The Brown Bomber and roamer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Louis

An 18 page short story about a boy, his dog, a brown bomber and a Bozo. Warning, this is about golf and dogs and has nothing to do with pool.

8-1-2000, Rev I, 9-22-05, CR, Fast Larry Guninger, all rights reserved, (18) pages, published in DC, Bpn, czm, upp, ppt, flp, rsb, btt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Louis

I believe God sends you dogs. When that dog appears you must not turn it away. You must find a way to take it in which is why I have four today, 3 are rescues. I gave them all a home and love them for their short lives. I believe they are spirits, equal to you and me, who were a family member in a former life and just could not connect on this time around, so they in desperation come to you wagging a tail. Don’t laugh at this, believe it or not, a third of the planet shares my belief in this.

A decade a go, I heard a scratch at my front door and when I opened it, there was Jake, a puppy, lost, ribs sticking out, half starved, looking like death warmed over. I took him in, fed him, brought him back to health and he rewarded me by being the smartest dog on the planet and becoming Wonder Dog. He became world famous and has been seen on prime time TV by a billion people. Jake was sent to me for a purpose and I had the choice to reject him or accept him.

Let’s go back in time, to 1952, to the heartland, Kansas City, Missouri. We have just moved into an older house 2 miles from Swope Park and the KCMO Zoo. We first came off a 160 acre poor Kansas farm into KCMO into an inter city l l/2 room apartment the size of a good bedroom today. The house we upgraded into and bought was quite modest, but to me as a boy, it was a mansion.

Truman was at the end of his second term. In a year, Ike would begin 8 years of what I call our Golden age. Everyone’s life was about to change dramatically. We had just seen the great depression, and then World War II and 100 million people destroyed. Peace was now on the land and people wanted to finally live and enjoy life.

We were a true blue collar working class family. My father was a teamster and so was I when I came of age. I was proud to hold a union card. For the first time in history common people like us to now own a car and not have to take the trolley down town. New appliances were coming out. Soon the new invention TV would be in all of our homes, 3 channels and rabbit ears. American was on a roll and soon everyone would like Ike and uncle Miltie.

I was 9 year old when we moved into our new older home that was actually 40 years old at the time. My dad bought me my first dog but he had been hit by a car. I only had 6 months with him and he was gone. Nobody had fences and there were no leash laws so the dogs roamed the hood and got ran over now and then. C’est La vie.

To ease my grief, Father knew some one who had a new litter of mixed mutts which was all blue collar people back then owned. They were giving them away and he took me to pick one out. I asked, what kind of dog is it, the reply was a Cur.

About once a week 2 dogs would get into a knock down fight to the death which we would all come out to watch and make side bets on. Nobody made any move to break it up. Also once a week a bitch would be in heat, two dogs would get stuck together and we would have to put the water hose on them.
We loved that one to the total embarrassment of the lady of the house that her female dog was under water attack. Nobody back then fixed animals. Cats were everywhere and a total nuisance. It gave the dogs something to chase besides the cars going by.

Dad bought a used white picket fence about 4’ tall to keep the new puppy in the yard and safe. We had the only fenced in yard in the hood. We were having problems keeping the dog home, from the get go; he wanted to roam and travel.

That is what I named him, Roamer, because that is what he loved to do.

I had dog tags and notes all over his collar saying call us when you find him. Roamer was a medium size dog, part German shepherd and Border collie, the number 1 and 3rd smartest dogs. He loved to run. He had a tracking nose to put a bloodhound to shame. Border Collies live to run.

He soon got a lot bigger than we though he would at 50 lbs. Being young and strong he was soon flying over Dads protective fence in a single bound like a deer. Once a week roamer would take off for a walk about and be gone for a road trip or 2 or 3 days. Some times he would get tired and hungry and come home. Some times he would get so far away, he would just walk up, open their screen door and walk in and lay down on their living room carpet like he lived there. After a long nap, he would wake up and demand dinner. Mom would get the call and go pick him up which was usually 3 or 4 miles away, the boy could travel well.

Every road trip he took, he seemed to get farther away from the last one. To make spending money I began to caddy at Swope Park golf course No I. It was high up on a hill overlooking the lake of the woods in a dense wooded area. It was very hilly and very beautiful. I would ride my bike the 3 miles to the course and carry a small ladies canvas bag 9 holes which was all ladies would play back then. The course was very hilly and tough to walk. I was small and weak and that was all I could do as well. The golf cart had not been invented yet.

Sp#1 was a public golf course. It had a working class crowd, about half white, half black. It was one of the few places blacks then could go play do to severe segregation then. It was a fine course and even had a pro tour event there a few times.
The course was a fine test of golf. Back then, Blacks or Jews could not play golf at any of the nicer clubs. We were in our final years of the separation of the races and religious segregation. Soon this would all just be a memory.

The pay for the loop was low and the tips even worse. In a few years when I got bigger and stronger I would graduate over to Blue Hills Country Hills where the pay from the doctors and lawyers was tops. The place was just like the club in Caddy shack and I did work in an actual caddy shack like you saw in the movie. After I grew up I joined the country club and played on the course I worked on as a boy.

I once carried Arnie's bag in his first pro event in 1955 when he was the Amateur Champion and first turned pro. After my caddie days I would grow up and learn how to play golf well and became scratch. I hated to see golf carts come in and the caddy shack go away. I spent so much of my youth there which was a sub culture just like a pool hall was. I got fired once every month and rehired when nobody showed up. I could write a book on that one alone.

I perfected my game on Sp#1. They actually had a pro then; he looked like something out of tin cup and was a drunk with the shakes and DT’s. He had been on tour before the bottle took him down but when he got half lit, he could play 9 holes in 32, and then would come in with a 55 and nipping on the flask would do him in. He taught me well and one day the years of lessons all kicked in at once. I had been playing in the low 90’s but this was a very tough course with small hard greens. I had never shot an 80 in my life.

I went out and shot a 69 and never left the 70’s again. I skipped the 70’s and 80’s shooting in the 60’s before ever shooting in the 70’s or 80’s and never knew any one who had done that. I was about to shoot a 65 and I was so deep into the zone which I had just discovered and I had been totally silent with nobody talking to me until we got to the 17th tee. My pal then said you can par in for a 65 and then reality came crashing home.

I panicked and hit ground balls into the club house. I finished the last two holes with double bogeys. Before I was driving the ball 320, now I could not drive it 50 yards. It’s amazing how the mind can free you to do things impossible then cripple you if you allow it. The 18th hole had my number from then on. It seemed like a zillion times I would come to 18 needing a par to shoot 69 and take a 6 or a 7. I could play the other 17 holes perfect and I would hit the 18th tee and begin to sweat and twitch. It was ugly to watch me choke and self destruct on that hole. The 18th was rated as one of the top 18 holes in the region. On the other holes, I had my first birdie, eagle, albatross and several holes in ones on. Every golfer has a hole which has his number and I had mine.

This place has many great black golfers then that was playing tour speed and they all played for cash. I could not fade any of them until many years later when I became scratch and they got older and lost distance. They were long and could putt like Tiger. They could not play on the white golf tour and few could even get into baseball until the early 60’s.

Finally I decided to take on these black dudes 15 years out of their primes when I was in mine. I shot 70 and lost. I came back and shot 69 and lost. I shot 68 and lost. I shot 67 and lost. I shot 67 and tied and lost in a sudden death playoff. I birdie the par 5 to lose to the guy’s eagle. I refused to play these boys any more; they were just too damn good.

If Ben Hogan had showed up on that course in 52 to play them, knowing what I know now, I don’t think I would have bet on Ben. He would have had to shoot a 65 or 66 to win, on a strange course. Ben did show up with the tour and played sp#1 but all the blacks that could have beat him, were all behind the ropes.

I would caddy at Sp#1 on the weekends. I would ride my bike the 3 miles to the course which was a flat ride and no problem. Roamer would run beside me all the way. I would caddy the 9 holes with him by my side. After a rest, I would catch a 2nd 9 hole loop. Somebody finally complained when he barked and they missed a putt saying there should not be a dog on the course. The manager told me to leave roamer at home. The next day I left for the course and an hour later my Mom let roamer out of the house and he was over the fence nose to the ground trailing my scent to where I was. I am coming up the 7th hole and here he appears over the hill all smiles and happy.

That routine repeated it’s self several times. I told the manager what roamer was doing and he said tie the dog up. If he shows back up here again you are fired. Caddies get fired a lot, normally once month. You come back, hang around and wait for a shortage of bag tooters to show up and they are so desperate they hire you back.

The manager said next week we are going to have a couple of thousand people out here and I don’t want to see that ugly mutt show his face. Who is coming I asked, Joe Louis he said. I gasped, the Joe Louis. Yes said the manager, in the flesh. I had never seen a crowd or a sports hero so I was not going to miss this one. Sp#1 was the only course where he would be allowed to play. None of the country clubs would allow him. He would draw a mostly black crowd. The whites knowing this would stay away as the blacks would take over the entire park and pic nic tables and get wild eating Bar B Q, water melons and drinking malt liquor till they got drunk. They knew how to have a fine pic nic. It was a different era than it is today. Whites would not even drive through the park when they got those parties going on in the shelters by the tables and stone grills.

Joe was what the whites called a good boy, he played ball and knew how to say yassa mister. He did what they told him to. They repaid him by allowing him to leave the ring dead broke. A decade later, Ali would do just the opposite, spit in the whites faces seeing what they did to Joe. Joe was a patriot and rose to the rank of sergeant in his countries army. He was a fine Christian. He liked white people. Cassius Clay was a draft dodger, he gave up Christianity and became a Muslim who then worshiped Malcolm X. He hated white people. Ali later turned on Joe when he tried to consul him calling Joe an Uncle Tom.

Louis has lost the title in 1949 and was still in splendid shape in 52. Ezaard Charles and Joe Walcott took his place but neither of them could fill his shoes or carry his jock strap into the ring. Joe was one of the all time greats of the ring. He would attempt a couple of come backs that failed badly. By 1952 he decided to now just tour and play golf for small cash and stuff on the side.

Right after the golf match at Sp#1 the next Joe Louis came on the scene, Rocky Marciano who could win for the next five years. In 1952, Joe Louis was still king, King Kong, he was the man, a true walking American hero and legend. To the blacks of his time, he was a God. In just a couple of years from here, all of his money and fame would be gone and the God would end up in the gutter broke, the typical end for most fighters and pool players.

Caesars Palace in Vegas gave him a job as a door greeter like when you walk in Wal Mart. It broke my heart to shake his hand in that role when I had seen him admired in his prime. When he passed they made a marble statue of him that still stands where he did at the door. It is a likeness of him in his prime in his boxing trunks in his famous fighting stance, now, forever, young in marble.

When Louis showed up at Sp#1 to play golf it was the 3 black hustlers dream come true that made up the foursome. Around 5,000 blacks showed up just to watch the match. Guys like Louis we called Gorillas. They could blast a drive 330. Hand them a wedge and they would blow it 50 yards over the back of the green. They just could not putt and had no touch. Jim Dent was like that when he came on tour. Nicklaus would watch him blast drives into orbit and shake his head saying, this guy makes me feel inadequate. Jack would win, Dent would not make the cut.

Louis made a fortune boxing and lost two fortunes gambling. He was such a nice guy he just wanted to be every ones pal. He would make very bad bets he could not win. Not only did he throw away a lot of money gambling the promoters swindled him out of millions. It’s an old tune; dumb boxer gets his clock cleaned. Ali was the first to refuse to fall into this trap.

When I went over to the course that day to watch the match I told Mom to be sure and tie up roamer so he could not follow me. I got on my bike and left. Mom later opened up the garage door where I had him and he had chewed through the rope and bolted under her legs and was in hot pursuit of me nose to the ground. The course was packed with 5,000 people but he would later find me. Suddenly there is a commotion and here comes Joe Louis and his entourage stopping for nobody, my heart sinks as he is going to walk right by me. Suddenly they stop for some reason right in front of me and I said Mr. Louis sir, may I have your autograph. He looked down at the small boy, smiled and said sure kid, scribbled out his name, gave me a fake punch to the chin, patted me on top of the head and he was gone.

I was stunned, back then the heavy weight champion was as big as it got. That title really meant something. The next thing I know is here comes roamer. If I take him home I miss the match, 6 miles, if I stay, I’ll get fired, so I stayed with roamer.

The foursome tees off and the match begins. The hustlers gave Joe the strokes he wanted but Joe was in a Hungarian mortal lock. There was no way he could win as he did not have enough weight. They were playing for thousands and when the presses and trash began to mount up it was some serious loot on the line. I kept back as much as I could because of the dog.

Strange things happened that day. The hustlers were not used to playing in front of such a large crowd or with a super star and they played well under their normal relaxed game not scoring well. Joe got on a roll and began to hit the narrow fairways and tiny hard greens. Hit puts began to fall and in short he was having his career round.

When they arrived at 18 it is 430 up hill but plays a lot longer than this. You drive into a slope which kills your roll. Thick trees left and right, narrow rock hard fairway that slants badly right and requires a hard draw just to hold it. The green is narrow, trapped front and on both sides with high sides like at Saint Andrews. They were hard to escape from. If you fly the back by 10 yards you are in the parking lot OB. It has double bogey all over it. I only birdied the hole once and usually had a bogey. It was a tough par. A killer finishing hole. I learned from experience if I had a lead and only needed 5, I would lay up and chip on playing it defensively. At least I took a 6 or 7 out of the equation. Any where you missed you were in jail. The hole was a heartbreaker.

Louis is on the 18th tee and to win all he has to do is bogey 5 it even if the other guys par. Nobody dreamed he would be leading at this point. The smart money figured him to have blown up by now. The hustlers looked worried and were sweating. They knew if Joe got on that green in two they were toast. I moved up close now to see the finish.

Joe pulls out the big dog and lets him hunt. He smokes a frozen rope down the chute to the left middle of the fairway with the draw, perfect. 270 down the middle. The opponents hit shorter but safely. They hit into the green first, one over the back OB, one into the trap with a fried egg against the wall, one short up front. Two gone, only one left with a chip par chance. Louis hits his wedge stiff 3’ away, the crowd erupts, the match is over. All Joe has to do to win is 3 putt from 3’, he can not lose.

The crowd broke a ran to form a circle around the green, a scene right out of the British Open final paring. There were no ropes to hold any one back. Being young and fast I got up there first and was in the front row with roamer between my legs 10 yards from Joe’s ball.
They trap man could not get on the green from the plugged lie and took a 6. The chip came up short for a bogey.

Joe is lining up his 3’ putt for birdie and victory and roamer bolts through my legs on to the green. He grabs Joe’s golf ball in his mouth thinking it is one of the marshmallows he plays with every day and runs off the green with his new souvenir. I took off running back down 18 fairways towards the tee. I am in hot pursuit behind him and suddenly the 5,000 blacks all react at the same time saying, get that dawg. Holy she-yit, it’s like a scene right out of a Tarzan movie. They are yellin, dat dawg done snatched Joes ball, let’s get him.

We ran in fear of our lives and about 200 yards from the green roamer takes a left turn deep into the trees, drops the ball and comes over to me. I ran past the ball and said follow me boy, run for your life. The crowd stopped at the ball and lost interest in us. From a safe distance I watched the tragedy unfold. The rules of golf would have allowed Joe to have replaced his ball where the dog stole it from. The hustlers told Joe he had to play it from where it now lay. Joe protested a little but caved it and said OK. Boxers are not the brightest people on the planet. Most are a little slow.

Joe hacks the ball in the rough and only moves it a few feet. His next shot only advances it 50 yards taking him two just to get back into the fairway. His approach hits the trap, two to get out, and 3 putts for a 9 to lose to the bogey 5. He should have had a 3 or 4 at the worst and won. It was nothing but a theft in broad day light. Somebody should have called the pole lice and reported the robbery.

I went back to the course the next week end and was fired. The hustler tried to buy roamer for any amount saying Ize could use a dawg like dat. I said thanks, but he’s not for sale. I did not want roamer to enter a life of crime as a dog hustler. He was already well on the road to that and I was trying to keep him out of trouble.

Roamers activities were seen as cute by some and others were not so wild about him. To say he was beginning to make a few enemies was an understatement. Roamer soon discovered the neighborhood grocery store only a short mile away, just a little stretch of the legs for him. He walked to the front door and put his paws on the rubber mat and bingo, the door opens for him, food, and the joint was packed with food. Not the crummy crap he was getting from me, but the real deal was here. He must have thought, is this a great country or what?

Roamer follows his nose right back to the meat market. He sits down and when the butcher saw him he goes into his routine I taught him. He sits up, barks, and then pants with his tongue hanging out. The butcher liked dogs so he went into the back and came out with a nice large soup bone he could barely hold on to and away he went with this prize. He would lie around and chew on it for hours which were great because they were keeping him off of the road. Every morning he would go up to the grocery store and beg for a new bone, come home, bury the old one for a rainy day and chew the meat off the new one.

Our yard was small and most of it was planted in thick flower gardens. When Mom would catch him digging up flowers he would get his butt whipped, so soon Roamer ran out of room to bury his bones. He began to expand his bone field into the neighbor’s yards which did not thrill any of them with him. A dog never do do’s in his own yard so every day he is dropping a cow pile and then digging a hole to cover it up. He was a marked dog, dead dog walkin. It was bad enough cutting your grass on Sunday but running over 7 of Roamers bones or dog patties was upsetting some. Mowers then did not have motors, just blades and it took a lot of strength to push through the grass. Their yards began to look like a prairie dog city with holes everywhere. On guy complained and counted 30 bones buried at one time. Roamer was now making two trips a day to the grocery store.

During one of his raids he spotted a new isle and grabbed a pack of beef jerky and began bringing that home and eating it. The dog would later be passing wind so bad he would run everyone out of the house.

The store brought in a new product and had this huge pile of marshmallows stacked right by the front door where he could slide in undetected, snag a bag and be gone with a clean get away. He was getting very good as his new job, kleptomaniac. Every day I would pick up the torn up plastic bag and marshmallows would be every where. If it rained, oooaahhh what a mess it made. He did not eat that many of them, he just found them curious and liked to play with them. They looked a lot like the golf balls I was chipping around in the back yard. He wanted to play too, so I guess in his mind, they looked like golf balls so he brought them home.

The store manager noticed his stock of marshmallows was going down twice as fast as it should and the checkers ratted roamer out. They had been covering for him thinking his shoplifting was funny. The manager laid in wait and cold stone busted him the next morning. He came home with his tail between his legs with no loot. The word went out, the dog is banned and could not step forth a paw in that store again.

Two days later somebody poisoned him. It could have been a boxing fan, the grocery store or the people in the hood, who knows. People back then did that a lot to dogs that became a nuisance. There were no dog laws, you could shoot one in the street and nobody would say anything if you had a reason for doing it. Roamer walked up to the front porch of a house he begged food from and lay down and passed away at the kind ladies feet when she was trying to give him water.

My parents said, dogs are just a heart break waiting to happen. Two dogs, I lost both and was crushed by Roamers passing. They would not let me have another dog. 10 years would go by. I would move out of the house and go to college. I would marry and then buy my next dog, a huge German shepherd male called Moose. He would protect my new 3 little babies. Moose treated my rug rats like their were his own.

Another side story of a dog called Bozo. The year was 1946 and my aunt Winnie had a dog with no feet. He was very short and low to the ground and his long hair covered his legs and brushed the ground. He was about 17 pounds. When he walked you could not see his feet move. He was as cute as a dog could be and smart, man that little dog could do anything. The apartment Winnie lived in was at 39th and the Paseo.
She lived on the 2nd porch and one day she came out and there he was. She talked baby talk to him and he went wild over her. During the War we were used to walking every where and nobody had cars and if you did you could not get gas to run one.

Winnie would walk over to Mom’s apartment to visit once a week and bozo would tag along. It was a 2 mile walk over and 2 back, which was a lot of walking for those little short legs. One day Bozo could not find Winnie and he made the 2 mile trip by him self and showed up on Moms door looking for her. He apparently did not like his home or master and every time he saw Winnie when he was out he ran to be picked up and loved. Soon every time they let him out he would run to her screen door, we did not have air conditioning back them for her to let him in. After a while he figured out how to open the screen door with his nose and paw and he would escape and go to his new mistress.

Every day the owner would have to come get him. Since they could not keep bozo home they gave him away to family who lived 160 miles away on a farm in Kansas. They dropped him off and bozo booked it the next day. He traveled for 2 months and how he stayed alive is a story. The real story is he showed up one day looking like death warmed over on Winnies back porch barely alive but saying, momma, I found you, I am home. The owners were so amazed at the love bozo had for Winnie they then gave him to her. She named him, Bozo.

She loved little bozo and I loved going over and playing with him. At the time we lived in a very small apartment and had no room for a pet. I was a little boy and he was my first dog experience. He lived till he was 12 and Winnie married a drunk and moved into the ritzy country club district. He came home smashed on night, bozo ran out to greet him and he ran over the little dog. Winnie divorced him over that. I guess it was a combination of things and that one was the straw that broke the camels back.

Joe Louis had won the title in 1937 and held it longer than any other man. After he retired in 1949 he began to drift and play golf. Soon all the money would run out. Caesars palace in Vegas gave him a job and took good care of him treating him like the legend he was. A lot of people later had guilty consciences about the way this great man ended up which was totally broke down and out.

In 1994 I was an APA 7 and captain of a pool and billiard team that had just won the Atlanta city championship and was in Vegas to play for the national title. It was my 30th trip to sin city and for the rest of the team it was their first time there. I was tour guide taking them to all the great casinos. I began the tour at Caesars and soon they discovered the marble statue of Joe Louis and said, who is that? I said, that is the Brown Bomber, perhaps the greatest boxer of all time. They all took turns stranding next to him having their picture taken and then asked me, Fast, do you want to stand next to Joe?

I said no thanks, been there, done that, 42 years ago. I saw his actual muscles ripple when he punched me on the jaw. He looked then, just as he does now, in his prime, magnificent.

The End.
One of the most dramatic moments in all of sports came on March 5, 1938, when Joe Louis defeated Max Schmeling in a return bout to avenge an earlier defeat.

The Brown Bomber -- The man behind The Fist

By Jenny Nolan / The Detroit News

Joe Louis grew up in Detroit and began his boxing career here. Although he later lived in Chicago and Las Vegas, and traveled the world, he thought of Detroit as home.
Joe Louis Barrow was born in Chambers County, Alabama, at the foot of Buckalew Mountain on May 13, 1914. His father, Munroe Barrow, was a hardworking sharecropper, but was committed to an asylum when Joe was 2 years old and died when Joe was 4.
His mother Lillie, after taking in washing to support the family, married Patrick Brooks when Joe was 7 and merged her family of eight with his eight. The family moved to Detroit in the summer of 1926 and moved into an eight-room house on Macomb Street. Joe attended the Duffield School and then Bronson, a vocational training school, where he stayed until he was 17.
Before school, Joe worked in the Eastern Market, and after school at Pickman and Dean, a Detroit ice company. He claimed carrying the heavy (up to 50 pounds) blocks of ice helped develop his shoulders and muscular arms.
Joe Louis and his mother Lillie in a 1935 photo.

Coleman Young, former Mayor of Detroit, recounted how Louis and he showed up at the same time to apply for the iceman job. Young, 8, was no match for the 12 year old, who lifted in one hand the block that Coleman Young couldn't pick up with two.
When he was 16, Joe's mother gave him money weekly for violin lessons, but Joe used the money to pay for a locker at the Brewster Recreation Center, where amateur boxers gathered and trained.
Amateur boxing was extremely popular in the '30s. It even overshadowed high school sports. When Lillie Barrow found out what her son was up to (the violin teacher had come by looking for him) she was disappointed, but told him to do the best he could at it. When Louis filled out the forms for one of his first amateur fights, he didn't have enough room for his last name, Barrow. The legend thus began under the name Joe Louis and so it continued.
After some early defeats, Louis got a job at Ford, but continued boxing, dropping the Ford job as his amateur career took off. Initially trained by Atler Ellis and Holman Williams at Brewster, Louis took their advice and hooked up with George Slayton, manager of the Detroit Athletic Club. He made it to the Golden Gloves finals in Boston in 1933, but was defeated by Notre Dame football star Max Marek. After winning the National AAU light-heavyweight championship in St. Louis he went pro three months later. In 54 amateur bouts Louis won 43 by knockout, seven by decision and lost four, all by decision.
His earliest manager was John Roxborough, a wealthy black former basketball player and gambling magnate, whose family was prominent in the Detroit insurance business. Roxborough's brother was a state senator and his nephew was in the State Department. Roxborough brought in Julian Black, a Chicago numbers operator and nightclub owner. Together the two managed Louis until World War II. They moved Louis to Chicago in 1934 and hired former fighter Jack "Chappy" Blackburn to oversee his training.
Louis' first professional fight was against Jack Kracken on July 4, 1934. He earned $50. A year later he knocked out Primo Carnera and earned $60,433. After his first eight pro fights, he became known as the "Brown Bomber of Detroit." As a News columnist at the time put it, Louis "had risen like a star across the fistic heavens."
He won his first 27 pro fights with 23 knockouts. At the age of 21, he had knocked out Primo Carnera, Kingfish Levinsky, Max Baer and Paolino Uzcudum in a total of 12 rounds. In December 1935, Detroit News Sports Editor H.G. Salsinger wrote: "Louis is generally regarded as the greatest fighter of all time." In his first year and a half as a pro, his purses added up to $371,645 at a time when the average yearly salary was $1,250.
Louis shadowboxes while training for his bout with Kingfish Levinsky in Chicago in August of 1935. He won the fight by a knockout.

Louis himself was so generous and often naive in his generosity, that he never saved his money and spent the last half of his life trying to pay back money he owed from the first half. He gave away money to poor kids and friends from his youth and hangers on. He started a Detroit softball team, the Brown Bombers, and bought them uniforms and a team travel bus. He even repaid the city of Detroit the $250 his family received in welfare checks after his stepfather was injured in an auto accident. He bought uniforms for an entire graduating class of army officers from Jackie Robinson's officer training class. He bought businesses for friends, and invested in friends' schemes. The more he earned the more he gave away. In 1940, the Detroit News reported that Louis was riding on his newly purchased farm near Utica. An elderly Indian lived in a shack on the property and was worried that Louis would evict him. Louis rode his horse over and told him not to worry, but to move over to the other side of the hill where there was a frame house that would be more comfortable for winter.
Louis bought the farm in Utica for his horses. He had started riding at Washington Park in Chicago and rode every day there. He collected show horses and competed in riding shows
Louis married Marva Trotter two hours before his fight with Max Baer in 1935. Here he gets a kiss from Marva shortly after winning the bout by a knockout.

Such a dedicated boxer was Louis that he married Marva Trotter two hours before his fight with Max Baer in September of 1935, won the fight and then began his wedding night. Fame and athletic success don't always go hand in hand. Although success brings fame, fame can sometimes hamper the road to success.
His fame allowed him to hang out with band leaders Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was a friend. When he began training for his fight with German Max Schmeling, the German, crowds flocked to his camp in Lakewood, New Jersey, to watch him. He played a daily game of golf against the advice of his trainers who warned that a good golf swing was harmful to a good punch. Complacency had set in.
Schmeling, unlike many American fighters, was not afraid to fight Louis. He and his trainers watched films of Louis' bouts and saw that when Louis jabbed, he kept his left high; when he went for the hook, he set himself ever so slightly and lowered his left. Schmeling was advised to step back to evade the jab, and when Louis lowered his guard, to throw a straight right over Louis' left.
On June 19, 1936, Joe Louis' victory against Schmeling was so assured that the gate was half what was expected. The threat of a boycott of the match with the German by Jews who were trying to draw attention to Hitler's genocidal campaign also lowered attendance. A rainstorm caused the Yankee Stadium fight to be postponed to the next night. Forty dollar ringside seats, the highest ticket price for a fight at that time, also kept attendance down.
The fight ended in a surprise upset. Schmeling annihilated Louis. He hit him with 91 right leads. Schmeling took charge in the fourth round and kept it up; Louis lasted into the 12th round when he was counted out for the first time in his professional career. The loss hit the country and particularly the Black community hard. There was rioting in Harlem: a Harlem man who had bet on Schmeling was hospitalized with stab wounds and a possible skull fracture.
James Braddock sprawls on the canvas at Comiskey Park in Chicago June 22, 1937, as Joe Louis walks away with the heavyweight title.

Joe Louis learned a lesson and never again took an opponent lightly.
On June 22, 1937, Joe Louis captured the heavyweight crown with an eighth-round knockout of James J. Braddock in Chicago. He successfully defended that title for 12 years, 24 times with 22 knockouts. His title defense became known as the "bum of the month" campaign.
One of his more memorable opponents included Tony "Two Ton" Galento, known as "the beer barrel that walked like a man." Galento dropped Louis in the third with a left hook, but Louis got up to finish him off. Arturo Godoy, a South American from Chile, befuddled Louis by planting a kiss on his cheek in the 14th round, losing only by a decision.
On June 22, 1938, a rematch with Max Schmeling was set up. This time Joe trained in earnest. The country was caught up in the symbolism of a black man fighting the representative of Nazi Germany's master race. Everyone was backing Joe Louis. He embodied the American ideal of a poor boy born in a log cabin. Two minutes, four seconds into the first round, Schmeling went down and didn't get up. Joe Louis had redeemed himself and upheld the honor of the United States as the countries inched closer towards war.
Sgt. Louis with daughter Jacquelin and wife Marva in 1943.

Joe Louis' laconic style hid his wit. Before his 1946 rematch with Billy Conn, when reporters asked him how he would deal with that fighter's agility and quickness, Joe Louis coined his most famous remark: "He can run but he can't hide."
Always a patriot, Louis donated his purse from the January 1942 Buddy Baer fight ($65,200) to the Naval Relief Fund. The purse from his fight with Abe Simon ($45,882) went to the Army Relief Fund. That year Louis enlisted as a private, earning $21 per month. Louis served with Jackie Robinson, who credited Louis with doing much for blacks in the then segregated army, including getting Robinson and other blacks entrance to officer training school. Louis served for almost four years in the special services, performing exhibition fights, and boosting morale. He retired as a sergeant with the Legion of Merit decoration.
The army had banned Louis from fighting championships while in the service, so he did not fight officially again until a 1946 match with Billy Conn, which he won by a knockout in the eighth. But Louis had lost some of his skill during the war years. A 1947 match with Jersey Joe Walcott was a close decision after 15 rounds. After a 1948 rematch with Walcott, which Louis won in an eleventh round knockout, Louis retired.
He started an insurance company in Chicago, the Joe Louis Insurance company, in which he lost interest, and similar business ventures fell by the wayside. His wife Marva, who had divorced Joe in 1945 and remarried him in 1946, then divorced him for good in 1949. Joe had huge financial problems. He had given so much money away, he owed the IRS hundreds of thousands of dollars, his divorce settlement was large, and since his retirement, he had no way of earning the money. He decided on a comeback, but it was not a success. He lost to Ezzard Charles in 15 rounds of a championship bout. He retired for good in December of 1951 after Rocky Marciano knocked him out in the eighth on October 26, 1951.
Various businesses and financial schemes failed, and Louis gave up hope of ever paying the IRS the more than $1 million he owed. He went on quiz shows, even tried professional wrestling, but when he did win money, he just gave it away.
A badly beaten Joe Louis sinks to the ropes after an eight-round knockout at the hands of Rocky Marciano. Louis retired for good after this fight.

Louis married Rose Morgan in 1955, gave her an annulment in 1958, and married Martha Jefferson, a successful Los Angeles attorney who was the first black woman to practice law in California, in 1959. He lived in Las Vegas, working as a greeter and in public relations at Caesar's Palace, a job given to him by old army buddy Ash Resnick, then an executive of the casino.
He also worked with Sonny Liston and as an advisor to Muhammed Ali. Eventually Louis' health deteriorated to the point where he was confined to a wheelchair. His heart was bad: he had two operations, which long time friend Frank Sinatra paid for. Sinatra flew Louis to Houston to have Michael DeBakey perform surgery. Louis suffered a stroke a year before his death and eventually his heart gave out. Joe Louis died on April 12, 1981. He was 66.
Ronald Reagan waived the eligibility rules for burial at Arlington National Cemetery, and Louis was buried there with full military honors on April 21, 1981.
The whole country mourned his passing. President Reagan praised his instinctive patriotism and extraordinary accomplishments.
Thomas Sowell praised his dignity, his gentlemanliness, sportsmanship and humor, the 'unbought grace of life' that was his gift.
"He was our Sampson; he was our David. With toughness he destroyed our enemy, with kindness he soothed our wounds and revived our psyche." -- Jesse Jackson
"Joe never lost his common touch, his love of Detroit. He stood for everything that was good about Detroit." -- Coleman Young
"Our loss is Heaven's gain; he was a great fighter, and a great champion in and out of the ring. He was symbolic to all people, young and old, black and white.''-- Jersey Joe Walcott
Louis' third wife and widow, Martha, in front of the Joe Louis statue in the lobby of Cobo Hall.

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"World Heavyweight champ Joe Louis (Barrow) sews on the stripes of a technical sergeant--to which he has been promoted..." April 10, 1945

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