Kimball found something worth fighting for

Writer and journalist George Kimball hung on long enough for one last American Independence Day. He died a year ago on Friday.

It was his last push for life, the last bit of improvisation for a boxing scribe from the old school who must have endured countless nights of chaos in order to get his copy in on time from white-hot arenas and blood-spattered notebooks.

The first and last time I met him was at a book reading in New York City’s Greenwich Village. He shared the stage with the Ali biographer Thomas Hauser, who was himself showcasing his recently published first-person fictional account of a heavyweight boxer, Waiting For Carver Boyd.