For Seniors : LINDA FELDMAN : Olympian Is a Top Finisher in Life

Some force must be watching over Louie Zamperini. Not because he was an angel. Quite the opposite. He endured--and raised--his share of hell. But Zamperini, 77, has come through it with his spirit intact. And what a life! From bad boy to Olympic athlete to being given up for dead in a prisoner of war camp to serving God.

His family was forced to leave upstate New York because doctors warned that Louie, then 2 years old, and his older brother would die of pneumonia if they stayed. They settled in Long Beach and a few weeks later their house burned down. His father, blinded by smoke, mistakenly grabbed a pillow thinking he was rescuing the boy. The father went back into the house and found the boy huddled under the bed barely breathing. Two years later Louie hid under the bed again when a boy who had challenged him to a race ran in front of a car and was killed before Louie’s eyes.

“I was lucky he beat me,” Zamperini, now a counselor, said from his memorabilia-filled office at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church.

The family moved to Torrance, and Louie started breaking the rules. It was a common sight to see Louie walking to kindergarten smoking cigarette butts that he picked up from the street.

Zamperini graduated to stealing pies and, later, beer during Prohibition days. No amount of beatings from school principals or his father could stifle his curiosity and his need for adventure. By the time he entered high school, he was undisciplined and getting into more trouble.

“Athletics helped people in those days,” he said. “I was 15, smoking and drinking, and my brother got me into track. The first time I ran I came in last. But I heard kids screaming my name in the stands--’C’mon Louie’--and I didn’t know that anyone knew my name. That did it for me. The recognition tasted good.”

Zamperini did his own brand of training. He went from maverick to track fanatic. He ran 12 miles a day. He took fifth place in Los Angeles’ All-City finals. He broke the national high school record for the mile, a feat that was his entree to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

“I wasn’t good enough to compete in the mile so I switched to the 5,000 meter. But on the ship going to Germany I gained 14 pounds. The advice we got in those days was no gravy, no pork and no women. That left everything else. There wasn’t enough time to lose the weight so I couldn’t keep up with the pace,” he said.

Zamperini competed in the 5,000 anyway and finished eighth but he did the last quarter mile in 56 seconds. He impressed the crowd.

“After the race, a group of us were being photographed. I was introduced to Hitler and Hitler said, “Oh, the boy with the fast finish,” and he extended his flimsy hand and shook mine. I didn’t think anything of it,” he said. After the Olympics he went to USC and broke the collegiate record for the mile. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics when war broke out in Europe. He volunteered for the Air Force and became a bombardier. Everything in his life prepared him for what would happen next.

The plane he was flying in developed engine trouble and went down in the Pacific. He blacked out as it fell, but his Trojan ring caught on the window latch and he was able to struggle out as the plane sunk in the water.

Common sense told him to get the raft that was floating away. He brought it back to where the crew was. Eight crew members died on impact and three boarded the raft. “We prayed because we looked at logic--no food and no water--and felt we had a better chance with divine intervention. We caught fish, birds and ate shark livers. We got into the water and hung up to our necks--the theory being that we wouldn’t dehydrate if we stayed in water,” he said.

The prayer for water produced a tropical storm and after 27 days they had water to drink. After 47 days they saw land and the Japanese saw the two crew members that remained.

Zamperini weighed 60 pounds. He was placed in a cell the size of a large dog kennel. He spent the next 2 1/2 years in a series of Japanese prison camps, 14 months in solitary. He was officially declared dead.

“When I was on that raft, I made thousands of promises. The most important one was that I would seek and serve God. But after the war, I didn’t keep one. I got married. There was no hunger, no explosions, no concentration camp. I went back to my drinking habits. Lost a lot of money in bad business deals. My wife was going to divorce me but her last hope was bringing me to hear Billy Graham.”

That was 1953 and he has been serving people ever since. Today, Zamperini lectures to young people about survival and to seniors about self-esteem.

Zamperini gives the same message to the old and the young: Do the best you can; always try to improve spiritually.