As I’ve written before, I love hearing stories from readers. Here’s another one.
Dan Wever is one of the most unusual athletes I’ve ever covered. He was little, he was big, he was a boxer, he was a champion tennis player, he was a horse racing enthusiast and, lately, he’s been involved in civic affairs.
So it was with great interest that I read what he wrote in the following email:
“READ YOUR article with the mention of John Phelan and thought I would share with you a story of my first seeing him. He was in the hospital. I guess it was at Beaumont. I was a member of the YMCA boxing team and we were taken out there to entertain the guys in the hospital. I remember John because he was disfigured and had a tube of flesh grafted to his face as I remember it. I am not sure of the date but it would have had to be around 1948 so he was still recovering from his World War II wounds years after the war was over.
“The guys in the hospital enjoyed the show and probably enjoyed me trying to swing the 16 ounce gloves and stay standing up. If you remember I was rather small back then. As a freshman tennis player I was five feet two and weighed 89 pounds. As a matter of fact I remember you called me ‘a little swatter’ in one of your articles. I like remembering things that referred to me as little. I remember going out for football and coach Red Harris telling me ‘Son, I think you need to find a new sport.’ Which I did.”
THAT LITTLE guy stretched like a rubber band during his teen years and before long Wever stood a bit more than six feet five inches tall.
He added, “Ray, I am only six feet four now as I have shrunk about an inch and a half. I was only 6-1 when I graduated and grew the rest in the service. I only weighed 132 pounds then and only weighed 155 when I got married at 25 years of age, thus my nickname with my friends of ‘El Flaco.’
“Today I am a 75-year-old man trapped in a body with the mind of an 18-year-old but the parts don’t work as they should. My bowling average is 147 and the last time I picked up a 10-pin was last year.”
AS FOR the late John Phelan, he recovered from his wounds and not only did he become one of El Paso’s greatest radio and television sportscasters at KTSM, he became one of the most important figures in the history of El Paso sports.
He helped start the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame in 1955 and was involved in local professional baseball for decades. The team was dissolved after a disastrous 1957 season but Phelan and several others revived the team in 1961 and he served as general manager.
As a sportscaster, he covered just about every sport imaginable.
AS FOR HIS war injury, here’s how I described it in one of my books, “El Paso’s Greatest Sports Heroes:”
“First Lieutenant John Phelan crawled out of the burning building, his face, arms and legs horribly burned. The room he had entered had been booby-trapped by the retreating
German army during World War II. ‘The whole room seemed to explode,’ Phelan painfully remembers. ‘I’m lucky I’m alive.’
“…Phelan’s injuries were sustained on April 1, 1945 – just a little more than a month before Germany surrendered. He was sent to William Beaumont Hospital in El Paso for treatment. He had been burned so badly he required extensive plastic surgery.”
THE DOCTORS did a magnificent job. Phelan became a striking figure, tall and attractive and incredibly personable. And oh, so talented.
He remains one of El Paso’s all-time most admired sports personalities.