Carmen Salvino

Carmen Salvino (born November 23, 1933 in Chicago) is a retired professional ten-pin bowler, inventor, author, ambassador, and a founding member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). Known as "PBA's Original Showman", Salvino has won 17 PBA Tour titles –- among them the 1962 PBA National Championship where he defeated fellow bowling legend Don Carter in the finals. He also won two PBA Senior Tour titles, including the 1984 Senior National Championship. The right-handed bowler was among the eight original inductees to the PBA Hall of Fame in 1975, and is also a member of the USBC Hall of Fame (inducted 1979), the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame (inducted 1985), the Illinois Sports Hall of Fame, and the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame.

Carmen Salvino was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 23, 1933 and lived on the city's west side until the age of 5. In order to make a better living during the Great Depression, Salvino's father moved the entire family to Florida where he worked as a vegetable farmer in a job created by President Roosevelt’s New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) program. During his childhood years, Salvino learned his strong work ethic from helping his father manually plow vegetable fields for long, strenuous work days. Despite the hard work, his family was still very poor. For an entire year, he had no shoes, and for two straight years he owned only one pair of overalls.

After living in Florida for 5 years, the family moved back to Chicago's west side and the young Salvino found work shining shoes on Madison St. In 1945, at the age of 11, Salvino was introduced to bowling when he was walking down a street in his west-side neighborhood and noticed a bowling pin laying on the ground outside the Amalgamated Center located at 333 S. Ashland. The building was home to Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America labor union and it housed a private 6-lane bowling alley reserved for workers in the garment industry. Peaking his interest, Salvino walked inside the building and talked to a man who oversaw the bowling lanes. In a stroke of luck, he offered the young Salvino a job making three dollars a night as a pin-boy. He then began to practice. The first ball Salvino ever threw was a strike, and it was there, at the Amalgamated Center, that a legend was born.

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