Willard Bean, Mormonism's 'Fighting Preacher,' attracted the attention of the curious press

  

Above is an 1899 news clipping from The Boston Globe. I apologize the text is mostly unreadable. It's a feature, however, on a "preacher," Mormon no less, named Willard Bean. He was a very good prizefighter out of Utah 100 years plus a generation ago. I first blogged about Bean several years ago. Here's a  link. And below is Cal Grondahl's fantastic cartoon that accompanied the blog post.

Bean has an "official" 8-5-3 record with one no decision and one no contest on BoxRec between 1897 and 1902 but he likely had more wins unrecorded. He would be tagged a near world-class boxer, in my opinion. The reason I say that is his no decision fight of 10 tough rounds with Joe Choynski in 1899. Choynski is one of the greatest early pugilists; a Hall of Fame boxer. A small clip from a Quincy, Ill. newspaper is below that mentions the bout.

Bean also fought, and went the distance -- 20 rounds -- with the world-class heavyweight title challenger Fireman Jim Flynn, who fought Jack Johnson for the world heavyweight championship. Flynn also knocked out future heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey in one round a few years before Dempsey won the title. Dempsey avenged the loss about a year later with a first-round KO of Flynn. Below is a recap of the decision win by Flynn. 

Below are some long ago clips of recaps of a couple of bouts Bean won by knockout.

Most people know of Bean today due to his enthusiastic missionary skills and temple work later in life. A popular film on Bean and his wife's missionary efforts, "The Fighting Preacher,"' was released a couple of years ago. I reviewed it here. It's available on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime. The next clip exemplifies his missionary spirit. It is from The Salt Lake Tribune in 1899. 

One more picture of the Fighting Preacher, Willard Bean. I do not know the source.

On Twitter, a hospice nurse provides observations about our final moments.

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On Twitter, I encountered a fascinating series of observations on death from an unnamed hospice nurse. The Twitter account is from @Rachel, Spirited Sparrow. This particular Twitter link has garnered more than 5.4 million views.

Death fascinates us. The final moments fascinate us. Near-death experiences fascinate us. What the afterlife is like fascinates us. On this blog, we have reviewed at least three books that deal with these topics. One is Map Of Heaven. Another is Glimpses BeyondDeath’s Door. A more recent review is The Devil Sat on My Bed: Encounters with the Spirit World in Mormon Utah.

Now back to the Twitter post. The thread is here. I am going to share only a little of it below this paragraph. I urge readers to go to the above link. The response from readers is also very interesting to read.

Some takeaways after my conversation with a hospice nurse of 12 years based on her experience:

… The people who have the smoothest transition to death tend to be those with a deep faith. The people who have the most difficulty are those who are adamantly anti-faith (rather than just having no faith)

… Men overwhelming more than women will pass when everyone has left the room. ...

… Based on what the dying have said during the end, it seemed to her that they were seeing through sheer curtains, whereas we are always looking at the other side through blackout curtains.

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Recently, LDS Apostle Jeffrey Holland, who has been in poor health, more or less revealed to church members in the church’s April conference that he had a near-death experience. I hear frequend anecdotes about family members near death, conversing with deceased family members that only they can see. I think that correlates with the hospice nurse’s comment about “seeing through sheer curtains.”

The debate over life after death, or whether we will greet deceased family and friends when we die, will always have fervent supporters and opponents. The proof, for better or worse, arrives when we die.