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"It is good to be here with my class," Dean Huffstickler, 84, told about 20 members of the R-S Central High School graduating class of 1958. Class members get together as often as they can and recently, special guest Huffstickler attended.
Recently named to the 2022 Carolinas Boxing Hall of Fame, Huffstickler told his classmates the first time he was introduced to boxing was as a young teenager in Rutherfordton. He said he was walking home one day when Rutherfordton Police Officer Earl Bowers stopped to talk with him and offered him a ride.
Huffstickler said Bowers told him, "I need a boxer."
"So he took me to boxing," Huffstickler said, and that's how his boxing career began.
Huffstickler was among members of Rutherfordton's boxing team in 1958 who competed in the High Point Golden Gloves tournament winning numerous top awards, according to a story in the Rutherford County News. Huffstickler won the middleweight championship.
Other Rutherfordton team members included Donald Wilson, D.J. Cothran, Billy Splawn, Jr., Earl Ford, Howard Clark and Carl Clark, also trophy winners. At the High Point tournament, Bowers received the trophy for most valuable coach.
Huffstickler reminded his classmates, gathered at Barley's in Spindale on Thursday, Nov. 17, he was encouraged to be a boxer by a police officer, so later in his life, Huffstickler became a police officer for the City of Gastonia, and had the opportunity to mentor hundreds of young people during his 30-year law enforcement career. He taught the young men a number of lessons, in the world of sports and in life.
One of Huffstickler's former boxers attended the class meeting with Huffstickler recently.
"I walked into the gym at age 13 and met Coach," said Johnny McClain of Charlotte. If one word describes "Coach" it is compassion, McClain told Huffstickler's R-S classmates.
McClain said "Coach" changed his life and taught him valuable life lessons. Huffstickler stood up for McClain when others didn't. McClain recalled a story from the early 1970s when the Gastonia boxing team went into a restaurant for a meal. Coach Huffstickler was told by the restaurant owner McClain, an African American, couldn't eat in his restaurant.
"That was in 1973. Coach told the man if his entire team couldn't eat there, no one would," McClain said, so they left.
McClain was 14 years old when Huffstickler took the boxing team from Gastonia to the beach.
"It was not for a tournament. It was just for a trip. It was the first time I had ever been to the Atlantic Ocean," McCain said.
"He is like my second daddy," said an emotional McClain. "I would lay down my life for him. I would," McClain said.
In Gastonia, Huffstickler was involved in the lives of many young male athletes who were a part of the young Police Athletic Club's boxing and baseball programs.
Huffstickler told columnist Bill Williams at the Gastonia Gazette during an interview once,"The programs, I believe, have really helped in many different ways. It has helped reach the kids who otherwise would have nothing to do, and this kind of situation creates problems for the police and the citizens."
Huffstickler said baseball and boxing also helped keep him out of trouble when he was growing up in Rutherfordton.
"If it hadn't been for sports I don't know if I would have had the determination to finish," he told Williams of his high school career.
When Huffstickler started the sports program while he was a Gastonia police officer he started out first with boxing and later baseball, sports he excelled in in Rutherfordton and at R-S Central. From about 35 boys in the beginning to nearly 100 applications to join the sports program in Gastonia, Huffstickler's work with the youth boys in the community continued to develop, Williams reported.
Williams said Huffstickler told him "everybody plays in every game," he said.
Huffstickler told Williams during the time he was coaching, he believes since he was an officer, the boys gained a greater respect for police officers and in some areas of town it cut down on vandalism from kids who might otherwise wind up in trouble.
A former Golden Gloves and Armed Services middleweight champion, columnist Williams said Huffstickler's biggest moment in boxing came when he was in the corner of Evander Holyfield, later to become world champion. The U.S. Boxing Team was battling it out with Ireland in matches in Charlotte. Huffstickler was one of two coaches for that team.
Although not a boxer at R-S High School, he was a star in track, claiming a NCHSAA Mile victory for North Carolina in track competition.
Before going to the Gastonia police department, he was a member of the US Air Force.
Also joining Huffstickler for the class lunch was his sister, Sharlene H. Jones, who is in the process of writing a book about her brother's passions for sports and mentoring young men.
