E PLURIBUS UNUM; BOXING COMES TO BROWNTOWN

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Gus Gianfala came to Brownsville to work as a pipe-fitter with Union Carbide.

And before he was done, he had neatly fitted many local boys with the skills they needed if they had a dream of one day enforcing their pugilistic skills upon opponents in a boxing ring.

Gus - as everyone called him - left his native Louisiana in 1948 to work at the Hydrocol/Union Carbide plant that once was the industrial anchor of the Port of Brownsville. Gus was also an old boxer and although his story may not be exactly like that of the “Cinderella Man” some say it resembles, he fought against all odds and at the end succeeded to create a venue on a shoestring where he taught kids the art of boxing.

Italo Zarate, now in retirement, was one of those young Brownsville pugilists who knew Gianfala. Over 50 years have past, but Italo still remembers his old mentor as a friendly, approachable - but not too close - sort of guy. Zarate recalled that Gianfala was also instrumental in helping Coach Vic Villarreal with the Brownsville High School boxing team.

He was built along the lines of a boxer and with over 25 years of experience in working with kids. Gianfala learned his boxing while working with Coach Ted Banks, who was at one time Tulane’s
University boxing coach.

(He also had a streak of good luck as can be seen in the 1955 photo above where he is accepting the keys from a priest after he won the new car at rear in a  church raffle.)

Coach Banks was also an assistant to Gene Tunney, who held the world heavyweight title from 1926 to 1928, and the American light heavyweight title twice between 1922 and 1923 before becoming an athletic supervisor in the Marine Corps during World War II.

Gus also rubbed elbows with  Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Alvin York, a military heavyweight in WWII who killed 25 German soldiers and captured 132 in a charge against a machine gun emplacement in France.

The boys in Brownsville did not know it then, but they were lucky to have a man with such boxing credentials on their side of the ring. His work here began when he noticed that a lot of boys in the city were out in the streets with nothing to do.

Gus turned to boxing to bring kids together and off the streets. By 1955, he did something no one in Brownsville had done—he created the Brownsville Boys Athletic Club. It was only days before large group of kids in many cases bringing their own equipment were waiting at the door to the join the club.

He knew he could not do it alone, so he attracted contributors like Ruben Edelstein, who donated a ring mat; Louis Nance of Sears gave a washing machine; the Navigation District added salvaged lumber for the construction of the ring and Glen Herman gave a scale for weighing the boys in.

But Gus had bigger ideas that went beyond boxing. He tried to convince the community that while he had a large audience of kids involved in boxing he could take advantage of the situation to hold educational trade classes.

Officers of the organization, like Alex Flores, Dagoberto Barrera and Rudy Pryon, envisioned kids to be engaged in trade programs that included: wood shop, pipe fitting, partial electrical work, heating hazards and other vocational skills.

The town was growing and the boys were growing with it—the club was such a success that it grew to the extent that the outdoor facilities at the old Lions Park (on the west side of town) could no longer meet their needs. Its founder said then,

“The BBAC is growing to the extent now, where more facilities are needed. So many boys are coming to me, that they are becoming overcrowded and need two more clubs to handle the vast amount of lads that have taken interest in the organization.”

Unlike today, the club did not depend on public funding to survive — most of its operational money came by way of its boxing activities. But that was always in jeopardy since all of its bouts were held outdoors, bad weather caused some of its cards to be cancelled, hurting the club financially and thus reducing the chances of expanding the program’s goals.

On December 1956 Gianfala went before the city commission to ask for permission to use the Fort Brown Memorial Civic Center to stage boxing matches, since they had no other place to hold indoor bouts.

But according to the late Dagoberto Barrera, a BBAC club official then, “The city commission and civil center committee denied our request.”

All boxing cards continued outdoors at Fort Brown and the Lions Park baseball park. Gus’s dream of preparing boys for jobs by establishing a trade program within the athletic club — was never realized either. Without the needed resources and city support the club crippled its way out of the ring, but not before many of its boxers demonstrated their skills.

Just 45 days after they had been organized, the Brownsville boys were nosed out of first place at the regional golden glove tournament at Harlingen.

The boys from the BBAC, the “Wolfpack” as they were known, featured a large number of boxers throughout the years. The following are only but a snapshot of those that walked into the ring: Poncho Garza, Joe Barrera (that's him at right delivering a hard right to an opponent), Joe Garcia, Joe Cancio, Joe Landis, Italo Zarate, Teodoro Lucio, Lupe Salazar, Fred and George Flores, Frank Stambaugh, Luis Vargas, Rene Zarate, Juan Gomez, Juan Bautista, Ramiro Rosillo, Nuco Torres, George Bailey, Mauricio Robles, Celestino Hernandez, Joe Cortez, Julio Garcia, Dave Lopez and many more…

Dagoberto Barrera once said: "We were like a family, ith the older boys helping the younger kids.” “Gus Gianfala was a father like figure to all of us.”

Gianfala took boys off the streets (as young as 10 years old) who had no place to go and nothing to do — brought them into the club and gave them the self-confidence they needed to succeed in and out of the ring. He never claimed that the club was his or anyone’s club, but that it belonged to the boys of Brownsville and vicinity.

The Brownsville Athletic Club gave every boy the opportunity to become his own master — allowing him to expand his chest and to become, at least for that moment, a champion in his own mind.