It was a real delight to be able to return to Gisborne recently for the launch of From Poverty Bay to Broadway. It was only fitting. Tom Heeney may have become world famous while he was living in New York, but he spent his formative years in Gisborne. That’s where he was born, went to school, entered the workforce, enlisted for the Great War and began his professional boxing career. His unexpected success in boxing came relatively late; he was well into his twenties when he left Gisborne.

Tom travelled the world, leaving a trail of information about his life that stretches from New Zealand to Europe and the United States, and I was lucky enough to be able to follow much of that trail. I too, began the journey in Gisborne, a place I’d only visited occasionally when I was younger. But after touring around Tom’s childhood haunts – Kaiti, St Mary’s school, Gladstone Road, Waikanae Beach – a picture of his daily routine emerged.   

It’s always valuable to see and experience places that are significant to someone’s story. It helps to imagine what life was like for him or her; a bit like the ‘In the footsteps of …’ tours that have become very popular with sightseers – Jane Austen tours are part of Britain’s multi-million pound ‘Austen industry’ for example – except that I’m both the guide and the only participant, and the route unfolds bit by bit as the research progresses. Sometimes a key building still exists, like the New York apartment Tom and his new bride took refuge in as the city’s reporters tried to get the scoop on their elopement. But the New York gyms Tom trained in have disappeared, as has Madison Square Garden III, the scene of some of his most important fights where he earned today’s equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in one night. Either way it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is to get a feel for a place, to imagine Tom running around Central Park, taking the train from Manhasset (where he lived during the Depression) to Penn Station, or dining at a tavern in the roaring forties after a fight at the Garden. Old New York seems ever present on the streets of Manhattan (‘To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin,’ says the narrator in Woody Allen’s film Manhattan) and I couldn’t help but feel the spirit of the roaring twenties even more keenly while researching Tom’s life there.

A real bonus of these journeys is either seeing a place for the first time or correcting pre-conceived notions. I had an image of New Jersey as a bleak, industrial sprawl. Yet during one trip there I ended up in an area that was all perfectly manicured lawns, chocolate box villas, fireflies and great local wine. Another New Jersey visit took in the lush and green Fair Haven, where Tom laboured in a heatwave for weeks as he trained for his world title fight with Gene Tunney. In July 2007 it was sweltering, just as it had been in July 1928.

Following someone else’s footsteps can lead to a greater understanding of already familiar places. Researching the story of Tom’s brief visit to Dublin in 1926, I walked up O’Connell Street, looking for the ticket office at number 8 that had done a great trade in seats for Tom’s fight against Bartley Madden. Interested to see what the layout of the street was in 1926, I later consulted a local directory for that year. Number 8 was home to several businesses including the ticket office and a dental surgery. Next the directory listed ‘9 to 17 ruins’. 17a was occupied by a merchant tailor and then came ‘18-18a ruins’. 19 and 19a were occupied but 20 to 22 were ‘ruins’. Street directories are usually pretty dry sources. But this one offered a vivid picture of O’Connell Street, post-Civil War, people going about their business amongst the rubble and the rebuilding.

I find it hard to pass the Auckland Town Hall now without thinking of a tragic bout that took place there in 1923 between Tom and a young Southlander, Cyril Whitaker. It’s not a pleasant association, but the sad events of that night are important. They will always be part of Tom’s story, the Town Hall’s story, Auckland history, New Zealand boxing history and most importantly of course, Whitaker family history.

Researching and writing history is largely a solitary job, but occasionally other people join one of my ‘In the footsteps of …’ tours. When two of my uncles visited Dublin recently they ended up in an apartment a couple of blocks from Barry’s Hotel, where Tom stayed. Barry’s has a bar, so I took them there for a drink, amid the spirits of Tom, his trainer and the Dublin newspaper reporter who tracked the New Zealander down for an interview in the hotel before the Madden fight.

From New York to New Jersey, Auckland to Gisborne to Dublin. I’d clocked up thousands of miles but it felt like a journey back in time as well. And like any good journey it enhanced my understanding of the world and left me with some enduring memories. But it’s always nice to return home and begin planning the next adventure.