PAIN CAN'T BRING CHUVALO DOWN

The depth of George Chuvalo's indescribable loss is never far from the
surface and no matter how many times he repeats it, the agony remains.

"There were seven in my family; I have three left," the former Canadian
heavyweight boxing champion and world title contender told an audience of
student leaders, troubled teens and representatives of various social
agencies at the Memorial Boys and Girls Club yesterday. "What happened to
my family shouldn't happen to anyone's family."

And so began an hour-long George Chuvalo Fights Drugs address that was
equal parts blood-curdling, stomach-turning, desolating. And in its way,
love-inspiring.

The incredible saga of Chuvalo's drug-ravaged family is well-known. First,
youngest son Jesse ended a hopeless addiction with a gunshot to the head.
George Jr. died of a heroin overdose. Five days later, George Sr.'s wife
Lynne could not longer bear the loss and ended her life with an overdose of
sleeping pills.

Then came Steven. Within a month of agreeing to join his dad in an
anti-drugs campaign, he was found dead with a needle in his arm and an
unlit cigarette in his hand, the quick victim of another, this time deadly,
heroin overdose.

I knew them all. Jesse, who, as a toddler, suffered a bad electrical burn
to his mouth the week his father fought WBA champion Ernie Terrell. Georgie
and Steven, good kids with bundles of energy. Lynne, George's wife from age
15 who suffered more at ringside than her husband ever did in the ring.

Chuvalo, who turned 65 last week, loved them all and they loved him back.
They are the reason for George Chuvalo Fights Drugs, the reason he accepts
the torment that brought tears to his eyes for the 200th time yesterday
while he watched a television tape involving him, Steven and son Mitch, a
high school teacher in Toronto. He has one daughter, Vanessa.

As one scanned Chuvalo's rapt audience, some in tears, one wondered why in
God's name no government agency, provincial or federal, has harnessed this
valuable anti-drug asset on a full-time basis. It's not as though drug
abuse is not a problem among our young. And it's not as though Chuvalo's
approach is not compelling.

Why should it fall to supporters such as David E. White Men's Emporium to
bring in a guy who has spoken to an estimated 250,000 young people since he
began this seven years ago? Nobody I've heard on the issue has the impact
of this man.

It showed yesterday as his listeners heard the real deal, the straight
goods from a guy who went from being one of the toughest men in the world
with a modern-day heavyweight record of 97 pro fights to being bed-ridden
and almost comatose with grief for six weeks following the torrent of
horrors that befell his family.

Chuvalo held the Canadian title 21 years and fought all the champions and
contenders. In many fights he lost, the winner went to hospital. He was
rock-tough, never backing up, never flinching. He was never knocked off his
feet.

Outside the ring, he is an intelligent, articulate individual with a
mystical nature. He never has to write down telephone numbers. He remembers
times and dates of the most trivial of events.

But there was nothing trivial about the dates he lost his wife and three
sons. They are etched in his mind along with the horrors of drug addiction
among his kids.

Reader discretion is advised for the following:

Stephen and George were in such craving for a fix "they defecated in their
pants at the sight of it in their dealer's hand and made the exchange with
feces running down their legs. They'd heat up the drugs and take them
before cleaning up. Every time I tell that story I get sick to my stomach,"
Chuvalo recounted. "My handsome sons . . . articulate, handsome and as they
say in Spanish, 'Muy simpatico,' very sympathetic."

They were, these same kids who can be seen grouped around their dad hugging
him in a long-ago photo. The same kids who, as tiny amateur pugilists with
pillow-sized gloves, created greater consternation for their ringside
father than he ever experienced during a career that saw him fight all the
top opponents.

Nothing suggests his kids would fall into the hopeless drug trap they did.
Children of famous parents tend to have issues different from other kids
but drug addiction isn't always one. Mitch and Vanessa have never had a
problem.

"We know we were loved," Steven says in the TV documentary. "I can't think
of any factor (that led to his addiction)."

Nine months and 15 days after the video was shot, Aug. 17, 1996, he was dead.

Chuvalo wonders whether Jesse's introduction to drugs was the start. His
youngest son suffered a shattered kneecap in a motorcycle accident and
prescription pain-killers couldn't stop the pain. He encountered a person
at a party in suburban Scarborough one night who had the answer: Heroin.

It would take over his life and he ended it Feb. 22, 1985.

George Jr., then Steven, would follow via overdoses almost a decade later,
George in a fleabag hotel, Steven in his sister's recreation room, both
with needles in their arms.

Chuvalo told his transfixed audience about the time Steven took off from a
rehab centre in below-zero weather in only a shirt, shorts and one sock and
walked kilometres to his home, where he was found, again overdosed, lying
spread-eagled on the floor.

And the time Steven and George Jr. were chased by police after holding up a
drugstore, all the while reaching into a bag of pills and stuffing them
into their mouths to quell their cravings as they ran.

"They were found, one lying on top of the other, out like a light," he said.

There was the time in Guelph, when Steven vanished. George, as he had done
countless times, went searching for him. He saw a figure trying to break
into an animal hospital and when he hit his car's high beams, there was his
son.

"He had a rock in his hands and was going to break a window looking for
drugs, drugs for wild dogs and cats," Chuvalo related. "I could feel the
hot tears rolling down my cheeks."

Once, near the University of Guelph, Steven asked his father to stop the
car in front of a pharmacy so he could get some gum.

"He came running out and said, 'Step on it.' He'd grabbed some vitamin B12.
He thought it was Demerol."

There were the jail terms, the failed rehabilitations, the many overdoses
before the fatal ones. At no time did his love diminish. He once told me he
has never forgotten the touch, feel and aroma of the skin of each of his
lost loved ones.

Chuvalo remembers after the deaths "being in bed a month and a half and not
remembering even going to the bathroom. I remember the love of friends, so
tender and secure. It's all about love."

That was part of his message. But most of it had to do with steering clear
of bad habits, including smoking.

"My son was going to talk to groups like this about self-esteem. The first
time a young person takes a cigarette they disrespect themselves," he said.
"If a can of tomato soup had a message on the side saying this can cause
cancer and kill you, nobody in their right mind would eat it.

"Pot, hash, ecstasy, crack -- when you go down the line, by the time you
get to No. 12 it doesn't look so serious. But it's an issue of major
proportions."

As many schools as he has spoken to, there are as many in a state of denial.

"They don't have a drug problem at their school," he said. "One school told
me that and a week later, a Grade 10 girl OD'd on heroin. There's a
problem, all right."

George Chuvalo once thought his right eye had been knocked out during a
fight with champion Joe Frazier. A left hook smashed his cheek and damage
to the supporting tissue of the eyeball left him in danger of losing the
eye. Besides the worst injury of his career, he took the best shots of
Muhammad Ali and Floyd Patterson and George Foreman and all the rest.

He came back every time. He's still coming back. The pain has never gone
but George Chuvalo remains standing.