BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : At 74, Flores Remains Guiding Light of Amateur Division in Southland

April 13, 1991|EARL GUSTKEY

Before World War II, there lived in Los Angeles a promising amateur featherweight named Johnny Flores.

Couldn't miss, folks said. He had already won some amateur tournaments when war came. Flores wound up as an Army infantryman, landing at Salerno, Italy.

Early one morning in 1944, Flores and five comrades sought refuge from German artillery fire in a small, abandoned farmhouse. But as the Germans began targeting the house, the six soldiers prepared to flee.

As they ran from the house, a round exploded directly above them. Five died instantly. By the time they got Flores to a field hospital, he was bleeding profusely from 33 shrapnel holes in his body.

But Johnny Flores survived. They gave him the purple heart, silver star and bronze star. He spent years recovering from his wounds, and never was able to resume boxing.

Instead, he turned to coaching young boxers, directing troubled kids into boxing gyms, organizing amateur boxing shows. Today, at 74, he still carries little chunks of steel in his body.

And in L.A., he is Mr. Amateur Boxing.

This week, he has been the major domo at something like his 750th amateur boxing tournament at the Lincoln Park Recreation Center gym. Tonight the finals of the 1991 Los Angeles Golden Gloves tournament will be fought.

Flores has no idea how many events he has run, or how many kids stayed out of trouble because he kept them in boxing gyms. So let's call it hundreds, in both cases.

Over the years, he has trained noteworthy pros, among them Jerry Quarry, Dwight Hawkins and Ruben Navarro. He has also seen countless promising prospects wash out along the way.

One boxer he has watched closely in this week's tournament is novice super-heavyweight David Luster, a 6-foot-4, 228-pound former linebacker at San Diego State. At 27, Luster began the tournament with only five amateur bouts.

Luster won Wednesday night, and will seek the L.A. Golden Gloves title tonight. If he wins, he will be on the L.A. team challenging the San Diego winners April 20. The North-South California Championships are April 27. Both the L.A.-San Diego and North-South events are at Lincoln Park.

Those winners will advance to the national Golden Gloves championships in Des Moines, Iowa, May 6-12.

Luster figures he is making up for a lack of experience by having picked Mercer Smith as his trainer. It was Smith who found Henry Tillman in a California Youth Authority boxing class and took him to a gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics.