Childhood
Johnny Tapia endured a tragic early life. His father had reportedly been murdered while his mother was pregnant with him. When he was eight years old, his mother, Virginia, was kidnapped, raped, hanged, repeatedly stabbed, and left for dead by her assailant. Tapia was awakened by her screams and saw her chained to the back of a pickup truck. He tried to alert others in his household, but no one believed him. His mother was later found by the police and taken to the hospital after she had crawled 100 yards to a road. She died four days after the attack without regaining consciousness. Raised thereafter by his grandmother, Tapia turned to boxing at the age of nine.
Read more about this topic: Johnny Tapia
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Among the most valuable but least appreciated experiences parenthood can provide are the opportunities it offers for exploring, reliving, and resolving one’s own childhood problems in the context of one’s relation to one’s child.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
““Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)