Floyd Patterson

by W. K. Stratton

  Guerrero’s left-hand tactics did frustrate Patterson. The older fighter moved with lightning speed as he delivered smashing blows to Patterson’s body, then effectively blocked Patterson’s attempts at counterpunching. Halfway through the fight, Guerrero shifted into a right-handed stance, adding to Patterson’s mounting frustration. Floyd was the favorite to win, but Guerrero wound up with an easy victory, leaving Patterson confused as he tried to understand how things went so wrong.

  More success followed by disappointment lay ahead. In the spring Floyd made it to the semifinal round of the Amateur Athletic Union national boxing championships in Boston. But he fell to defeat in the semis. Still, at age sixteen, Patterson had proved that D’Amato and Lavelle’s faith in him as a prospect was not misplaced. As a newcomer to New York’s fiercely competitive amateur boxing scene, he’d made his mark. His premiere in the Golden Gloves competitions was just one victory shy of spectacular.

  Patterson and his handlers knew he had a ways to go to succeed against boxers of Dick Guerrero’s caliber. Floyd had looked exhausted at the end of the Guerrero fight, so improving his stamina through roadwork became his highest priority. Running took on a new purpose for him, and he remained, until his final days, a dedicated runner.

  Lavelle oversaw some of Patterson’s most challenging roadwork, picking him up early on Saturday mornings and taking him to Coney Island. There the trainer instructed him to run on the sandy beach to strengthen his ankles, calves, and thighs. It wasn’t easy, but the older man convinced Patterson it was necessary to develop the leg power he needed in the ring. On other mornings, Patterson ran closer to home. He did his roadwork before dawn, often accompanied by his uncle Charley Johnson, in Prospect Park. He chugged along in Army shoes, long underwear, overalls, and a hooded sweatshirt. With each step, he reminded himself that boxing could be the financial salvation for him and his family.

  Patterson’s dedication to training was unmatched. He trained everywhere, even when he wasn’t at the Gramercy Gym or clicking away the miles in Prospect Park. At home, he locked himself in the bathroom and shadowboxed in front of the mirror, occasionally throwing jabs at the string hanging from the old-fashioned light fixture. He even employed paper bags and pillows as makeshift punching bags.

  Though he claimed boxing was his only concern, Floyd was still a teenager and found some time to hang out with other neighborhood kids. Through one of his buddies, he met a girl who had a pretty smile and who seemed to be about as shy as he was. Sandra Elizabeth Hicks was her name, and Floyd guessed she was about his age. The Hicks family lived on Bainbridge Street, not far from his maternal grandmother’s house. With Sandra so close by, Floyd suddenly found a reason to visit his grandmother much more often. He started running into Sandra on his way to his grandmother’s, just as he hoped he would. It didn’t take long before his visits to Bainbridge Street were directed toward visiting Sandra and Sandra alone.

  It took a while, but Patterson shared snippets of his past life with his new friend, if not the whole story. He feared she might think he was stupid. He also hid details about his family, such as just how many brothers and sisters he had and even the address of the apartment the Pattersons called home. The Hicks family was not affluent, but they were better off than the Pattersons, and Floyd thought she might break things off with him if she found out. But when she learned about all these things, and also about his time at Wiltwyck and his experiences at PS 614, none of it seemed to bother Sandra. She introduced Patterson to her parents, who were impressed by his polite demeanor. Eventually, Floyd worked up enough nerve to ask Mrs. Hicks if Sandra could be his guest at one of his fights. Mrs. Hicks responded by saying, over Sandra’s protests, “Do you have any idea how old Sandra is?”

  “No, Mrs. Hicks,” Patterson said, “Sandra and I have never discussed that.”

  “Floyd, Sandra’s only thirteen.” He left the Hicks household that night knowing that if he were to have a relationship with Sandra, it would have to develop more slowly than he’d first thought. The good news was that Mrs. Hicks had not prohibited Patterson from seeing Sandra. “You’re a gentlemanly young man,” she told him.14

  The exposure to the Hicks family affected Patterson in a way beyond the potential for romance with Sandra. They were devout Roman Catholics, and Sandra attended parochial school. At the time, Floyd was not particularly religious, and the Baptist Patterson family seldom attended church. But his involvement with the pretty girl with the straight white teeth stirred a spiritual awakening in Floyd. After witnessing her displays of sweetness and decency time and again, he began to wonder if her faith made her who she was. He and Sandra began to discuss religion frequently. Eventually, she took him to her church’s parish house and introduced Floyd to the priest. Floyd said he wanted to start catechism classes.

  As Patterson studied the teachings of Roman Catholicism, he continued Cus D’Amato’s ring catechism to prepare for whatever boxing offered him next. No one could have been more surprised than Floyd at what that turned out to be.

  3

  Floyd Patterson Is Out of This World

  PS 614 PRINCIPAL Alex Miller called Floyd aside and asked what he wanted to do with his life. “I want to fight,” Patterson said. “I mean, I want to be a professional boxer.”

  “Why would you want to do that, Floyd?” Miller asked.

  “It’s the quickest way I know to start earning some money to help out my family.”1

  Patterson was about to turn seventeen. PS 614 was in essence a vocational grammar school for troubled students. After graduating, he would have nothing more than an eighth-grade education. Two options lay ahead of him: go to work or continue his education at a vocational high school. The prospect of high school could not have been very appealing to Floyd, given his age; he would have been about twenty-one before he finished. More than anything, he wanted money, and he wanted it now—money for himself, money for his family, money to spend on Sandra Hicks. He juggled the options: backbreaking work at some dead-end job for low pay, further education that might lead to something financially rewarding years down the line, and prizefighting. It wasn’t a hard decision.

  During the 1951 holiday season, Floyd approached D’Amato about turning pro; he wanted to start bringing some money home from the ring. Cus listened patiently, then advised Patterson not to give up amateur competition just yet. Floyd was surprised. Didn’t D’Amato think he was good enough to fight pro? Of course he was good enough, D’Amato said with conviction. But if he turned pro, he wouldn’t be able to qualify for the 1952 American Olympics boxing team.

  The Olympics? It was the first time anyone had mentioned the games to Floyd. He didn’t understand how competing in the Olympics could benefit him. Jesse Owens had become a hero for black Americans after his remarkable four-gold-medal performance in Berlin in 1936. But Owens’s background wasn’t quite like Floyd’s. Owens and his family had struggled to get by in one of Cleveland’s poor black neighborhoods until Owens’s track skills opened the door for him to attend Ohio State University, and that changed everything. He became a college man, and American Olympic teams of the day were dominated by college men. Amateur athletes by and large still looked down on the scruffy sorts who took money to participate in sports.

  Floyd was perplexed by D’Amato’s thinking. His goal was to make money, and he couldn’t see how the Olympics would lead to dollars in his pocket. But he had put his trust in this enigma of a manager. If D’Amato’s plans included an Olympic tryout, Patterson would follow them. He decided to extend his amateur career into 1952, while taking classes at a vocational high school.

  Floyd began his Olympic quest in February 1952. A return to the New York Golden Gloves competition at Madison Square Garden was his first stop. Patterson had grown taller and filled out some since his previous Gloves appearance, so D’Amato determined he should fight in the light-heavyweight (175 pounds) class. Patterson liked battling the heavier boxers, who fought more slowly than he. He sliced his way through h
is three opponents in the Gloves with first-round knockouts. His championship bout lasted just forty seconds. In March came the Eastern Golden Gloves championships, again at the Garden. Patterson easily defeated his first opponent, and then, using what was becoming his trademark looping left hook—because he often leaped while throwing it, both feet off the mat, it became known as Patterson’s “gazelle punch”2—Floyd TKO’d Newark’s Harold Carter to claim the Eastern title. During the third week of March 1952, Patterson competed in the Intercity Golden Gloves tournament, winning the light-heavyweight title.

  D’Amato had designs on Patterson’s winning the national Amateur Athletic Union championship that spring in Boston as well. But he determined that Patterson’s approach to this year’s tournament should be different from the previous one. He and Patterson agreed that Floyd should go to Boston without the distraction of schoolwork. So Patterson, who’d graduated from PS 614 a month earlier, decided to stop attending the metalworking classes he was taking at Alexander Hamilton Vocational High School. In Floyd’s mind, there was a right way and a wrong way to take that step. Because of his past reputation as a truant, he did not want to simply drop out. He wanted to secure working papers first. Hotelier Charles Schwefel, an acquaintance of D’Amato’s and a supporter of PS 614, gave Floyd a job at the Gramercy Park Hotel, and that allowed Patterson to get the documents he desired. Floyd put in time at the hotel, but it was always clear to Schwefel and everyone else involved that his real job was training to box. Schwefel freed him from his hotel responsibilities for fights—including his travel to Boston to train for the national AAUs.

  Floyd went down in weight for the AAUs, fighting as a middleweight—a bold move, given that middleweight was a much more hotly contested class than light-heavyweight. It was all part of D’Amato’s plan to mold Floyd into a versatile boxer, one who could bang with heavier boxers but also match the speed of lighter ones. The middleweight competition caused Floyd no problems. He hammered his way to the finals. On April 9 at the Boston Garden, he won the AAU championship with a knockout. Of his four matches in the tournament, three had ended with his opponents on the mat, and Floyd was named outstanding boxer in the AAU tournament. With the Golden Gloves titles and now the win at the AAUs, he moved into the ranks of American amateur boxing’s elite, poised to claim a spot on the Olympic team bound for Helsinki, Finland.

  Patterson competed as a heavy-middleweight in the Olympic qualifying tournament.3 The winners of eight sectional qualification competitions for AAU boxers were to receive an invitation to compete in the Kansas City finals in late May. (The boxing champions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, as well as the Army and Navy champions were also invited to Kansas City.) Patterson fought in the sectional tournament held in Albany, where he “stole the show” at Hawkins Stadium, according to the Berkshire (MA) Evening Eagle. The paper’s reporter noted that Patterson “stalks like Joe Louis” and came to the New York state capital “with a reputation of a future champion.”4 Floyd proved that reputation was warranted as he scored consecutive technical knockouts—amazingly, both TKOs occurred precisely at one minute, thirty-eight seconds of the opening rounds.

  At the finals in Kansas City, Patterson continued his string of impressive wins, racking up more knockouts on his way to the title match. On June 18 he stopped NCAA boxing champion Gordon Gladson with a hard left hook. Awarded a technical knockout, Patterson became an Olympian: “I beat a college guy—me who had trouble getting through grammar school.”5

  The 1952 squad was by far the best Olympic boxing team the United States had ever dispatched to the international sports festival. Dr. Barry Barrodale of Houma, Louisiana, managed the boxing Olympians, and he boldly predicted that the Americans would win four gold medals. The team’s two coaches, Pete Mello, who mentored New York Catholic Youth Organization boxers, and J. T. Owen, who headed the boxing program at Louisiana State University, agreed. But all three knew their charges would have to take a different approach from previous American Olympic teams if the team were to harvest that many medals.

  Past American teams in Olympic competition faced an unfamiliarity with international boxing rules. Barrodale said, “We’ve lost many a chance at titles in the last two games because of minor infractions. The referee warns you once for something like not taking a full step back on the break. Then if you hit and hold, or push off on the break, or bob and weave below the waist, then they can disqualify you and do—for the second violation. In the ’48 games, [Washington] Jones knocked a guy cold and then was disqualified for hitting with an open glove.”6 Barrodale’s fighters, while supremely talented, would have to be disciplined enough to avoid tripping over the rules if they were to win medals. That became the focus of their training.

  As for the potential gold medalists Barrodale saw coming out of the games, he included Floyd. “Floyd Patterson is out of this world,” Barrodale said. “He knocked out all eight of his opponents in the 165-pound trials. Brother, if he doesn’t win, the guy who beats him will have to be somewhat super-special.”7 Floyd joined three hundred other American Olympians for a grand departure celebration in New York, which included a lower Manhattan ticker-tape parade, a reception at City Hall, and a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria—events all new and wonderful for the kid from Brooklyn.

  The Pan Am plane began its descent. From his seat, seventeen-year-old Floyd could see evergreen forests extending to the horizon. There was one clearing and the plane was slowly flying into it. The plane touched down around sunset, and Floyd joined the other American Olympians in exiting the aircraft. It was an extraordinary experience for him. While other American teenagers were engaged in summer vacations and thoughts of the upcoming school year, Floyd was preparing to represent his country while battling the best amateur boxers from around the globe. On the drive into Helsinki from the airport, he sensed he was entering a place far different from anything he’d known, a city that looked ancient and yet seemed almost like a frontier community. He’d later say it was an experience he could never forget. When he arrived at the camp, he received his Olympic uniform. His was like everyone else’s on the American team, all red, white, and blue.

  Barrodale assigned Mello to be Patterson’s Olympic trainer, and Mello filled the role more than adequately as Patterson attempted to digest the odd rules the Olympics imposed on boxers. Patterson also made a friend of fellow New Yorker Tony Anthony, a member of the American boxing team. Once in Helsinki, the two fighters spent their free time exploring the Olympic Village and beyond. One day they passed the Soviet team as it worked out, and Floyd saw firsthand just how different an approach the Eastern Europeans took toward boxing compared with the Americans. The Soviets stood in a line, wearing matching blue sweatshirts. Their trainer shouted a command, and the boxers responded in unison, throwing jabs. Another command, and the Soviets all threw rights. Patterson was surprised by how mechanical—and ineffective—it all seemed. He dismissed the Soviets as not being much of a threat to the Americans.

  But he did worry about the Finns—not the Finnish athletes, but the people who called Finland home. When Patterson and Anthony roamed the Helsinki streets, they saw that many residents lived in poverty as dire as that of Bed-Stuy. By contrast, the athletes in the Olympic Village were treated to spreads of food the likes of which Floyd had never witnessed in his life. The discrepancy between the hungry Finnish hosts and the pampered visiting athletes troubled him as he recalled the many nights he himself went to bed hungry as a child. He decided to do something about it. He began helping himself to extra food from the Olympic Village cafeteria lines, sometimes taking as many as three or four steaks. He then made up little packages containing the extra food, which he’d pass on to Finns he’d meet on the street. Mello saw him doing this and was dumbfounded. “I’m in this business forty-one years,” he said, “and this is the nicest kid I ever handled.”8

  In the Olympic boxing ring at the arena called Messuhalli, however, Patterson was anything but nice. Red Smit
h saw him in action there and was mightily impressed by the young fighter with “paws faster than a subway pickpocket.”9 Writing at the time for the New York Herald Tribune, Smith had a reputation as America’s most literary daily-newspaper sports columnist. Receiving favorable notice from Smith boosted the career of any athlete. But Smith went beyond merely mentioning Patterson. He devoted a whole column to the young boxer, the first lengthy piece of journalism about Floyd. The Herald Tribune had a national readership itself, but Smith’s column was also syndicated to dozens of other papers around the country. His piece on Patterson helped make Floyd’s name familiar to sports fans nationwide.

  It was clear to Smith and other reporters in Helsinki that Patterson was far more talented than the international boxers he faced. Floyd did, however, struggle against the rules, which favored European-style orthodox boxing (standing straight up with the arms precisely positioned) over the looser, more improvisational American-style boxing. In one fight, Floyd drew a warning for simply throwing a left hook, then crouching—a standard tactic in American boxing. The European referee could have disqualified him for two more such infractions, but Patterson safely finished the fight, scoring a win.

  Floyd defeated fighters from France, the Netherlands, and Sweden to advance to the gold-medal round. The other finalist was a Romanian named Vasile Tita. Given the tenor of the cold war era, Patterson guessed he would have a difficult time defeating a Soviet-bloc fighter with a Soviet-bloc referee making rules decisions, and a large pro-Soviet contingency in the audience shouting its approval. So he was determined to knock out Tita, removing any possibility of hanky-panky in the judging. And Patterson did just that—easily, as it turned out. Just twenty seconds after the opening bell, Floyd landed a crisp right uppercut on Tita’s chin, knocking out the Romanian fighter and securing the gold medal for himself.10