Gibbons' Church

Gibbons Church

Hot afternoons, a poet says, have been in Montana, and few of them hotter than July 4, 1923. That day, the sun poured down without mercy on the little cow town of Shelby, where, in a damp prizefight ring, glistened and heaved the ruddy shoulders of Tommy Gibbons, a husky boy who wanted to be champion of the world. Jack Dempsey, the champion, was punching and slashing at Tommy Gibbons. Sweat glistened on the faces of the shirt-sleeved crowd. One man fainted. It was the heat. Another man suddenly had a bleeding nose. Tommy Gibbons felt weak and sick after a while. He lost the fight and made no money. Dempsey got $300,000. Mayor Jim Johnson of Shelby, chief backer, lost $150,000. That was probably Tommy Gibbons most famous fight.

In 1925. in a hard twelfth round at the Polo Grounds, Manhattan, Gene Tunney knocked Tommy Gibbons out. That was Tommy Gibbons' last big fight, but he got well paid for it, and he had been well paid for many another fight.

Last week, in Osakis, Minn., Tommy Gibbons gave $50,000 to build a church. He has a summer home at Osakis and felt he ought to do "something worthwhile" for the town. The name of the church that Tommy Gibbons builds will be The Church of the Immaculate Conception.