The following is the second installment of a weekly series that turns back the clock to celebrate a mostly-forgotten moment in Delaware County history.

Heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey, one of a number of cultural icons from the Roaring 1920s whom most of us learned about from our history textbooks, almost sabotaged his career – right here in Delaware County – before he ever fought for a championship.

In August 1918, in an attempt to appear patriotic and inspire men to take jobs that would assist our efforts in World War I, Dempsey posed for photographs at the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Chester, holding a riveting gun and wearing overalls and … patent-leather shoes.

Yes, patent-leather shoes, and they stuck out like sore thumbs.

The publicity stunt was concocted by Dempsey’s manager, who wanted it to appear that Dempsey, while not fighting in the trenches of France, was working hard in the shipyards of Chester.

“In the shipyard,” Dempsey said, “I was given a pair of striped overalls and told to slip them on over my street clothes. Snap. Snap. Snap. And that was that.

“The next morning, I unfolded the newspaper, and there I was, dressed in those crisp overalls with my shiny patent-leather, suede-topped shoes sticking out like sore thumbs.”

The disparity between his blue-collar garments and fancy footwear raised doubts about his contribution – or lack thereof – to the war effort.

Dempsey’s ex-wife wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle indicating that he had lied about supporting her, in order to dodge the draft.

“It would be an insult to every young American … to crown him with any laurels built of fighting courage,” the famed sportswriter Grantland Rice said of Dempsey.

The New York Times summed up the chorus of disdain for the future champion:

“Dempsey, six feet one of strength in the glowing splendor of his youth, a man fashioned by nature as an athlete and a warrior – Dempsey did not go to the war,” the Times editorialized, according to Jack Dempsey: The Manassa Mauler by Randy Roberts. “While weak-armed, strong-hearted clerks reeled under pack and rifle; while middle-aged men with families volunteered; while America asked for its manhood.”

Sportswriter Red Smith wrote that Dempsey “was reviled as a slacker during World War I, and although a jury exonerated him of a charge of draft-dodging, the odium clung to him.”

Dempsey would eventually, gradually repair his image. In 1919, he became world champion, and ruled the sport until 1926.

That year, on Sept. 23, he lost a 10-round, unanimous decision to Gene Tunney in front of 120,557 fans at the brand-new Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia. He’d lose again to Tunney a year later at Soldier Field in Chicago, before calling it quits.

Few people undoubtedly knew that Dempsey was, for a brief period, Public Enemy No. 1 in America.

All because of what happened here in Delaware County.

Click here to read DELCO Today’s previous installment of Flashback Friday.