Post by Dee Williams on Mar 10, 2009 1:16:02 GMT -5
Happy Birthday to Forum member Dee Hamaguchi!!
www.wban.org/biog/dhamaguchi.htm
excerpt:
Her transition to boxing began in 1993 when a notice for the New York Daily News Golden Gloves appeared in the gym where Dee was training. As she told WBAN, "The notice for the Gloves was taped to the wall, and most of the boxers in the gym were gearing up for that tournament. I asked if women were allowed to enter and was told, "No." But I knew that USA Boxing had been recently forced to accept females as members, and that there could be no discrimination with regard to gender in amateur sport according to NY State law (I had taken a fair housing seminar). So I sent in an entry just using my first initial. Unfortunately, the Daily News sent me my notice for my physical exam too late. My appointment was for Jan 16th, 1994, and I received the notice on Jan 18th. I called the Daily News the next morning, but was told that the last physical was given the night before. So I was out of luck. I decided to pursue it further, and wrote a letter to the News asking them to consider giving me another date for the physical, especially since they sent me my notice too late. They responded that I should have known to just show up on Jan 18th. I suspected that the Daily News just wanted me to go away once they realized I was a female. That just made me more determined to force them to let me enter, since I knew it was my right."
As the Daily News stated in an "Ladies night with a punch," on April 7, 1995, a year after she made history, "Dee Hamaguchi is the reason why women were here at the Daily News Golden Gloves in the first place. It had never happened in the 68 years of the country's oldest and largest amateur boxing competition. Last year as application was submitted with the name D. Hamaguchi. Nobody knew D. was Dee, and that Dee was a woman from Harlem. Even though she didn't end up competing last year, the seed was in the ground, and it started growing, so there we were last night looking at Jill Matthews' mascara and at the Golden Gloves dangling from Christine Bruno SanGallo's neck."
www.wban.org/biog/dhamaguchi.htm
excerpt:
Her transition to boxing began in 1993 when a notice for the New York Daily News Golden Gloves appeared in the gym where Dee was training. As she told WBAN, "The notice for the Gloves was taped to the wall, and most of the boxers in the gym were gearing up for that tournament. I asked if women were allowed to enter and was told, "No." But I knew that USA Boxing had been recently forced to accept females as members, and that there could be no discrimination with regard to gender in amateur sport according to NY State law (I had taken a fair housing seminar). So I sent in an entry just using my first initial. Unfortunately, the Daily News sent me my notice for my physical exam too late. My appointment was for Jan 16th, 1994, and I received the notice on Jan 18th. I called the Daily News the next morning, but was told that the last physical was given the night before. So I was out of luck. I decided to pursue it further, and wrote a letter to the News asking them to consider giving me another date for the physical, especially since they sent me my notice too late. They responded that I should have known to just show up on Jan 18th. I suspected that the Daily News just wanted me to go away once they realized I was a female. That just made me more determined to force them to let me enter, since I knew it was my right."
As the Daily News stated in an "Ladies night with a punch," on April 7, 1995, a year after she made history, "Dee Hamaguchi is the reason why women were here at the Daily News Golden Gloves in the first place. It had never happened in the 68 years of the country's oldest and largest amateur boxing competition. Last year as application was submitted with the name D. Hamaguchi. Nobody knew D. was Dee, and that Dee was a woman from Harlem. Even though she didn't end up competing last year, the seed was in the ground, and it started growing, so there we were last night looking at Jill Matthews' mascara and at the Golden Gloves dangling from Christine Bruno SanGallo's neck."
