I Dreamt The Olympic Dream Deferred

By Pete "Twin" Spanakos

Pete and Nick Spanakos

Every athlete's dream is to make the Olympic team. My identical twin, Nikos, and I had that dream. For me, I dreamt the Olympic dream deferred. Bear in mind that the journey to the Olympics, for me, became more important than the destination. Our "Ithaca," like the title of the Cavafy poem, was our seductive muse, boxing. We were raised in Red Hook which is a forlorn, poor, rough, tough, hard scrabble waterfront war zone, section of Brooklyn filled with hallowed eyed factories and often a metaphor for despair. Red Hook was memorialized in Arthur Miller's play, "A View from the Bridge", Thomas Wolfe's book, Only the Dead Know Brooklyn, in Elia Kazan's epic movie, "On the Waterfront" starring Marlon Brando, and the movie, "Last Exit to Brooklyn." The zeitgeist for Red Hookers to survive was to get your enemies before they could get to you always with a preemptive attack. Red Hook was famous for producing gangsters. When you drove your car in Red Hook and made a hand signal out the car window they stole your watch and ring. Drugs and its evil twin addiction, were pandemic in "da hook." So much so that on Friday nights the buildings would nod and there were track marks up and down the lamp posts. The view of the nearby Statue of Liberty had both hands up.

Many of "doz" gangs went to work every day but with a gun in their hands. When the kids from "da hook" played cops and robbers they played for real. The twins' small stature and being the only Greek "greaseballs" were bullied on a daily basis. In order to defend themselves, or maybe because of atavism or channeling their Spartan heritage from Thermopylae to Red Hook by the age of 10 they became first class Court Street street fighters and at 14 they initiated their loooong boxing career. Boxing to the twins served as their mythic muse and later on with the help of the Oracle of Delphi, beholden a 1956 college boxing scholarship which gave them their one-way ticket from the mean streets of "da hood" n hook n palookaville. Both were blessed with boxing scholarships from one of the top Pacific Northwest liberal arts colleges, Albertson College of Idaho, Caldwell, Idaho.

In the fall of 1952, we were 14 and a few inches over 5' tall, a little over 100 lbs each, and high school freshmen in Brooklyn's Fort Hamilton High School, one of the best high schools in Brooklyn then and now. Now it is the largest high school in the United States with over 5000 students. After perusing the print media, especially The Daily News, on the Summer Olympic Games at Helsinki, we both came down with the "Olympic fever" which for us lasted 12 loooooong years.

We were raised in a pride of seven lions down on the mean streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn. Our hard-working Greek immigrant parents had a restaurant at 584 Court Street. They were from Mani, Greece, descendants of the ancient Spartans famous for fearlessness and ferocity as fighters. Our father ruled the family with an iron fist covered bv a velvet glove. Spartan mothers sent their sons to battle with the laconic caveat, "come back with your shield or on it." In order to survive the street fighting ethos of our "hood", five of us became boxers and all seven of us became first class Court Street street fighters.

We dreamt the dream about competing in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. In 1952, we tepidly ingressed into the Red Hook NYC Parks Department boxing gym. In 1954, we transferred to the Red Hook NYC Police Athletic League (PAL) 76th precinct Miccio Center. We both attended Brooklyn's coveted Fort Hamilton High School from 1952-56. The NYC schools never had boxing as a PSAL sport. To this day, we never knew why the PSAL never initiated and sanctioned boxing for boys and girls as a Public School Athletic League (PSAL) sport, like football, despite the operative that football is much more dangerous and expensive. Team insurance is cheaper for boxing than football. If the city will not assume the high school boxing program then let the NYC PAL run and pay for the program out of the city's high schools. This will be at no expense to the NYC Education Department.

My twin and I want to see high school boxing in all the public, private, charter, and parochial schools as a great antidote for juvenile delinquency. In boxing, unlike the three major American sports, football, basketball and baseball, you are not penalized because of height, weight and strength. Small and light athletes, male and female, are all eligible. The boxing program will hopefully segue into PSAL or PAL wrestling and martial arts programs.

From 1952 to 1956, we focused on the Olympic dream. We prayed daily, trained six days a week. At 5:30 am, we ran around the dark, dank and dangerous Red Hook Stadium, or the equally dark but safer undulating equestrian path of Prospect Park. In those days, the only runners were fighters-in-training, or muggers. This Spartan regime forged our indomitable will to win and succeed. We lived like secular, ascetic monks. Family legend has it that we even shadow-boxed in our sleep.

In 1953-56, we singularly or collectively took all the boxing championships around, like the Parks Department, AAU, PAL and Golden Gloves, usually at 118 or 126 pounds.

We both lost in the 1956 USA Olympic Eastern Trials in Albany, but we were both blessed with boxing scholarships from the highly regarded and coveted Albertson College of Idaho, and continued four years of college boxing. Again this boxing scholarship was transformative as it changed the direction of our lives. This gave us our one-way ticket out of da "hood" and "hook" and "palookaville." Too many of our fellow Red Hookers without a ticket (college scholarships or military service, etc.) took a round trip to and from Red Hook. In true Red Hooking tradition they died with a spike in their arm or a gun in their hand.

Nick Spanakos

Pete Spanakos

In the interim, I won a bronze medal in the 1959 Pan American Games. Cassius Clay, now Mohamed Ali, was an alternate teammate. When Ali was 16 years old in 1959 he kept telling Nikos and me he was the GOAT (GREATEST OF ALL TIME). We teased him and called him the GREEK GOAT (GREEKEST OF ALL TIME). In 1960, Cassius, Nikos and I, the three Greek musketeers were the number one favorites to make the 1960 Olympic team. We, the twins, basically won the Golden Gloves in Los Angeles, Las Vegas. Portland, Seattle, Western (Chicago) and the National Intercity Golden Gloves in Madison Square Garden. We often won the "Outstanding Fighter Trophy" at these tournaments.

Finally, in May, I lost in the 1960 Western USA Olympic Trials in Pocatello, Idaho; but Nikos won that one and won again at the final USA Olympic at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. His dream was no longer a dream.

In the 1960 Rome Olympics, Nikos lost a "Disputable" decision during the height of the cold war, to an awkward, rushing Russian, Boris Nickamorov. His dream became a nightmare. The next day, the Rome Olympic Committee fired half of its boxing officials, all of them from Communist countries. The cold war was still on. Nikos, in the true Spartan tradition, was stoic about his oracle of Delphi fate. Nikos' team and roommate, Classius Clay, went on to capture the gold.

This was not the end of my unrequited and unconsummated passion. We trained and fought another four looooong years for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

In my senior year of law school, I picked up my shield and won the 1964 Golden Gloves at the old Madison Square Garden on West 50th Street and Eight Avenue. Nikos was the 1964 All-Army champion and was working on his doctorate in business administration, but he lost in the final bout of the final Olympic Trials. He was nine minutes from Tokyo; had he won he would have made history as the only member to make the USA Olympic boxing team twice, at that time.

In our mythic uber-boxing odyssey, we won 17 Golden Glove titles and competed in the 1956, '60 and '64 USA Olympic Trials with a heroic boxing resume of 200 epic fights each, won over 30 championships each, and left a bloody trail in over 40 cities. Our motto was "Have Gloves, Will Travel."

During those 12 yeas, we often had to juggle three full-time careers simultaneously: schooling, boxing and working. Self-pity was a luxury that we could not afford. We have NO regrets. Boxing changed our lives forever. It left us with an epiphany of a rich legacy of wellness: healthy eating, daily exercising, controlling stress, anxiety, depression, fear and hubris.

Remember the Asian philosopher and warrior, Sun Tzu, who wrote, "All battles are won before they are fought." Also remember the Spartan King Leonidas who at the battle of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, when asked to surrender laconically, responded with his famous war cry, "Molon Labe", which means "come and take them"

Contact Person: Petros M. Spanakos (10 time undefeated Golden Glove champion from 1955 -1964)
zundos@hotmail.com

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