The brothers who came home to South Jordan
At 1385 West in South Jordan, Utah, the ground sits near the farming town where Gene Fullmer, world middleweight boxing champion, and his brother Don Fullmer grew up before their careers in the ring. Both are buried together with former Utah governor Norman H. Bangerter in South Jordan Cemetery, about 1.7 kilometers away.
Two farm brothers from South Jordan turned professional boxers
Gene Fullmer grew up working the family farm in South Jordan, back when the town was still fields and irrigation ditches. His younger brother Don Fullmer came along eight years later, in 1939. Boxing gyms were scarce out here. But the Fullmer name would end up filling more of them than most. Gene turned pro in 1951. He was a farm kid from a Mormon farming town. He punched his way east toward bigger cities and bigger names. By the middle of the decade he was fighting main events. Don followed him into the ring a few years behind. He was always a step behind his older brother's career. He built his own record in the same rough trade.
Gene Fullmer beat Sugar Ray Robinson to take the title
In January 1957, Gene Fullmer took a fifteen-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson. Robinson was one of the greatest fighters of the century. Gene became world middleweight champion. He lost the belt back to Robinson four months later. He then won other versions of the title through the early 1960s. He defended them against fighters like Carmen Basilio and Dick Tiger. Don fought through the same years. He fought on the undercards and in his own main events. He never reached a title himself. But he built a career that stretched into the 1970s. Both brothers eventually stopped fighting. They came back to Utah. They went back to the same small town they had left as boys.
The Fullmer brothers were buried a mile from home
Don Fullmer died in 2012. Gene Fullmer died three years later, in 2015, at 83. Both are buried in South Jordan Cemetery, a mile and a half from this house, in the town where they were born. Norman H. Bangerter, a Utah governor, is buried in the same cemetery. The brothers once filled arenas in other cities. Now they are back on the ground they started from. They are a short drive from the farmland that raised them.
A farmhouse outlasted the irrigation ditches around it
South Jordan, Salt Lake, Utah, United States started as a farming settlement in 1859. It was laid out along ditches that carried water from the Jordan River. Families broke the ground into fields and orchards. They stayed for generations. One of them built the Garside-McMullin House in 1898. This farmhouse still stands about a mile northeast of here. The house went up when the town was still mostly barns and irrigation lines. Gene Fullmer would be born on the same kind of ground three decades later. The house outlasted the farms around it. It is listed on the National Register now. It is one of the few physical pieces of the agricultural town left standing.
A farm boy became governor and rests near the Fullmers
Norman H. Bangerter was born in 1933. This was two years after Gene Fullmer. He was born on the same stretch of South Jordan farmland. He left the fields for a different kind of fight. He fought in the Utah legislature. Then he served as governor, starting in 1985. He served two terms. He died in 2015, the same year as Gene Fullmer. Bangerter is buried in 1.7 kilometers. The same small cemetery holds both boxing brothers. A farm boy became governor. Two farm boys became world-class fighters. All three ended up a few plots apart. They all rested on the ground that raised them.
The fields are mostly houses now, but the cemetery still holds the ones who left and came back.
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and Strata will dig the ground under your feet instead, wherever that is, in about a minute, with every source shown.