SONNY O’DAY

“Shake the hand that shook the hand of the world.”

“It’s all in the footwork.”                               

“Everyone knew who I was. But they’re all dead now.”

– Sonny O’day

I first ran across Sonny’s place in 1989 when I was shooting the Cemex Harvest Oil Refinery, and, while scoping the huge railyard in Laurel, I saw his bar across from the railyard. I had already heard of Sonny O’Day, and had the good fortune of finding him here in Laurel, that was another industrial town, like Butte, where Sonny first arrived when he came to Montana, thrived and became who he was, or made himself into – Sonny O’Day – until he died.

Sonny presided over, what a friend, Jim Murry, called “that wonderful, wonderful blue-collar life.”

Sonny loved my love of Butte and, the fact, I lived in Brooklyn. He got his start professionally In NYC where he had officially changed his name and lived in Brooklyn, although his first taste of boxing was when he was 11 years old in Butte. I first saw Butte by way out of Brooklyn and saw basically the same place i was leaving, but at different elevations, and so did Sonny when he came to Montana via Brooklyn and Italy. Only Sonny got here during the boom years, when a vision of how things could be,  a possibility that, combined with work, couldn’t fail.

One time, early on, while in the bar, Sonny introduced me to one of his friends, another boxer, like him, who had retired from the ring. We spent the entire night in the bar swapping stories and also having a little impromptu boxing session in Sonny’s ancient, old boxing ring, which, in Montana, is not not unusual at all, especially considering the great tradition of fighting in bars  and boxing in general, out west. At one point his friend took me aside to inform me of who Sonny, I guess, really was. Of course, I knew Sonny was a character, but I didn’t know he was this much of a character. There was Sonny with his Irish brogue and looking very much the Irishman, and his buddy is telling me that he is Carlo Augusto Giorgi from Lucca, Toscana, Italy. In New York, where the boxing industry was controlled by the Irish, he made a name change to get into the game. It stuck, he liked it, I bet, for a variety of reasons. Anyways we proceeded with the night we had a great time, and I took pictures as well.

Sonny O’Day took the American ideal of the self-made man to such entertaining heights and wrapped it up in blue-collar culture’s highest temple, the bar, that he was well-known throughout the state of Montana, based on that alone. It was Sonny’s style of that kept him off the radar outside of Montana but, if he would have appeared on the Johnny Carson show he would have been nationally known in a very big way.

Another guy from Butte, Evil Knievel, perhaps, extreme, but generally emblematic of the Butte attitude towards life, and death, that, perhaps understanding that life is to be lived to the fullest, and in the case of Sonny and his wife, living the longest.

The last time I saw Sonny was in his bar, one summer afternoon in 1998 while heading to Butte to stay for a while. It was Sonny, myself and an oil rigger who is getting pretty blasted for the hour of the day. Riggers they have unusual schedules and they can work a rig for a couple days in a row. At one point he asked me where I was from, he thought it was California. He went on to mildly berate me about coming to Montana and, “fucking it up”

What was I gonna say? That I was from Williamsburg Brooklyn (before hipsters) and that I hate gentrification from the perspective of somebody who is actually from the neighborhood and enjoys neighborhood life. It’s reminding me of the art world where they always got it wrong.

In the fine Montana tradition, Sonny had a boxing ring in his bar. Now Sonny claimed at the boxing ring came from the Queen Mary, but considering it could have been another beautiful lie, I would hold that in intellectual limbo.

There was Sonny with “his” Irish brogue saying to me. “Go on, get in the ring with him.”  And me, saying “Are you kidding? I didn’t come out here for this.” I mean this guy, compared to myself, was huge and really in good shape and pretty drunk. I did end up taking pictures, later on that night. It was Sonny and one of his boxing friends from the old days who lived in Laurel as well. As far as shooting is concerned, I managed another shoot with Sonny on a slow night, just he and I, and a farewell shoot one afternoon, which was the last time I would see him in his bar in 1998 because he died in early 2001, before the internet’s grip on information, 9/11, covid and D.T, in what’s become another time.

Sonny presided over, what a friend, Jim Murry, called “that wonderful, wonderful blue-collar life.” in a great eulogy he gave at St. Anthony’s Church in Laurel Montana on Febuary 6, 2001. And, of all people, Sonny lived that blue-collar life fully.