New Haven Independent

This winter, Lowry (at right in photo), who was born on Munson Street in 1920, will be inducted into Connecticut’s Boxing Hall of Fame.

Two dozen admiring friends and five generations of family from around the Northeast, including younger members Ryan and Sage Sands (in photo), were on hand at the main library’s Writers Live series Tuesday to celebrate Lowry’s memoir of a courageous African-American life that mirrors the 20th century.

In a career of some 141 fights, Lowry faced five world champions, including Joe Louis, Archie Moore, and Sonny Liston. His career was interrupted when he joined the 555th Parachute Battalion, the first all black parachute division in the Army during World War Two. Although there were rumors that his unit was going to be at the Normandy landing, he stayed stateside and was a smoke jumper in Washington and the Pacific Northwest. There during the war the Japanese, he said, launched balloons that set forests on fire.

“These were really remote areas. We jumped in around the fire and contained it until the regular firefighters, who traveled on mules, could get up there.”

With a charming and pugnacious humor, Lowry, still remarkably fit, fielded questions and received compliments such as those delivered by Sharon diNapoli. She came to offer a gift to Lowry, a photo postcard of the arena in Providence where he faced the undefeated Marciano on Oct. 10, 1949.

“Marciano was a homey, from nearby Brockton, Mass,” she said. “But my dad, who worked in the arena, said everyone in that audience knew you had won the match.”

“Will you accept a kiss?” said Lowry, and he proceeded to land one on a smiling diNapoli.

Lowry’s winning charm was interrupted — with his own tears — when he recalled that he and his fellow Triple Nickles (the 555th) were training in the South. “German POWs, who were on a kind of leave, got on the public bus, and I had to stand up and move to the back of the bus. These Germans had probably killed some of our GIs and they were being treated better than we were.

“There, in the South,” said Lowry, “I found out that I was black.”

Retiring from fighting at age 35, he returned to New Haven. He got a job in the Whalley Avenue jail, and also did odd jobs. He founded the New Haven Mustangs, a local all- black football team.

“In those days,” he said, “in the early 1950s black kids were rarely allowed to play on the high school football teams. Maybe one or two kids every few years. I gave them a chance.”

“He was a tough coach,” said Project MORE CEO Warren Kimbro (in background of the photo at the top of this story), who had been kicked out of Hillhouse High School as a teen and was referred by the authorities to Lowry. “He used to take me on some deliveries he’d run, delivering fruits and vegetables. He gave us things to do, and he tried to make a football player out of me also. He saved a lot of lives.”

Later, Lowry moved out of New Haven and established the Greater Norwalk Boxing Association, where he trained some 200 kids. In 1997 the Dixwell Community House Alumni Association gave him an alumni award. Today, said his son, Ken, Ted mentors kids at the local YMCA in boxing and in life skills riding the school bus as a security guard in Norwalk.

Jim Krayeske, Jr., the chairman of the state’s boxing commission, was on hand Tuesday to congratulate Lowry for his memoir, God’s in My Corner: A Portrait of an American Boxer, and to tell him he’ll see him at his induction in the Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame. That event will likely take place either at Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods. For more information, the contact is George Phillips, the chief of officials for amateur boxing in the state.