Chess is like life in one sense

Lennox Lewis receives honorary degree at Laurier convocation

• By Jeff Hicks, Record staff
• Fri Oct 28 2011

WATERLOO — Landon Lewis took the ceremonial tam from his dad Lennox and plunked it on his head.

The purple hat looked like a large heliotrope umbrella on a seven-year-old’s noggin. On dad? The same tam looked like a small, wide-brimmed skull cap on the 46-year-old Kitchener-grown behemoth of boxing.

Everyone laughed in the corridor of the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex as Pomp and Circumstance began to play on Friday afternoon.

“This is the reason I’m bringing him to this kind of event,” said Lennox Lewis, before the last great heavyweight boxing champ the world may ever know received an honorary doctor of laws degree at the fall convocation of Wilfrid Laurier University.

“So he can actually see his father accepting his honorary degree and see him in a different light than in the ring.”

Lewis is seven-years retired from the world of boxing now.

He escaped with his dignity and his priorities after winning all that there was to win, including an Olympic gold medal for Canada in 1988.

Now, the British-born Lewis is rich beyond the dreams that he held competing in football, basketball, track and wrestling at Cameron Heights high school.

It’s not that he’s worth an estimated $150-million or that he lives in Miami and Jamaica.

His true wealth rests in his family.

Remember when once-fearsome foe Mike Tyson threatened to eat the champ’s children before being demolished in the ring by Lewis?

Tyson better have an appetite.

Lewis, a kid who grew up without a dad, expects to be a father of four come Christmas.

His wife Violet, a former Jamaican beauty queen, is expecting. Their daughters, Ling and Leya, are five and two respectively.

“I love the fact I have time for my kids,” said Lewis, who was mentored as a teen by his Kitchener trainer, the late Arnie Boehm. “They have such young minds. And they depend on their father and mother for information. I’m glad to be there for them.”

Landon held hands with his grandma Violet Blake, who had purple streaks in her hair, as the procession worked its way into the main arena, where 1,150 Laurier students were up for graduation on Friday.

Laurier’s new chancellor Michael Lee-Chin, a wealthy philanthropist like Lewis, gave a purple-robed Lewis his doctorate. Lewis later introduced his mom, son and niece to the crowd. Lewis, who used to play basketball with the Laurier hoopsters as a teen, wants his kids to graduate from university one day.

“They’re excelling already,” he said. “My son is very intuitive, inquisitive. At his age, he’s learning to play chess. Me and him play chess as many times as possible.”

Boxing was the sweet science to Lewis. He was a thinking-man’s heavyweight who could outsmart opponents as well as knock them out.

His ascension to becoming the last in a long line of boxing monarchs has been one long chess game. Lots of thinking between moves. Lots of strategy between bouts.

“Chess is like life in one sense,” he said. “You make a move in life, you have to make sure it’s the right move. You have to make sure you are protected and it has to be a positive move.”

Do something positive and give back, Lewis told the new graduates.

His boy Landon listened intently too.

“Education and knowledge are the tools,” Lewis said.

This was a much different ring where fists could not talk. Lewis looked comfortable in it.

His mom still had a front-row seat.

“I’m glad she’s had the opportunity to come here,” he said.

“And see her son in such a great light.”

Source: http://www.therecord.com