Brent Kerns took 4^th place in the Oregon tryouts for a place on the 1976 Olympic wrestling team.  His grandmother, Janet B. Kerns, thought that qualified him to be the proper recipient of his grandfather's boxing medals.  She went into her bedroom and came out with two medals which she presented to him.  I, James Kerns, had never seen them until this date in November 2021.  One says, “Boxing.  City Championship Corvallis Ore. 1931.”  The other is for the intramural boxing championship.

The story behind them is that my father, Tom Lorance Kerns, was a student at OSAC, Oregon State Agricultural College.  My brother, Mac, points out that he, Dad, and Tim all graduated from the same school as agricultural engineers, but that the school had a different name at each graduation.  Dad graduated from OSAC, Mac from Oregon State College, and Tim from Oregon State University.

Dad competed in the “smokers” which were held four times a year.  These were boxing matches.  Boxing was big then, and anyone could enter.  It wasn't just for students.  Burly loggers competed, too.  Participants paid a $10 entry fee, and fees were also charged to watch the fights.  Two men would enter the ring.  When one lost the fight, another would take on the winner.  The last man standing won the purse.  Dad beat them all!  He said the smokers were a great source of income.

The income was surely needed.  Mom and Dad were married 5 September 1931.  Jean was born a little over 10 months later, and Dad finished college.  He couldn't graduate, though, because they couldn't afford the $10 fee for the diploma.  So they left to go back to the ranch in Wyoming.

By 1941 the folks were newly settled on the 80 acres they'd purchased at Haines.  Farming wasn't working out well, so Dad took a job teaching vocational agriculture at Enterprise, Oregon.  In order to qualify for the job he needed to be able to show the school district his college diploma.  Dad paid the $10 fee, got his diploma, and a notice appeared in the newspaper that Tom Lorance Kerns had graduated from OSAC.  The records at Oregon State University, therefore, show that he graduated in 1941, though he actually finished school a decade earlier.

“Did Dad teach you how to box?” Tim asked Mac.

“He and Mom didn't want me to box.  They wouldn't let me.”

“Why not?”

“They were afraid that I'd get 'punch drunk' from concussions from too many hits to the head.

“I was always the youngest in my class at school.  The big kids liked to pick on me.  So Dad showed me how to box.  He said you feint with one hand, and then lay the guy out with the other.

“In my sophomore year there was a big kid named Freeman Marshall.  He and I got into it on the bus.  The driver took us to the principal.  The principal took us to the gym and put us in the care of the coach.  The coach gave us boxing gloves, and told us to go at it.  That big kid came at me, and I knew I was going to be pummeled; but I delivered a left to his jaw, and he went down hard.  We were great friends after that.”