Somehow, he still resembles a fighter — hips narrow, shoulders a car bumper wide, gut as flat as a tabletop, knuckles as prominent as a club hammer.

There’s just one concession to his 56 years: “Stop staring at my bald spot,” a silver-haired Gerry Cooney told the boys standing behind his chair as they all posed for a photo, and the room cracked up.

You’d think a guy who trafficked in violence would never take such good care of himself, but one look is irrefutable proof: The former heavyweight title contender kept his health, kept his marbles, kept his humor and even kept his money. He also kept a set of values whose origin he cannot trace — values he asserts to the kids who were clinging to him as he sat in a second-floor meeting room at the Passaic County Administration Building Tuesday.

These are five of the 27 boys who will spend two years at the Kilbarchan Youth Home on 39th Street in Paterson, a Youth Consultation Services program, where Cooney has taught weekly lessons in boxing and life for eight years. They were there to see him honored by Mike Marotta of Wayne and other Passaic freeholders for his work at Kilbarchan, and after the photos were taken and the conversation began, the kids never left Cooney’s side. They looked like they belonged there.

“We put together a boxing program to help the kids learn about how to get rid of anger and frustration,” Cooney explained. “So we talk about boxing and life, depending on what day it is.”

Like their teacher, these boys are lost and abused and imperfect; unlike their teacher, they have someone who can give them coping mechanisms to deal with their raw adrenaline and disassociated anger.

Cooney was dominated by an abusive, alcoholic father who might have beaten him to an early death, if not for three brothers who occupied the rest of Tony Cooney’s time absorbing the same punishment from his sadistic rages.

Gerry’s refuge was a damp corner of the basement in their house in Huntington, Long Island, literally hiding behind boxes for hours every day throughout his formative years. The abuse didn’t end until Tony Cooney died in 1976, a year before Gerry turned pro.

“I didn’t have a childhood,” Cooney said. “I think about that. I never got to explore some of the things I try to teach these kids. I lived in fear — out of sight, out of mind, I felt. I wasn’t going to get hurt that way.

“So I tell these kids they have options. They have to pursue them now, because at 18 or 20 they can go away.”

He gets emotional when he talks about them, because “kids have to have dreams — we have to get them earlier than we do nowadays.” The boys who make it to Kilbarchan are the lucky ones. Virtually all of them have been abused and neglected, most of them have been adjudicated, and the attentive ones successfully transition back into productive society.

“Gerry’s unbelievable with them,” said Kareem Terry, a longtime counselor at Kilbarchan. “All his training is hands-on, he counsels them afterwards, and you can see by the way they talk he knows where they’ve been and where they could end up.”

None are likely to end up as professional boxers, but that’s not the point:

“We talk about instilling the belief in their ability, and that if you can learn to box, you can do anything,” said Cooney, who will host a boxing fundraiser for the group home at LA Boxing in Hoboken on Nov. 10. “That’s really what the deal is.”

He came one bout shy of a belt himself. Indeed, some historians would say that he was best known for his defeats — getting out-jabbed and bloodied beyond recognition by Larry Holmes in the WBC title bout at Caesars Palace in ’82, which was arguably his bravest and finest moment in the ring; and essentially getting pummeled into retirement by Michael Spinks at Atlantic City in July of 1987.

“If I could change anything,” he said of his career, “I would have taken better care of myself. The night I knocked out Ken Norton (in May 1981), that was the night I should have gotten a hold of myself. But the pressure must have gotten too big for me. And I picked up the bottle. I had nobody grab me by the arm and say, ‘C’mon home with me.’ ”

He hasn’t had a drink since 1988, but he knows alcohol, drugs and aberrant behavior changed the trajectory of a career that never fulfilled the promise of his anvil of a left hook. Cooney has come to terms with that, and even forgiven his father. And he keeps no secrets from these kids, and shares everything about his life that can illuminate their own struggle.

“Every kid here can identify with a fighter’s life,” Cooney said. “I mean, not being heard, not being seen, nobody caring. And ...”

He paused to compose himself. It took about 10 seconds.

“Kids have to understand that there are people who do care,” said this giant man, squeezing it out in the smallest of voices.

Two of the kids, like sentries ordered at-ease, reached out to touch his shoulder.

The feeling was mutual.

Dave D'Alessandro:

ddalessandro@starledger.com

