Young Louis Zamperini was bad news. He was angry and rebellious. He had a taste for alcohol and a penchant for fighting. The police always seemed to be chasing him for something. Back in those tough days of the Great Depression, his future looked pretty grim.
Louis Zamperini was born in Olean, New York, in 1917, the second of four children, and moved with his family to Torrance, California, in the 1920s. Like many kids, he didn’t think much about the consequences of his actions. He had a bravado that made him tough and resilient, but that also brought him some close shaves, such as the inevitable perilous falls that came with hopping freight trains. He almost drowned one day after plunging into the ocean. He was pulled out unconscious, but he survived—with the new nickname Lucky Louie.
As Zamperini entered his teenage years, he found an outlet for some of the energy that had led him to mischief: competitive distance running. Before long, he had set the interscholastic record in the mile. “Newspapers started calling me Zamp the Champ,” he says. “I relished every moment in the limelight, knowing at last I could make something of myself…. I won a scholarship to the University of Southern California and, at 18, I made the US Olympic track team in 1936 to compete in Germany.”
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