, Kevin Rooney. After D’Amato’s death, Rooney would become Tyson’s trainer.

At 14, Tyson finally had a home. And in Cus D’Amato, who became Tyson’s legal guardian, he had a father. When D’Amato died, Tyson was 19.

In an interview recently, Tyson was asked what D’Amato would have said to him after his defeat by Buster Douglas last month.

“He would’ve told me: ‘You didn’t fight with your spirit, or with your enthusiasm!’ ” Tyson said.

“Then he would’ve abused me verbally for a while. Then he’d have said: ‘Mike, I must sit down and talk with you about this performance.’ Then he’d say: ‘Aw, what the hell--want some ice cream?’ ”

Today, D’Amato lies in the last row of graves at St. Patrick’s Cemetery. The three-foot high headstone reads:

CONSTANTINE D’AMATO

1908-1985

Below his name, there is an inscription:

“A boy comes to me with a spark of interest. I feed the spark and it becomes a flame. I feed the flame and it becomes a fire. I feed the fire and it becomes a roaring blaze.”

Beneath the inscription, there is an engraved ring rope, with two boxing gloves hanging from the rope by their laces.

Fresh flowers have been placed at the headstone this morning, as they have been on every morning since the funeral 4 1/2 years ago. The card attached to the flowers reads:

“From Kevin, Mike, Camille and the gang.”