A Tribute to Big George Foreman, That 1968 Fight with Jonas Cepulis, and a Beloved Brother in Vietnam

(Editor’s Note: With the passing of George Foreman on March 21, OMP resident Dave Murphy harks back to 1968, when everything was riding on Foreman’s fight with Soviet fighter Jonas Cepulis, including the safe return of Dave’s brother Pat from Vietnam. -jb)

In 1968, my brother Pat, ten years my senior, went to war. He arrived in Vietnam when he was twenty and I was ten. That year was my introduction to the nightly news with Walter Cronkite. Dan Rather frequently reported from Vietnam.

My father died several years earlier, and my other older brother, Ed, had moved from our dying factory town of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan to find work. It was just Mom and me.

Each evening, Mom and I gathered near our small black and white television to get the news from Vietnam. As Cronkite would hand it over to Rather for a war zone report, Mom would say, “Be quiet and look for your brother! We might catch a glimpse of him!” We’d edge nearer and nearer the TV to study every millimeter of it for a sign of Pat.

We never succeeded in finding Pat in an interview or as a backdrop to Rather’s reporting, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Any glimpse of Mom’s beloved son would have been a blessing for her rattled nerves, sleepless nights and endless prayers.

Pat’s letters arrived routinely. He mentioned strangely-named cities, an elephant on a rampage that killed villagers, a pet monkey, a debate and fistfight (that he won but cost him a stripe) with an officer about playing a radio with his buddies while off duty, patrols and exploding bombs, including one that landed him in the hospital with shrapnel in his back, his radio operator job during combat, another hospitalization for a jungle fever, and something called the TET Offensive that began a few weeks after his arrival.

A detail in several letters that stayed with me the most was, “I’m here to help end this nightmare so my little brother won’t ever see this place.”

Mom and I compulsively wrote letters in return. In fact, when people ask where my interest in writing began, it was by writing to Pat in Vietnam. But Mom had a secret superpower via other sources she communicated with routinely. She was a weapons grade Catholic. Mom had a patron saint for every cause from baking to lost car keys, and St. Michael the Archangel was the patron saint of warriors. Even so, no one outshined her favorite, the Virgin Mary. If a person can get a hernia from praying, Mom and I did that year.

Like Mom, my nights were troubled rest. I’d stack up the prayers on Pat’s behalf as I’d lie awake counting Hail Marys, Our Fathers, and Acts of Contrition. We lived across the street from the Catholic church and school that I attended. There were masses at 7 and 8 a.m. before school and all during the summer. I served every one of those masses in 1968 for Pat’s benefit. School prayers to begin the day were a time to request support for a special need, and my classmates heard Pat Murphy’s name daily.

While classmates played at recess, I went to church to pray by myself. My one quarter allowance each week was carefully spent on five nickel votive candles purchased in the church to the side of the altar. I measured the burn time so one would be lit as much as possible through the week, lifting prayers to heaven for Pat.

When my brother Ed visited, he made it clear that he was a “lapsed Catholic” and didn’t find my prayerful ways at all appealing. He adopted a new name for me: “Pious Little Shit.” Mom scolded him for the language but privately told me that Catholics had long suffered for their beliefs, so I was in fine company. I wore the “Pious Little Shit” moniker with pride. Wasn’t there once a Pope Pious? Actually, it was Pope Pius, but it still gave me peace of mind … the Notorious PLS.

Now that the television had my attention for more than the likes of cartoons and Gilligan’s Island, I was glued to it to learn of news like Martin Luther King’s assassination in April of ’68. My brother Ed was in the National Guard and was stationed in Detroit defending a fuel depot while being shot at during the riots of 1967. Ed’s service was another tense time for Mom and me, but it was within the boundaries not only of our nation, but the State of Michigan. With King’s death, would Detroit catch fire again?

Our hope, especially as Catholics, was Bobby Kennedy’s run for President in ’68. Bobby promised a swift end to the war, and in my youthful naivety, I imagined that might bring Pat home early. I stayed up late on a school night in early June to hear reporting on the California primary returns, but Mom sent me to bed before the final results were in. When I awakened the next morning, the first thing I did from my bed was shout to Mom about the results. Mom was downstairs in the kitchen, listening to the news on the radio. She called up to say that Bobby had been shot. He died that morning.

The year was not entirely gloomy. The Detroit Tigers ran away with the American League Pennant and pulled off a remarkable comeback to win the World Series. The eighth-grade nun at our school was a baseball junky and had everyone praying the rosary for the Tigers. I closely followed the Apollo Space Program, collecting free drinking glasses of the Apollo missions that the A&P Grocery Store gave to us. After a disastrous launchpad accident in 1967, the program was back on track with a manned mission scheduled for late 1968. We might yet beat our communist rivals to the moon.

If there was any peak moment for me in 1968, it came with what was labeled the Summer Olympics that didn’t take place until October of that year. I learned of a teenage American boxer named George who’d go against an experienced Soviet fighter in his late twenties. It sounded like a horrible mismatch … a good American kid, younger than Pat, fighting a mature adult communist who was secretly paid to be a professional boxer by our cheating adversaries … the same rotten commies that Pat was fighting to stop the takeover of Vietnam.

It’s impossible to describe the meaning this sporting event represented to me at the time. Pat was due home on the first of January but had sent letters talking about buddies dying just prior to their return flights. There was no level below which these dirty communists wouldn’t stoop, killing good young Americans boys as their families awaited them. The intensity of hatred I had for Pat’s enemies was matched only by my prayerful ways. By October, the volume of supplications said in Pat’s name could have been stacked so high that the Apollo astronauts might have walked to the moon on prayers.

The boxing match was set for a Saturday and was broadcast from Mexico City right into our living room in Sault Ste. Marie. Scheduling seemed muddled. The television announcers kept telling me the fight would begin soon, but the promotions dragged on for hours. Mom was alternately vacuuming and dusting every room in the house, or in the kitchen cooking, rattling pans and doing the dishes. I’d yell out reports of when I thought the fight would begin. I couldn’t grasp her lack of interest.

I was sick with anxiety. Finally, it began. George appeared big and powerful, but so young. The pale Soviet with the weird name of Jonas Cepulis was so mature that he was already balding! George had to beat this communist. He had to! He had to win for America. He had to win for world freedom. He had to win for me. But most of all, he had to win for Pat. A victory by George would be a portent of Pat’s safe return.

The fight began. George looked bigger, but the commie looked quicker, far craftier and more experienced, and more aggressive. I feared for George. He absorbed a couple hard blows from Cepulis, but then George began launching bombs. I was screaming at the television, pleading for Mom to join me, spitting epithets at the Soviet, and roaring so loud that George might hear me and know this was all for Pat.

George bloodied the Soviet’s nose! Was it possible he might win? By the end of the first round, George seemed to have the upper hand, but those sneaky communists … don’t give him an opening, George! The Soviet fought back despite his bleeding wounds. The round ended. I was dancing and jumping around the room, roaring. But still no Mom.

The second round began. I remained cautiously optimistic. And loud, yelling for George. The teenage American was clearly damaging Cepulis. Then inexplicably, the referee stepped in, calling for a temporary stoppage to give the Soviet a standing eight count. What? I’d never heard of such a thing! Why didn’t the ref let George finish the guy? Was this more cheating? Why give the commie a break when George was nearing victory?

But my worries were short-lived. George finished the poor guy off, leaving him a bloody and staggering mess.

Then George did something that proved to me that this was all for Pat. He was handed a small American flag and carried it around the ring after his victory, bowing to the crowd.

Mom never joined me in our living room. It was for the best. I cried because I knew something that others couldn’t possibly grasp: George fought and won for my brother. I was exhausted but happier than at any point of that stressful year of 1968. I’m certain I went across the street to the church to light a candle for George and Pat.

Times and views change. My thoughts on Catholicism and prayer, the futility of hatred, confidence in the constancy of American righteousness, and the value of the George Foreman Grill have evolved over time.

But with George Foreman’s passing on March 21, 2025, I couldn’t help but think I should light a candle for the hope that man gave a child in 1968.

Epilogue: The morning after Pat returned from Vietnam in early 1969, I was awakened by laughter in the kitchen a floor beneath my bedroom. Then I heard Pat’s voice with Mom’s. I thought I was dreaming. For the past year, I’d been in chronic fear for his life. Was he really home or was it a taunting dream?

I tentatively crept downstairs to see if it was true. There they were. It was real. Christmas morning was never remotely this great. Pat was reading a letter I’d begun composing for him, but I worked on it past his departure time, so it was awaiting his return. It was a made-up story about my dog and me, intended to make a young man in a distant war laugh.

Pat caught me gazing at them. Still laughing, he signaled me near, pulled me into his lap, asked me where I came up with this stuff, and gave me a bear hug I can still feel today.

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