Kilroy Was Here: The Story of Boxer and Stuntman Billy "Kilroy" Ramoth

This article first appeared in the February 2008 edition of the Clifton Merchant Magazine.

Most 80-year-old men have a scrapbook lying around their house somewhere, documenting accomplishments of a lifetime.  Some, more successful men, may have two books.  Billy "Kilroy" Ramoth has four.

During an interview on a mild January afternoon at his Toms River, N.J., home, the octogenarian leans over the dining room table, flipping through the volumes that illustrate his life. 

There are clips of his boxing triumphs in the ‘40s over the likes of Sal Belloise, Gene Boland and Rocky Castellani. 

Pictures of his days as a Clifton cop and movie stuntman in the ‘50s, brushing shoulders with Marlon Brando and Paul Newman.  And even a 1966 letter from a First Lady thanking him for his beautiful poetry.

As he readies to narrate his legendary tales, Kilroy ignores the offer to sit—he’s always been more comfortable on his feet.

“A Real Sensation”

The first binder tells of Kilroy’s days as a fighter.  Born in Wallington in 1927, the pugilist grew up in East Rutherford and began boxing when he was just a sinewy teenager.

“I was always a rough kid,” he said.

By the time he was 15, Kilroy was already on the circuit, training at Whitey Plunkett’s gym in Paterson and being featured in seven amateur fights at Kantors Auditorium in Passaic.

“He fought in the Diamond Gloves and was a real sensation,” said New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame President Henry Hascup.

Like many in his generation, a 17-year-old Kilroy enlisted in the Navy during World War II. 

Stationed out of Jacksonville, Fla., and working as a radio operator, Kilroy continued to box, becoming an All-Service Middleweight Champion.

By this time, Billy, whose real last name is Ramoth, began fighting under his mother’s maiden name of Kilroe. 

Some changed this to the similar-sounding Kilroy, after the WWII pop culture expression “Kilroy was here.” 

Legend has it that during his first bout in the Navy, those in attendance began chanting the phrase and it stuck.  That’s one version of how Kilroy got his ring name.

There’s another story about a sports writer misspelling ‘Kilroe’ in an article, and that leading to the alias.  Ramoth can’t remember which tale is true, but from that point forward, he was Billy Kilroy.

After he was discharged from the Navy in 1946, the boxer turned pro.

“I was a stand-up fighter with a fast jab and a good right hand cross,” recalled Kilroy. 

“I was pretty fast,” he added, “and I would make my opponents miss quite a bit, so they would get tired.”

That became a winning strategy, as Kilroy went undefeated through his first 24 professional fights, scoring victories in gyms and halls from the Jersey Shore to Hudson County.

Kilroy eventually lost to Tommy Marra and Rocky Castellani in a rematch, but he said his toughest fight came against Walter Cartier on Jan. 20, 1948 in White Plains.

“That was the hardest I was ever hit and they stopped the fight.”

Kilroy remembered being knocked down six times before the match was called and he lost a TKO.  “He was a beautiful puncher and I left myself open and he got me.”

Seven months later, Kilroy fought Charley Zack in Scranton, Pa.

“Charlie and I had a war, and I hit him with a good shot and he collapsed in the ring and had a cerebral hemorrhage,” Kilroy said.  “He was paralyzed and never fought again.  I started thinking that could easily be me.”

After delivering the devastating blow, Kilroy appeared on just six more cards, getting TKO’d in the first round of his final fight against Georges Chappe on May 20, 1949, at Madison Square Garden.

“I didn’t realize that in fighting, you had to get hurt no matter how great you were,” said Kilroy.  “Sooner or later, you’re going to get hurt in that game, and when you start thinking like that, you can’t fight.  I started to have the wrong thoughts in my mind to be a fighter.”

So Kilroy retired from professional boxing with a record of 35-7, including 21 knockouts.  At one point during his career, he was ranked the 13th best middleweight on the planet, but at the age of just 22, Kilroy turned in his gloves for a pair of handcuffs.

Walking the Clifton Beat

In 1949, Billy Kilroy purchased a home on Dawson Ave. in the Richfield section of Clifton, NJ with his wife Doris, a high school classmate whom he married two years earlier at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in East Rutherford.

On the first day of 1950, Ramoth took the oath as a Clifton Police Officer and thus began the second scrapbook of his life.

“My beat was the whole city of Clifton,” he said.  “The roughest parts were down Main Ave. by the Paterson border.”

When Ramoth first joined the force, he was shown the ropes by Casey DeGroot, father of Det. Sgt. John DeGroot, who was tried and acquitted of the infamous 1966 Judi Kavanaugh murder.

A few years later, Ramoth returned the mentoring favor when Ira “Cook” Van Dorn started with the CPD.  “He had the nicest personality of anyone in the police department,” said Van Dorn, who went on to become a lieutenant.

The two became great pals and the Ramoths would frequently attend parties thrown by Van Dorn and his wife Anne at their Sylvan Ave. home, a few miles away. Being a cop and an ex-fighter, Ramoth was somewhat of a celebrity at these family gatherings.

“Billy was the nicest guy in the world, you just didn’t want to fight him,” said Cook’s nephew John Van Dorn, a Clifton firefighter and former boxer.  “To look at him, you would think he was a poet.”

“It’s a privilege to know Billy,” said Ira’s son Pete, who lives on Huemmer Terr. in Clifton.
Cook and Billy developed such a close relationship, that in the ‘70s, they joined with four other men to open the Neutral Corner Bar at Highland Ave. and Second St. near the Passaic border.

Two decades later, the old police buddies even retired down to Toms River at the same time in 1996.

Back on the force, Ramoth was as much of a hero as he was in the ring.  Following a bad rain storm in early 1962, an elderly woman in a car got stuck on a flooded road down by Styertowne Shopping Center. 

“He ruined his uniform going through the water, but he got her out,” said Doris, pointing out a picture in the photo album of Mrs. F. Schwartz, who was planting a kiss on the man who saved her.

Kilroy had a lot of admirers during his time walking the beat, but it wasn’t just for his bravery.
Big Screen Stuntman

The third book in the life of Billy Kilroy began a few years after joining the Clifton Police. 

While off duty, Ramoth took a ride to Hoboken where he heard former heavyweight boxer Anthony "Two Tons" Galento would be for the filming of a motion picture titled On the Waterfront. 

Drinking a beer and sporting a leather jacket in a local bar, Ramoth caught the eye of Elia Kazan, the movie’s director.

Kazan thought Ramoth looked a lot like the film’s star, Marlon Brando, and so he hired the ex-boxer to act as Brando’s body double in the picture’s fight scenes.

At the age of 27, Kilroy reprised his stage name for his new career.  He got to meet Brando as well as co-star Eva Marie Saint on the set of the movie that the American Film Institute recently named the 19th greatest of all time.

After On the Waterfront won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1954, Kilroy’s buddies back on the force teased him by giving Billy a baseball trophy that they dubbed ‘a replica Oscar.’  On the beat, women began approaching the officer to get his autograph. 

“All the girls loved him,” said Doris, his wife of 60 years.

But the Clifton cop’s brush with Hollywood didn’t end there.  He acted in fight scenes and worked as a technical adviser in 12 other movies, appearing as Paul Newman’s stunt double in Somebody Up There Likes Me and The Hustler.

Some 50 years later in his Toms River home, Kilroy flips to a page in his scrapbook with a picture of Newman in a wheelbarrow while Billy looks on laughing.  Kilroy tells a story of how the actors spent their down time on the set joking and smoking.

“In between takes, Paul lost a card game and he made me go to the bank to get him $100 in pennies to pay off the debt to another man,” recalled Kilroy.

While filming The Hustler, the Clifton patrolman ran out of vacation days, and Chief Joseph A. Nee wouldn’t give him any more time off so he couldn’t complete the movie. 

Newman heard this and personally phoned City Manager William Holster to ask him to give Billy more time.  Kilroy said Holster’s secretary nearly passed out when she realized who was calling.

Kilroy went on to make guest appearances on a number of television programs, such as I’ve Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth.

But in 1962, Kilroy left the entertainment world and traded the company of national celebrities for that of international criminals.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Ramoth

After 12 years and eight months of service to the Clifton Police, William Ramoth left the Department to join the U.S. Marshals Service.  This, after newly appointed District of New Jersey Marshal and former Paterson politician Leo A. Mault suggested he make the move.

Shortly after joining the Marshals in 1962, Ramoth went to work on the trial of Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, during which he guarded defendants.

Ramoth also worked the trial of John Butenko, who was accused of spying for the Russians.  Butenko was found guilty of treason on Dec. 2, 1964, and there’s a picture of Ramoth escorting the handcuffed spy within the pages of his fourth scrapbook.

The Deputy may have even played a small role in the infamous Rubin "Hurricane" Carter case.

In his autobiography, The 16th Round, Carter claims he was warned in advance by a dozen policemen that the authorities were out to get him.

“Quite a few people who I could call my friends were lawmen,” he wrote.  “There was Billy Kilroy, a U.S. marshal and an old friend...”

Ramoth just smiles and laughs when asked if this is true. 

“I knew Hurricane from Tex Pelty’s gym in Paterson,” he said.  “He’d come to our house in Clifton sometimes.”

“I can’t see Billy tipping off anybody,” said Clifton defense attorney Miles Feinstein, who represented Arthur Dexter Bradley, one of the witnesses who testified against Hurricane.

Feinstein, who was also John DeGroot’s lawyer during the 1966 Kavanaugh murder trial, described Ramoth as a decent, very soft spoken man.

“One time he invited me to go to the veteran fighters dinner in Brooklyn with his boxing buddies Fitzie Pruden and Tippy Larkin,” Feinstein said.  “We picked up Rocky Graziano too, which was a thrill for me because my father and I were big boxing fans.”

Ramoth said he utilized his experience in the ring during his time as a Marshal.  As a former fighter, he was able to identify with the prisoners.

“A lot of people get the wrong impression of them, but they’re just guys who got themselves into jams,” said Ramoth.  “Most of the prisoners would always rather be guarded by me than anyone else.”

“The Bard of Federal Square”

While serving 18 years as a Deputy United States Marshal, Ramoth began writing poems about the inmates he would transport from jail to the courtroom and back again.

He became so well known for his verses that Herald-News writer Les Plosia once labeled Ramoth “the Bard of Federal Square” in a 1973 article.

But the poet wrote about more than just prisoners.  His pieces also explored his days as a fighter and his love for his country.  In 1966, Ramoth sent a poem about beautification to the First Lady.

“The preservation and restoration of our Nation’s beauty is indeed an appropriate subject for poetry, and I appreciate your sharing your creative efforts with me,” Lady Bird Johnson replied in a thank-you letter to Ramoth.

Old Billy Kilroy doesn’t write much poetry these days.  The one-time local celebrity has been out of the limelight since 1979, when he was inducted into the NJ Boxing Hall of Fame.  That same year, the city of Clifton drafted a resolution recognizing his boxing achievements.

In 1996, Ramoth and his wife left the town that had been their home for 47 years, and moved south to Toms River with their good friends Ira and Anne Van Dorn.

Not too many people hear from Billy any more, except maybe his daughters Nancy and Irene.  He keeps to himself aside from the occasional lunch with his old pal Cook. 

But ask Kilroy about the glory years, and he’ll be more than happy to fetch the four scrapbooks and put up his dukes for a picture. 

He’s still got it.

Jordan Schwartz is Bleacher Report's New York Yankees Community Leader. His book "Memoirs of the Unaccomplished Man" is available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and authorhouse.com.

Jordan can be reached at [e-mail].