Louis Silvie Zamperini, 85, took up running when he was about 5, the same age he took up smoking. Sometimes his fleet feet came in handy for escaping the police.
But they also took him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, to USC, into NCAA and wartime record books, and into a museum that will highlight the contributions of Italians in the history of the West. He even has a new autobiography coming out, "Devil at My Heels," co-written by David Rensin; it is a more detailed version of one he wrote in 1954.
Nothing could deter Zamperini from running, which helped him transcend the mean streets. When he was about 7, a boy who had challenged him to a race took the lead, only to run in front of a car and be crippled for life.
"I was lucky he beat me," Zamperini said in a recent interview.
Zamperini was born in upstate New York in 1917 to an Italian immigrant father and Italian American mother. Two years later, his family left the East Coast because doctors warned that Louie and his older brother, Pete, would die of pneumonia if they didn't escape the harsh climate.
They moved to a tough Torrance neighborhood where anti-Italian sentiment ran high. Until first grade, he spoke only Italian and was mercilessly teased by other kids. He quickly learned English, along with how to fight to survive.
His bravado made him tough but also made for close shaves, from hopping and falling off freight trains to almost drowning at the Redondo Beach saltwater plunge, when someone pushed him off a 20-foot-high platform. He was pulled from the water unconscious, but earned the family nickname "Lucky Louie" by surviving.
" 'We move to California for your health, and here you are almost dying every day,' my mother always reminded me," Zamperini recalled.
Like many Depression-era kids, he grew up tough and poor. Neighborhood parents warned the violent and rebellious teenager to stay on his own block and away from their children.
"I cursed freely. I destroyed property. I ordered kids around. I never used my head, never thought about consequences," he said.
Undisciplined and constantly in trouble, he ditched school, rang church bells in the middle of the night, let air out of teachers' tires, stole beer from bootleggers, spread axle grease on railway tracks so the train had a hard time braking, peppered neighbors' pets with a BB gun, stole pies from a bakery and bullied kids into fistfights.
