On that second night, “Donoso of New Richland was required to go through two opponents,” either because of scheduling around lower weights or because the welterweight class had a large number of entries. He won “a TKO in the second [round] over Bob Duzbabek.” (Owatonna Daily People’s Press)
According to the New Richland Star, “Raul so thoroughly out-maneuvered and out-pointed the loser Dusabek [Duzbabek] that the referee called the fight.”
Donoso “later came back to out-point Don Kenow also of Faribault in what easily was the best fight of the night.” (People’s Press, Jan. 25, 1948)
Ronglien freely describes their long-ago meeting in the finals, saying Raul almost right away dealt him a body-blow that told him something — and another that sent him backward.
“I don’t think he punched at my head, but he did knock me down with other body punches. In the first round!”
Both fighters were listed at 147 pounds.
The Star reported it: “He had his opponent dazed from the off-set when he sent a power-packed left to the midsection of Ronglien and had him down to the count of three. ... Donoso went after him again and after several punches ... the referee counted Ronglien out on his feet.”
The Owatonna newspaper reported it: “Donoso ... floored Ronglien twice in the first round, and the Owatonnan took the full count at 1:40. He was not injured in the finals of the welterweight mix.”
Donoso and Ronglien have remained good friends since their introductory mid-1930s years as “State Schoolers.”
One of several visits in recent years was when Raul came to the museum with his daughter Melody who had “graduated from college at the same time as from high school on a Running Start program at Washington State U,” wrote her father. “She attended Smith College on a full ride and went to work with Morgan Stanley Bank in New York City. On Father’s Day, she climbed Mt. Annapurna in Nepal. I didn’t do that, though I did climb to the base camp of Mt. Everest a long time ago, 1972.” In addition, “daughter [Laurelynn] Grace, living in Paris, is a recently married graduate of the University of Paris.”
Donoso’s other “climb” was as a teenage athlete described in the New Richland Star as “through the state institution at Owatonna,” then “to find a satisfactory home,” then using “the same ambition to gain ... an education.” And of course the climb to win at prize fighting on the local, district, state, and national levels.
Between bouts in Minneapolis “he returned here for the weekend,” was the Star report. “There was no bragging as to what he was going to do; rather, he expressed how he expected to get beaten...”.
However, he simply went back up to win “the first fight Monday evening.”
“Wednesday he came home a state champ ... admitting he was too tired to do anything about an opportunity to finish his man off” with a knockout.
At that time, near the end of February, his mind must have been on the impending Chicago experience in the boxing ring. But it was also on high school graduation in spring.
It was reported that Donoso would use “a fifty dollar trade certificate from the Owatonna Jaycees to buy a suit for graduation.”
(To be continued.)
