Volunteer shares passion with local youth

By HILARY MATHESON

Daily Inter Lake

Growing up in a tough environment — exposed to drug use, neglect and hunger — Johnny Pena’s life was altered in a profound way when he first stepped into a boxing ring.

“I never thought I could be happy. I never thought I could be someone,” Pena said. “I never thought I mattered, you know, that’s when I entered that boxing ring.”

Pena, 30, joins the Flathead Valley as an AmeriCorps member serving No Kid Hungry an organization with a mission to end childhood hunger in the United States.

Over the next year spent in Kalispell, Pena said he has two considerable goals — help end childhood hunger and mentor youth by starting a boxing club.

“[A club] where youth could come in and have a safe place. Where there’s no judgments. Where they could feel safe,” Pena said describing what he himself found in the boxing community.

Pena’s passion to help and encourage youth can be traced back to his childhood living in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico — a city that has gained notoriety for its violent past and drug trafficking — and in bordering El Paso, Texas.

Pena grew up fending for himself with a mother who “was hardly home.” He said he has never met his father.

“Growing up I had no one to defend me, or stand up for me, or be there for me, so that’s my passion what I want to do for children, stand up for them, fight with them, whatever challenges they’re facing — hunger, if they’re feeling alone, [or] homeless,” he said.

Pena discovered boxing around the time he was in middle school. At the time, he had been invited by friends to play basketball at a recreation center. After playing basketball for a while Pena began to wander around the center, past pingpong tables and weights when he stopped at large metal doors. Opening the door, sights and sounds of boxers unfolded before him.

“There was punching bags, the speed balls, you hear ‘choom, choom, choom.’ You could hear the whip of the jump rope, the coach yelling. I was like, ‘what is this,’” he said.

Without money for boxing lessons Pena instead stood in the back of the gym for about two hours a day over the next few weeks, “seeing how the coach [taught] to throw a punch, a jab, a bunch of hooks.” Eventually a boxing coach approached him and asked why he wasn’t fighting, then offered to coach him. One day the coach told Pena he would fight his son and told him not to expect to win. At the dings of the bell, the coach’s son threw a body hook at Pena.

“So he left his whole head open, pow, I come in with my power punch. He falls down. And my coach, his face turns red and I’m scared. I’m a sixth-grader. I was like, man, I’m going to have to fight my coach now for knocking out his son,” Pena said. “He jumps on the ring, climbs in, puts hands on my shoulder [and said] there’s something special about you, I’ll train you.”

So Pena joined the boxing team at the Pavo Real Recreational Center in El Paso and it brought out the fight in him to live.

“I’ve wanted to commit suicide since I was 5 years old. You know, just didn’t want to live, just a little kid. So, when I entered boxing it was just something where I learned not just physically, but emotionally, and mentally, spiritually to fight back,” Pena said, later adding, “That is what I want to bring to the students who come in. Every time we throw a punch when we’re tired it just shows us we’re fighting against any negative thoughts we may have against our own selves.”

During periods of extreme tiredness in training — lugging punching bags back and forth along canals — Pena said he realized his potential and quoted Muhammad Ali along the lines that training doesn’t truly begin until you’re tired, but choose to press on.

“It’s just been such a great journey in the boxing world. Great for me and many youth because it was a place to get out of trouble, escape from challenges at home, challenges in the streets. [We were] able to build community, help each other, build friendships, achieve things together — not just hanging out — that — we were proud of.”

With Olympic dreams just beyond his grasp, he moved on to a life of service, whether it was assisting others to build orphanages, leading mission trips, or organizing and leading youth programs and ministries, impacted by the poverty around him having seen families living in homes constructed with pallets and children scavenging landfills for food.

“My heart just — I don’t know, felt like it died,” Pena said about seeing mothers and children looking for food.

While his life had changed, the image mirrored his own. “I was one of them. It was that point I felt I could make a difference.”

Today, smiles, laughter and humor appear to come easily to Pena.

“I’ve worked so hard to get where I am now,” he said.

Once a child who thought of suicide and, out of the desperation of hunger, said he said he broke into neighbor’s homes to find food to eat, Pena is now working to tackle childhood hunger through No Kid Hungry. As part of No Kid Hungry Pena will assist with Kalispell’s free summer meal program, work with schools and educate the community.

“In the state of Montana one out of five students live in food insecure homes which means they don’t know where their next meal is going to come from,” Pena said.

As for the boxing club, Pena is looking for equipment donations such as youth- and adult-sized boxing gloves, hand wraps, punching bags, speed balls and jump ropes.

The boxing club will start Monday, June 12, at the Gateway Community Center, 1203 U.S. 2 West, entrance “B” in Kalispell. The club will meet from 5 to 7 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and is free to participants.

“I just want to inspire youth. I want to help bring strengths out of them that they may not know,” Pena said.

The name of the boxing club is “Anomaly.”

“The definition of anomaly is ‘a deviation from the common rule.’ A group who has been counted out, but we are going to fight back. Fight against the statistics that says we are going to fail, [be] incarcerated, be a single parent, a drop out, addicted, or even six feet under.”

He said the fight against labels and statistics is not done alone.

“We fight for one another, with one another. Our greatest weapon is love and light,” he said.

For more information, call Pena at 406-212-2811 or email johnny.pena@mt.gov. More information on No Kid Hungry may also be found online at www.nokidhungry.org.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.