Lou Duva - Early Years

Early Years

Duva was born in New York City to Italian immigrants, the sixth of seven children. After spending time growing up in Little Italy, New York, his family then moved to Paterson, New Jersey. Duva's childhood was an impoverished one and he had to do many jobs to try to help his family.

Duva's 23-year-old brother, Carl Duva, introduced young Lou to boxing when the boy was only 10 years old. Lou polished his own boxing skills and by age 12 was both an amateur and ballroom brawler. However Lou as a boxer did not have much luck, although that might have been due to the fact he barely had time to train, having to go out to the street and perform many types of jobs to try to help the Duva family make ends meet.

In 1938 Lou went to try to join the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). He had problems getting in because applicants were required to be at least 18, but Duva was only 16 years old when he applied to join. He went and changed his birth certificate and all his personal information and they accepted him, thinking that he had been born two years earlier, in 1920. The CCC sent him to Boise, Idaho, and then to Walla Walla, Washington, where he learned to drive trucks.

Duva went to the US Army after World War II broke out. He went to Jackson, Mississippi, to train but he was dismissed from the base after many fistfights with fellow soldiers as well as an altercation with two Lieutenants when he defended a black woman being harassed on a public bus. After that, he was sent to Camp Hood in Texas, where he was named boxing instructor.

He went back home in 1944 to help run a restaurant and to begin a professional boxing career, as a boxer. But he could only compile a record of 15 wins and 7 losses as a professional fighter, and he retired soon after, going back to his days as a trucker. He started a trucking company and met his wife Enes soon after. He had met her while he was performing as a clown at a ministry and they married in 1949.

Lou spent a good portion of the early 1950s at a gym named Stillmans boxing gym. Stillmans gym is known by two things: its legendary fame as a filthy gym where windows were kept closed so that the smell of sweat would not escape, and the large amount of celebrities, both from Hollywood and the boxing world that the gym attracted. It was here that he began friendships with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frankie Valli, among others. Duva, already enamored with the world of boxing, felt his passion for that sport increase every time he visited Stillman's.

Duva's trucking business was doing well, so he decided to open, with the blessing of Enes, his own gym, named Garden Gym. After he sold his fleet of 32 trucks, he became a bail bondsman, and he tracked offenders who jumped bail to avoid trial. Around this time he also worked as a union representative in North Jersey.