After Mr. Kelly's encouragement, Ronnie did spend more time picking up games as he could in the neighborhood and at the Epworth Recreation Center. He loved all sports, including baseball, football, and boxing, but he remembers basketball as his best game. Shortly after he left reform school, he tried out for a semipro basketball team called the Boston All-Stars. He made the team and in early winter began traveling to small towns, making little more than expenses, but earning a reputation for enthusiasm and the ability to focus on the game.
By the end of the season, the eighteen-year-old had earned the starting forward position. It's tempting to wonder what kind of opportunities he might have had to play and excel at organized sports if he had been a better student at Manual High School, but Ron refuses to spend any time on that kind of regret. He is grateful to Epworth Center, where he practiced the self-discipline he had learned from Mr. Kelly in reform school.
Self-discipline was mostly set aside when Ronnie was on the streets. Even as he was enjoying success with the Boston All-Stars, he continued running with his friends. He picked up pretty much where he left off, and in the next two years he committed a long series of petty crimes. He and Roy had learned some tricks at Buena Vista, however, and they managed to avoid getting caught.
The time Ronnie had served at Buena Vista, along with his physical ability and his quick reaction to unexpected situations, made it seem inevitable that he would evolve into the generally accepted leader of the “group of brothers.”
Ron looks back on those years as crucial to his evolution as a boxer, not only for the self-discipline he achieved on the basketball court, but also for his risk-taking in the streets. He doesn't try to make excuses for his behavior, although his friends and family frequently do. “It was hard for Ronnie to say no to his friends,” it was said, or “He was so big, they wouldn't leave him alone.”
When asked if he has any regrets, Ron comments on his street experiences and every other detour he made in his life by stating, “If is a crooked word that will never be straightened.” And if the listener doesn't quite get it, he will add, “If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass when he hops.” The only regret Ron Lyle ever expresses about those days is for the hurt he caused his mother.
The kids in the “group of brothers” naturally looked to Ronnie for protection, but some remember him as reluctant to initiate trouble. He would try diplomacy first, quoting his mother, “What's wrong with people in the world today is they don't know how to show respect.” If that didn't work, he would do all he could to inspire so much fear in his adversaries that they wouldn't fight. Today he describes that strategy as, “I tried to scare their disrespect out of them.”
By 1960, a rivalry between the “group of brothers” and a bunch of older guys that did fit all the criteria of a gang became full-blown and acknowledged throughout the neighborhood. Russ Perron remembers the gang as “very tough and very mean.” One guy in particular, Douglas “Flash” Byrd, was known for beating other kids with whatever blunt object was available.
Ronnie set about staving off Byrd's gang through intimidation and, as with other bullies, that strategy seemed to work; for months, the gang did not openly attack his friends. In the end, though, Ronnie failed to keep them at bay, and the result was disastrous.
■ ■ ■
Shortly after lunch on May 16, 1961, Mr. Wilhoit glanced out the window of his Manual High School science classroom toward the park across the street. He stopped in the middle of a sentence and continued to stare out the window. One of the two original members of the “group of brothers” still in high school, Russ Perron, was two rows in, and he followed his teacher's gaze down at the park. He could clearly see six of his friends chasing the gang of neighborhood tough guys across the grass.
“Pretty soon the whole class was standing up and watching what was going on in the park. They must have had ten or twelve guys, older guys, running around down there, and I kept thinking we were outnumbered. I wanted to go out and help, but then we all started to see what was happening. Ronnie was out in front, and our guys were beating up their guys. It was something.”
After all the guys had left the park, a police car arrived, and Russ got a bad feeling that something more was going to happen. A couple of hours later, he boarded a bus with his teammates, headed to a track meet at South High School. “Just then two carloads of our guys drove up to the bus, and somebody yelled out, ‘We gotta rumble.’ Gil Kruter, our coach, wouldn't let me off the bus, so we took off for the meet. When I got home after five-thirty, I walked back to the projects, and my mother's boyfriend met me at the door.
“‘Where were you this afternoon?’ he hollered at me. I looked up at the television screen, and there it was, the whole thing, the park and an alley behind Roy Tyler's house, and they were talking about a shooting. Somebody had shot Flash Byrd. This was a guy who was known for knocking people around with lead pipes and tire irons and even a jack hammer. I knew something really bad had happened.
“Just about all our guys had guns by then. You could buy a .22-caliber pistol on the street for $15 in those days. Later, when I found out the police were holding all of them and wouldn't let them go until somebody confessed, I knew Ronnie would take the fall. I just knew it.”
Ron Lyle still remembers everything about that day, and he tells his story, but only up to a point. He says the friends in the park with him were Connor Hill, Beau Peat, Phillip Dawson, Roy Tyler, Gerald Wade, and Sonny Boy Tyler, and he shakes his head, “The whole thing was about a girl.”
Leaning forward, Ron lowers his voice, “We were minding our own business, just hanging around like we usually did, in that park across from Manual High School. This dude named Pancho thought Connor had taken his girlfriend, and he brought a bunch of friends to help beat him up. It wasn't about drugs or money, and we weren't a gang. It was about a girl.
“Well, naturally, we had to help Connor out when a bunch of guys jumped him. We did a pretty good job, too. We were just there to help. You know what I mean? Pretty soon, they started running out of the park, and we grabbed a couple cars and chased ’em for a few minutes, then headed back to Roy's place. When we got to Roy's, we found out his sister Sue was there, and that made a big difference, because after these guys picked up Flash Byrd, they came back in cars and had guns. I once saw this guy beat a kid almost to death for refusing to give up his lunch money. Flash was one mean guy. They drove through the alley and started shooting into Roy's house. They could have hit Sue, you know?”
As Ron moves to the end of his story, his voice is barely above a whisper, and he speaks in short, choppy sentences. “So we followed them. Flash was driving. He stopped in the alley. I went over to the driver's side. I told him, ‘Get out of the car.’ He opened the door. He was swinging a big lead pipe. The shooting started. Flash ran down the alley. I chased him, but he got away. We saw the police coming. We went back to Roy's. The cops came and took us all in.”
He adds, “Don't ask who did the shooting. Ever since the trial, I have never talked about it, and I never will.”
■ ■ ■
Excerpts from The Denver Post:
May 19, 1961
Youth Tells of Shooting Two Men
A 20-year-old youth Thursday admitted firing at least three shots at almost point-blank range at the two victims of an East Denver shooting, Detective Capt. Roy Tangye said.
Tangye identified the youth as Ronald D. Lyle, who, along with seven other young men, was jailed after the shooting Tuesday afternoon.
After giving Detectives Ron Hammonds and Charles Roden a written statement, Tangye said, Lyle took them to look for the weapon which he said he hid in the Five Points area. Killed in the fray was Douglas Byrd, 22. An autopsy showed he died of .22-calliber bullet wounds,