Remembering Lemuel Steeples, 1979 U.S. Team Plane Crash, Champion Who Never Was
By Robert Brizel, Head Real Combat Media Boxing Correspondent
The United States National team crashed landed in Warsaw, Poland, on March 14, 1980. Blinding sunlight, according to one veteran Polish airplane pilot, had obscured the light bulb on the landing gear button, and the Polish LOT Airlines flight 007, an Ilyushin II-62 plane, aborted its landing as the crew was unsure the landing gear was down. The landing gear, in fact, was down, and the plane tragically nosedived when it went back into the air, as a manufactured defective turbine disc led to uncontained engine failure, taking the lives of 87 passengers and crew. The United States National Boxing team of 22, consisting of boxers, coaches and doctors all perished.
When the boxers died, their dreams of winning Olympic Gold at the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics went with them. The United States decision to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympic Games occurred after the crash. It must be noted the dreams of the amateur boxers on the plane went up in flames, the dreams of glory of becoming a future world champion lost, with the names of the victims over 40 years ago forgotten in the winds of time.
The international experience of the traveling U.S. National team was meant to compile experience in preparation for the Olympic Games. Future World Light Heavyweight champion Bobby Czyz was injured in a car accident the week before the flight, and so was among the lucky boxers supposed to be on the doomed plane, but who were lucky not to be.
The members of the team who died on the plane were: Kelvin D. Anderson, Elliott Chavis, Walter Harris, Byron Lindsay, Andrea McCoy, Paul Palomino, Byron Payton, George Pimental, Chuck Robinson, David Rodriguez, Lemuel Steeples, Jerome Stewart, Philadelphia’s Gary Tyrone Clayton and East Germantown Philadelphia’s Lonnie Young, Joseph F. Bland, Colonel Bernard Callahan, John Radison, Junior Robles, Dr. Ray Wesson, Delores Wesson, and team coach Thomas “Sarge” Johnson. Identical statues commemorating the United States Boxing Team that perished in Warsaw were placed in both Warsaw, Poland, at the Warsaw Sports Club Skra Warszawa, and on the training grounds of the United States Olympic team in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Team USA consisted of 13 boxers, eight staff members, and the coach.
Of the boxers on the plane who perished, Lemuel Steeples, 24, of St Louis, Missouri, was considered the strongest medal contender for the Moscow 1980 Summer Olympic Games. In 1978, Steeples competed in the World Amateur championship in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Both the amateur National Golden Gloves champion (by defeating future world champion Milt McCrory) and the Pan American Games champion in 1979. At the first AIBA world cup in New York, he lost in the finals. His 1979 points loss to Russian Valery Lvov in Las Vegas is recognized as one of amateur boxing’s greatest robberies, with two Russian judges voting for the Russian. In 1978, Steeples, competing for Team SUA in Bucharest, Romania, defeated Karoly Hajnal.
Steeples is buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery in Normandy, St. Louis County, Missouri. Steeples had won the Gold Medal at the Pan Am Games in 1979 in the 139 pounds amateur weight class, the very same medal Sugar Ray Leonard had won in the same weight class in 1975. That is why Steeples tombstone reads “Gold Medal Winner”. Leonard had won a Gold Medal at the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976, and Steeples hoped to follow in Leonard’s Olympic footsteps. However, Steeples never got the chance, and as fate would have it, in 1980 anyway it was not to be. The era brought big names such as Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Wilfredo Benitez, and Thomas “Hitman” Hearns. The name Lemuel Steeples will never ring a bell among boxing fans. The time period, in historical reflection, was just not a good omen for amateur boxers following the Team USA pathway to Olympic glory and professional success. The TEAM USA plane crash occurred in the middle of the Cold War.
In a related postscript to the forgotten Team USA, on Saturday, November 13, 2021, a Philadelphia street was renamed in honor of Philadelphia’s amateur champion Gary Tyrone Clayton, among those who perished in the plane crash. The Germantown Recreation Center in Philadelphia was renamed the Lonnie Young Recreation Center in his memory, shortly before the street renaming ceremonies at the corner of North 10th Street and Chew Avenue in Philadelphia. It is good the memory of the tragedy emerged with something good, so the memory of the aspiring departed boxers can inspire other young athletes to realize their potential and dreams and achieve.
think brizel a bit off on thinking lem is that forgotten. a ton of people i speak with remember him. what a talent. lol he kept me from moving up in weight from 132. his ability to anticipate an opponent were uncanny. normally i would look at a family putting gold medal winner on a stone as easing hurt but in lems case nah it would have been accurate.