Tuesday, March 25, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
The Rev. Louis Madejczyk, a retired priest, recalled his six-decade-long friendship with Zale, who died Thursday of Parkinson's disease and other health problems. He was 83.
"Every Sunday he'd be sitting in the second pew from the altar for Mass," Madejczyk told the mourners. "He might have some patches over the cuts on his face and colored glasses over his eyes, but he'd always be there no matter what had happened the night before."
Zale's championship belts and his trademark white boxing shoes, gloves and an American Flag were displayed around his coffin at the Stilinovich and Wiatrolik Funeral Home before Monday's Mass.
Hank Stram, a Gary native who coached the Kansas City Chiefs to a Super Bowl title, was among those who gathered to honor the man who quit the ring to be a steelworker, then returned to boxing and knocked out Rocky Graziano.
Stram said that the man who earned the nickname the "Man of Steel" was really a softy inside. "He had a heart like a blow torch and hands like trip hammers," Stram said.
Born in Gary as Anthony Florian Zaleski, Zale held the middleweight title for eight years after defeating Al Hostak in July 1941. But Zale was best known for his three matches against Graziano, becoming the first fighter to knock him out.
Three months after Zale knocked out Graziano in the third round of their last meeting, in 1948, Marcel Cerdan of France dethroned Zale.
An old friend, Leon Wolek of Hobart, said Zale was the last of his kind.
"He never forgot where he came from and he always had time for you. They don't make fighters like that any more," Wolek said.
Zale is survived by two daughters, Mary Madeires and Terrie Gassis, both of Pinole, Calif. Zale's second wife, Philomena, died in 1992.
Philomena "Frisco" Gianfranciso was a member of the short-lived "All American Girls Baseball League" during the 1940s, which was dramatized in the 1992 movie "A League of Their Own."
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