In the spring of 1980, long before he was the ‘Baddest Man on the Planet,’ 13-year-old Mike Tyson was the shy, respectful houseguest of Camille Ewald and her longtime partner, legendary boxing trainer Cus D’Amato.
Tyson must have been an anomaly as an African-American adolescent, recently released from reform school and living in the mostly white Hudson Valley town, where he was legally adopted by D’Amato. But inside the aging Victorian home on Thorpe Road, Tyson was just one of several aspiring boxers boarding with the septuagenarian couple.
Like the others, ranging in age from 9 to 15, he followed D’Amato’s instructions in the ring, Ewald’s strict edicts in the home, and spent the rest of his time cracking jokes and playing dollar-bill poker.
‘So they were truly family and I just remember they would clean the kitchen after dinner and they had their jobs to do in the house and there was never a question about it,’ award-winning photographer and filmmaker Lori Grinker told DailyMail.com. ‘They laughed a lot and I didn’t find him competitive with them.’
If this image of Tyson conflicts with his public persona — often violent, combustible, bombastic, and disrespectful — it’s because Grinker knows a different side of ‘Iron Mike.’
She was just a college student on a class assignment for the Parson School of Design when she first encountered Tyson in Catskill 42 years ago, but Grinker would spend the next decade as his primary photographer, capturing some of the most candid shots of his celebrated career. Those early days proved to be pivotal, not only for Tyson, who would go on to become the youngest heavyweight champion in history, but for Grinker, whose decorated career began with her access to the fledgling pugilist.
Now Grinker is offering a rare glimpse into Tyson’s formative years with her new photo book, ‘Mike Tyson,’ which chronicles his life from the Catskills through his devastating 1990 defeat to James ‘Buster’ Douglas in Tokyo.
‘I think the innocence comes through, the sweetness, the humor,’ Grinker said, contrasting Tyson’s teenage years to his 20s and 30s. ‘And then you see him with the model, Beverly Johnson, and suddenly all these celebrities are coming into it, and you could just see how that might start to affect things.’
‘There were a lot of visuals with the girl because she had a pet rat and she was a Mormon and the little boy lived in a trailer and so it was interesting,’ said Grinker, who succeeded in publishing a photo piece on Hamm.