Friday's Heroes: Willie Pep Remembers...

This book is about some ghetto kids of the 1930s and 40s who became famous because they learned how to fight better than anyone else. We call them boxers and they came from the neighborhoods of New York Chicago Philadelphia Detroit and other cities. The Television Set was introduced to Americans in the late 1940s as an alternative to radio. The Friday Night fights soon followed. The Friday Night fights were broadcast weekly by Gillete and Pabst Blue Ribbon from the late 1940s into the early 1960s. Along with The Milton Berle Show the Friday Night fights helped to sell millions of television sets during these years as families and friends gathered together to watch their heroes perform. FRIDAYS HEROES is also about a young man from the Italian section of Hartford Connecticut who went on to become One of the Greatest Fighters in the history of the sport. His name was Willie Pep. This Will O the Wisp was World Featherweight Champion from 1942-1951 and campaigned for twenty-six years. Finally this is a book about such people as Sugar Ray Robinson Rocky Graziano Chico Vejar Kid Gavilan Joey Giardello Billy Graham Rocky Marciano Ezzard Charles Joe Louis Jake LaMotta and others who are no longer the ghetto kids making a living from boxing but middle-aged men with the roar of the crowd behind them. Today the athlete - never to be confused with a boxer - is a celebrated figure. Yet as boxers these men seemed to have a different kind of respectability in our society perhaps because they had to fight for a living. Nevertheless no warrior that stalked the arena was more gallant than these kids. Willie Pep Remembers...Fridays Heroes is a book about people these people.