Mark Connor - It’s About Time_youtube

BoxersAndWritersMagazine.com Buy my Book It's About Time (Millions of Copies Sold for Dad) Mark Connor is aBoxing Trainer and a Writer from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hisfirst book, It’s About Time (Millions of Copies Sold for Dad), is a sagawrapped around a package of poems, guarded by angels. Through an autobiographyreading like a novel, he weaves together a story of love, family, and life withtwenty poems running through it, sharing his growth in the Catholic faith, theinfluence of Irish heritage in his hometown’s American identity, his explorationof Lakota tradition within the urban American Indian community, and hisunderstanding of how truth found in different spiritual approaches can leadothers—as it led himself back—to its fullness in the revelation of Christ. Mark Connor grew up in Saint Paul, callinghimself the product of a “mixed marriage,” because his father—a combat woundedVietnam veteran—grew up across the street from St. Columba parish in the Midwaydistrict, while his mother—a school teacher who later became a lawyer—came fromthe Holy Rosary parish “across the border, in South Minneapolis.” Born inMinneapolis and raised in Saint Paul, he began boxing at age 10, at the MexicanAmerican Boxing Club on the city’s East Side, the area of the city from whichhe formed his understanding of the world, anchoring his perception of directionto the family house and the rising of the sun outside his bedroom window. He had 102 amateur fights, made it to three national tournaments, andcompeted against some of the nation’s top world class boxers. He became theUpper Midwest Golden Gloves lightweight champion at 17 and traveled to theOlympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO, two daysafter graduating high school, competing in the 1987 trials for the Pan AmericanGames. Raised in the East Side parish of St. Pascal Baylon, where he attendedfirst through sixth grade, Mark’s father, a graduate of [Bishop] Cretin HighSchool in Saint Paul, insisted Mark and his brother, David (13 days less thanone year older than Mark), each attend its rival, St. Thomas Academy, insuburban Mendota Heights, from 7th through 12th grade, an all-boys CatholicMilitary high school. Having begun writing seriously at 16 and starting collegeat 18, Mark began an internal struggle between the academic path and boxing,spending one and a half years, respectively, at three schools—Regis Universityin Denver, Co., the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, and the Universityof Minnesota in Minneapolis—earning his BA in English from the University ofMinnesota. He was inactive as a boxer for only one and a half of those years,but never felt he was able to reach his potential while immersed in study, soupon graduation, he continued Boxing.