Pat Putnam's name to be removed from boxing award
BOXING
Organization president says writer had falsely claimed he was a highly decorated Marine during the Korean War.
A national boxing writers organization will remove the name of Pat Putnam from an award after confirming that the acclaimed writer, who died in 2005, had falsely claimed he was a highly decorated Marine during the Korean War, the group's president said Thursday.
The Boxing Writers Assn. of America was set to honor brothers Lamont and Anthony Peterson with the Pat Putnam Award at the group's dinner Thursday night at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Bernard Fernandez of the Philadelphia Daily News, who is the group's president, said that he would refrain from mentioning Putnam's name when announcing the honor.
"I'll talk about them overcoming adversity, and the award has Pat's name on the inscription, but Pat's name will not be mentioned," Fernandez said of the Petersons, who overcame homelessness as children to become championship contenders. "I don't want this to detract from these kids' special moment.
"At some point, we'll re-name the award."
Putnam, who worked most notably for the Miami Herald and Sports Illustrated, claimed to have endured 17 months as a prisoner of war in Manchuria, and also claimed to have received four Purple Hearts and the Navy Cross.
"We have no biographical files on a Pat Putnam, and after checking all of our casualty reports, there were no Purple Hearts awarded to a Pat Putnam nor any wounds suffered by a person of that name," Danny Crawford, spokesman for the Marine Corps History Division in Virginia, told The Times.
Military historian Doug Sterner, of Pueblo, Colo., said he checked into Putnam's credentials after reading an article Fernandez wrote this week about the Peterson brothers. Sterner said he presented Putnam's full name, his Social Security number and date of birth to military officials, and was told, "He never served in the Marine Corps." Another researcher, of POWnetwork.org, reported Putnam had never been a POW, Sterner said.
Marine Corps spokesman Major Jay De La Rosa said a full check of Putnam's information was processed by his office and national personnel files for other military branches and found "no record on file."
Putnam's daughter told ABCNews.com that her father always was a story-teller. "He was Irish and could tell a story," said Colleen Putnam. "Maybe this one he yarned. I don't know."
Putnam said her father's war stories began when someone asked him about the scars on his back that were from a car accident. "He said he was in the war, and it grew and grew. Maybe my father didn't know how to stop it."
Muhammad Ali received the Putnam award last year. Putnam, who died at age 75, broke a major story in 1964 when he reported Cassius Clay was changing his name to Ali. In 1982, Putnam won the association's Nat Fleischer Award for excellence in boxing journalism.
lance.pugmire@latimes.com
