As far back as Donald Fortner’s daughter Elizabeth can remember, music floated through the house. Jazz music … Dixieland Jazz.

And her father danced.

He was the youngest of 12 children, all of them blessed with moves to accompany a trumpet melody and cornet-trombone improve.

“Oh, they were all good dancers, some more than others, but they all loved dancing to the music,” Elizabeth Hall says. “If you had any kind of get-together, there was always dancing. They’re all gone, now, all the brothers and sisters.”

The last, Aunt Mary, was 95 when she went to be with Lord in July of 2019.

Don Fortner’s story, which started in Mount Holly in January of 1931 and had segments in South Carolina and Texas, isn’t solely about jazz tunes, which filled the CDs scattered about his home and car. He was, Hall says, “multi-faceted.” A college graduate, war veteran, car salesman, Christian.

He also was a champion boxer – “not a fighter, a boxer,” Hall says. A successful one, which has earned him a spot in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“I wish my father were alive to be able to receive this award,” she says, “but I know he’s looking down, and he’s so proud that he’s a son of Mount Holly.”

The music is a glimpse into who Donald Fortner was, when he wasn’t a student-athlete, or working man.

“He was a Renaissance Man. He taught at Arthur Murray to make money during college,” says Hall, who lives in Delaware now. “He was not your typical handyman. You weren’t going to ask him to rebuild an engine or build a playset, but he could show you how to do the foxtrot, or waltz or the tango, which was a lot more interesting. He taught us in the living room. As a young child, you’re not always that interested, but it was there if we wanted. And he would always go to the Chattanooga Jazz Festival with a cousin. That was something he looked forward to.”

It was the boxing that fascinated Fortner while at Mount Holly High School. He boxed for the school team and won the 1948 Mount Holly Golden Gloves title as a middleweight. There was a two-story building on Main Street, with a drug store downstairs and room upstairs, where the boxing club met to train. He won the 1949 Charlotte Golden Gloves title, the ’49 Concord Golden Gloves and 1950 Golden Gloves in Mooresville and Silver Gloves in Gastonia.

His name made the papers a lot, and though there’s a difference between a fighter and a boxer, sportswriters’ Webster’s are known to fluctuate, slightly.

From the Mount Holly News, of Friday, January 6, 1950:

“Two Mount Holly pugilists were slated to fight in the semi-finals of Gastonia’s 10th annual Silver Gloves at the Gastonia Armory last night. The two boys on the evening card were Don Fortner, popular local fighter and loser in a raw decision at the Gloves last year, and Jack Carpenter, representing the Cramerton team in the ring. Don is one of the best boxers to come out of Mount Holly in many moons and his loss in the Silver Gloves last year was the subject of much debate since most fans agreed that Don had easily beaten his opponent.

Fortner was slated to mix with Lee Godfrey last night in an open division welterweight battle royal. Results were not available as The News went to press. Fortner was fighting unattached.”

His talent got him a ride to Belmont Abbey, where he earned an associate’s degree in general studies before getting a scholarship to the University of South Carolina, where he was a welterweight champion in 1950, ’51 and ’52.