One day in February 1980, an elderly gentleman living in Southern California received a letter.

Dear Mr. Sanstol:

It was with pleasure I read your name in "Nordisk Tidende."  Many years have passed, but your name is not forgotten.

I remember you from "Den Norske Kafe" in Chicago. (My parents owned this restaurant for many years.) Followed the stories in the papers since then. You traveled extensively and it was always interesting to read of your experiences. The restaurant was frequented by Norwegians in the 20s. Von Porat, Haakon Hansen are some of the names you probably recognize. Von Porat is still active but have heard nothing about Haakon Hansen.

Sending you a letter from the Norw.Am. Historical Assn. They are collecting histories of the Norw.-Am. Since you must have many clippings, and I know you wrote quite a bit, thought you might be interested in preserving these things....

I read that you visit the Seaman's Church in San Pedro. We belong to the Norwegian Church (Minnekirken). I think you had a talk there many years ago. There is only 1 Norwegian speaking church left in Chicago....

Thought you would like to have a few lines from the "Old Town." With Best wishe[s] to you and your wife from one who remembers "those days."

Hilsen
/s/ Josefa Hansen Andersen
________________________
 

At the dawn of the Twentieth Century, Moi was a small fishing town on the coast of Norway - the land of the Midnight Sun. It took demanding work to make a living there. One had to struggle and fight to exist. But the air was brisk and invigorating and one could become hardy, too.

It was in this environment that Peter Olai Sanstøl was born March 28, 1905, to Jonas and Dorthea Sandstøl, the youngest of five children and the only boy. "I was a mistake!" he often joked throughout his life. His sisters were Inga, Elise, Lotte and Emma. Pete was raised in a family and in a culture where one's family counted first, and he loved his family dearly.

Pete's "first sorrow," as he termed it in his memoirs, occurred when his sister Emma died of scarlet fever when he was ten years old.

According to a January 26, 1999, e-mail message to the site owner from Einar Sanstøl (no relation -- "This is a question we have heard hundreds of times...!" he wrote), Pete's grandparents, Jonas Pedersen (Toften) Epteland and Lotte, had purchased a farm near Moi from Einar's great-great-grandfather, Mr. Sandstøl. As was the custom until it was prohibited by law in 1920, Pete's grandparents took on the name of the farm, Sandstøl. Pete later dropped the "d' from his name for some reason. Apparently other Sandstøls later did the same, too.

Jorunn Sanstøl informed us by e-mail in April 1999 that one day Pete's grandmother Lotte died, leaving her children, including Jonas, alone with their widower father. He later married a 19-year-old woman (believed to be Berte Serene Omundsdtr) and they had a daughter named Siri. Then they moved from Helleland, Norway to Moi to purchase the Sandstøl farm in 1877. Siri became the half-sister to Jonas, Pete's father. She was Jorunn's grandmother.

Pete was somewhat a wild and reckless boy, as he had been born fearless. He seemed to have little direction in life as a youngster although he was an excellent student. His conduct in school and his grades were exemplary, except one. It is ironic, given his later passion for it, that his worst subject in school was "Norwegian Writing." Pete attended public schools in Moi where he also played about the streets. Pete's father also owned a store in Moi. Later, while Pete was still a youngster, his family moved to Stavanger, which is about ten miles from Moi.

Siri and her husband continued to live at the Sandstøl farm until 1915 when they sold it and moved to the traditional Sandstøl town of Helleland. Many Sanstøls still live there today. The Sanstøl name is not that common in Norway, says Jorunn, thus many Sanstøls/Sandstøls are often asked to this day whether they are related to "the famous boxer."

Pete attended high school for four years in Stavanger. He also skated, skied, fished, worked hard and gradually built himself into a healthy, athletic and handsome young man. As adulthood approached he knew he soon had to decide what to do with his life. He eventually could go into business with his father, who operated a small store. (Jonas later owned other properties that generated income, including a sardine factory, and became rather wealthy in time.) But that seemed too stale, too stationary -- at least at this point in his life. There was something else stirring within him. "What's the word for it?" he asked himself. "Adventure! Yes, that's it!" He had the spirit of adventure within him struggling to break free. He wanted to see other parts of the world with Norway first, then Scandinavia. Definitely Europe. Perhaps even America! He wanted to visit all these places. What did they look like? A photograph or a movie never did a locale justice. You had to be there to actually plant your feet firmly on the ground to witness and fully savor the beauty, excitement and enjoyment -- even the ugliness -- of a particular spot. He had seen how it was all too easy to finish school, get a local job, marry, have children, and before you knew it life was essentially over and you were still in the same place you started. That satisfied many but it would not satisfy him, not now anyway. He was too ambitious, inquisitive, restless. He needed to satisfy that desire for adventure blossoming within him before he would be ready to live the "simple, quiet life."

But what could he do? What skills or knowledge did he possess that could sustain him during those dreamt-of journeys?  He took up writing, painting and the violin. He learned Swedish and Danish. Nothing seemed to gel. "I tried my hands at many things," he wrote years later, "but did not seem to be able to ‘click.' I had, however, always been interested in sports and in 1920 started as an amateur boxer." So, at 15 years of age, Pete took up the sport of boxing.

The boxing bug first bit Pete when he was living in Stavanger, according to a September 1929 issue of the Norwegian publication Oslo Illustrerte. Being the new kid in town, as well as having a dialect different from others, Pete felt out-of-place. He was deemed too small for virtually all sports. Furthermore, coddled by his mother and older sisters as the only boy, Pete was a "sissy" -- he later admitted. During these early days in Stavanger Pete's family had little money, so his mother had to sew rather poor-looking underwear and shirts for him. He was frequently bullied and beaten by his bigger peers. He wrote later that he often went to sleep crying. Then, in his quest for answers and meaning to his life, Pete diverted his attention away from his studies of Hans Nilsen Hauge (a famous religious leader in Norway, who was imprisoned and suffered much, and eventually became a cult-hero), to boxing. Boxing was not that popular a sport in Norway. But in boxing Pete found that he was not "too small" - because boxing classifies participants by weight, not size. "I felt that now I had found something that chased the injustice away, because I had always felt it unfair not given the chance to participate [in other sports] because of my size," he wrote. He found boxing to be an honorable and manly sport, exhilirating fun, new and wonderful. "I had started a new chapter in my life, but at the time I did not know it. I was only glad I now had many new friends that I could knock on a little and receive a beating in return, box with, win or lose. We were friends afterward no matter how it went.... I felt a sort of song inside me when the blows landed where they were supposed to, and I was cheering inside when I managed a successful trick, and there was a symphony inside me when a fight was superb and successful."

Oslo Illustrerte also informs us that Pete's first pair of boxing gloves were home-made. Pete placed his fists one at a time on a piece of cloth or canvas and folded over the material to draw outlines. He then realized he needed padding. He couldn't go to his father and tell him all the other boys had gloves, and that was something he wanted, too. So he and a group of his friends headed down to a local pier where they set about cutting a hole in one of the pier bumpers or fenders, and began to pull out the stuffing when a guard happened upon them. They quickly gathered what they could and took off running. They made it safely to Pete's home where his friends helped him stuff the new padding into his makeshift mitts. "Just to get hold of a pair of gloves was something that gave excitement," he wrote later. "We used to go to a basement of one of my friends [to box]. I used to go there as soon as my school duties were done."

When he was 16 he moved to Oslo and was soon honing his boxing knowledge and skills in the Oslo Athletic Club. (Click here to view a photo of Pete with other members of his boxing club during this period.)

It appears that his idol, the boxer he most admired in these early days, was welterweight Ole Røisland, an amateur himself. He apparently had seen Ole in action and said that he was so outstanding that he should have become a professional, too.

At 5-feet, 3½-inches tall, Pete wasn't a big man. Therefore he fought in the lighter weight classes. The flyweight, and the next heavier bantamweight division, seemed tailor-made for him. At a 118-pound maximum limit bantams were not called that for nothing. Unlike the heavier divisions of boxers, such as heavyweights -- who would often plod away like giants, clinching and stalling until one or the other could land that decisive knock-out blow -- bantams, like the little game-cocks for which they are named, were compact, active, and generally went at each other with non-stop intensity and verve that got the crowds up on their feet mad with excitement.

Heavyweights have always received the most attention, but the 1920s and 1930s produced the lion's share of the greatest bantamweight boxers who ever lived -- particularly the class of 1920-1929. Every town and hamlet throughout the world had its own standard-bearing bantamweight. The rings were overrun with them. They were the most popular weight-division of boxers in the United States during this era. They are often referred to as the Golden Bantams from the "Golden Age" of professional bantamweight boxing that ended in 1940 when Cleveland's Georgie Pace and Brooklyn's Lou Salica held a title bout in New York. "Back in those days, there was so much action among these little guys that by themselves they kept boxing interest high throughout the country." The Ring magazine, December 1953 issue, pp. 12-13.

In the early 1970s, the long-respected boxing manager Charley Rose (1886-1974) lamented: "Things have changed in this country. The heavyweights have swallowed up the game. If you aren't a heavy, you don't belong. Some of the oldtime little guys contributed heavily to the fame and fortune of the game. Now they shoo them down to the Forum in the Garden." The Ring, March 1975, p. 72.

Pete probably realized that, even as a bantam, he lacked the so-called "power punch" that many in the ring relied upon as their most dangerous weapon - a weapon they usually deployed in the early rounds to knock out their opponents. But he must have also soon realized that he possessed other valuable boxing skills - such as aggression, amazing speed, and the uncanny ability to weave and duck to successfully out-maneuver punches. He developed his "wind," his stamina. He also discovered he had an incredible "chin" - he could recover quickly from staggering knock-out blows to the head without disturbing his equilibrium. He evolved into a full-fledged, top-quality amateur boxer with the uncommon power "to take it." And he innately had something else for which Pete was forever proud. He had "color" - the charismatic magic of giving the crowd a thrilling show and leaving them exhausted and satisfied.

In 1924 he won the Norwegian Flyweight Championship in Oslo. He then won the Norwegian Bantam Title in 1925. Later, he also won the Scandinavian Fly and Bantam Titles. (For some reason that remains unclear to us to this day, in Pete's early professional publicity photos, there would be mention that he was the Norwegian and Scandinavian Fly and Bantam Champion, but it appears these were amateur titles. Perhaps some experts on Scandinavian boxing history can shed some light on this matter.)

Pete became sufficiently developed as a boxer that in 1926 at age 21 he turned professional. Perhaps this sport could support him for awhile as he tried to satisfy that "desire for adventure." Here was his opportunity to start seeing the world. His last amateur contest was held at the O.A.K.S. in Oslo on April 11, 1926.

Pete wrote many years later that he became a professional in 1925. Maybe he forgot or maybe it was a typo, because his professional debut was against England's Bert Gallard May 2, 1926, at Oslo's Cirkus. He KO'd Gallard in the first round. Gallard was no bum. By the time he met Pete in the ring, he had had some 50 bouts to his credit.

Pete's manager at this time was fellow Norwegian Harald Undersrud of Jonassen & Undersrud. (He would later become an announcer and promoter.) Harald had seen and understood the potential the little boxer had, and it was he who encouraged Pete to turn professional, but suggested he leave Norway to take on competition in Continental Europe.

---

While still an amateur in early 1926 Pete had received an invitation to come to Berlin to start his training there. This invitation came from none other than Arthur Bulow, the manager of Max Schmeling.

Pete, too small to be an actual sparring partner with the eventual heavyweight, but being the energetic, hard-working and charming fellow that he was, nonetheless was invited to do road-work with the German. Soon Max fell under Pete's spell. They often would run together, chatting about everything and anything in fluent German, as Pete had quickly learned the language.

Meanwhile he studied Max and probably learned a thing or two from him. Max became a big brother of sorts to Pete during the time they trained, although Pete was in fact a few months older than his friend.

In 1958, Vi Menn - a Norwegian magazine, published a three-part series of articles written by Pete. In these he describes his early life and career. In the second of those articles Pete wrote at the very end:

Tore Tjersland ble fra da av min manager for den nærmeste tid. Han ordnet det slik at jeg fikk låne noen penger og kunne begynne treningen igjen. Ved hjelp av sine venner ordnet han det også slik at jeg traff Arthur Bullup [Arthur Bulow?], manager for Max Smelling. Bullup sørget for at jeg kom i samme treningsleir som den gode Max, og så begynte noen herlige dager.

On October 29, 2000, Mr. Morten Larsen translated the above as follows: Tore Tjersland was from then on my manager for the near future. He arranged it so I could borrow some money and start training again. With help from his friends he also arranged for me to meet Arthur Bullup, manager for Max Smelling. Bullup arranged for me to be in the same training camp as the good Max, and then some wonderful days started.

Schmeling had moved from Cologne to Berlin, "The Whore of Babylon," as he termed it, in the Summer of 1926. There, young and poor, he hooked up with Arthur Bulow -- who became his manager. Bulow helped finance Schmeling's training during this period. He took Schmeling out to Max Machon's training camp located on Heinz Modisch's old resort at Lanke bei Bernau, a half-hour from Berlin.

There "Machon trained three top-notch fighters," wrote Schmeling, and he was invited to join.

Our training was hard and our pleasures harmless -- maybe a stroll and then coffee in a cafe. More than that we neither had nor wanted. The days were all the same. We got up at 6:30, put on a heavy sweater over our sweatsuits and began our run through the woods surrounding Berlin, a hilly landscape of pines and lakes. Following a distance run, we did 100-meter sprints, then ran hills, and then did calisthenics; it was an early form of interval training. Our distance run soon increased from fifteen to twenty kilometers. Back at camp, a massage followed, then came breakfast. The rest of the morning was taken up by instruction, where Machon often showed us fight films of famous boxers to demonstrate the fine points. Lunch came before noon so that we could sleep two hours before training in the ring.

Max Schmeling, An Autobiography (1998 English edition), at pp. 17-20.

Almost 50 years later Pete would state to Vi Menn that they became friends. He added that Max was a wonderful human being and the greatest technical heavyweight he ever saw. Vi Menn, Nr. 39-23 (Sept. 1975) at p. 5.

In late 2001, Pete's grandson was provided the mailing address for Mr. Schmeling. He wrote to Max and asked if he could recall those days with Pete. He couldn't, as he is 96-years-old and that was 75 years ago, he replied. Click here to view that letter. (We have whited-out/erased his address and the grandson's name for privacy reasons. Also, Max wrote his reply on the reverse side of the letter to him, which has Pete's logo at the top, so there is some "bleed-thru" - you can kinda make out the other side of the letter.) The English translation is as follows:

Dear [Pete's grandson].

As you probably know, I was 96 years old in September 2001. It therefore is always enjoyable for me to hear from celebrities whom I met during my active sports career.

It is with great regret that I must inform you that I cannot remember your grandfather, Pete Sanstol. After all, in the meantime 75 years have passed since our meeting.

With best regards,
/s/ Max Schmeling

The great Max Schmeling later died at age 99 years. While in Berlin Pete had more fights. On July 5, 1926, he defeated Urban Grass by a TKO in the third round. He then beat German Flyweight Champion Harry Stein on July 13, and Alfred Michelsohn on July 19 or August 4 - depending on the source. This how Pete's first months as a professional were described:

Vår lille bokser hadde imilertid den gang – som nu – en god venn. Det var Harald Undersrud, han forstod hvad slags stoff det var i gutten og at skulde han frem på den tornefulle profesjonelle vei, måtte han bort fra sitt eget land. Turen for de to gikk først til Berlin, hvor Sanstøl bokset 3 "no decision" kamper (først mot Michelson og Urban Graf og så mot den daværende mester Harry Stein) og fikk PRESS-SEIER i alle tre. Derpå drog de til Paris hvor 8 matcher mot forskjellige boksere (deriblandt endel negre), blev avviklet, alle med gunstig resultat for Sanstøl.

Mr. Morten translates: Our little boxer had also at that time - as now - a good friend. It was Harald Undersrud, who understood what material was in the boy, and that if he was to go ahead on the thorny, professional road, he had to leave his own country. The journey for the two first went to Berlin, where Sanstøl boxed three "no decision" fights (first against Michelson and Urban Graf, and then against the then present champion Harry Stein) and got PRESS-VICTORY in all three. Thereafter they went to Paris, where 8 matches against different boxers (some negroes), was done, all with beneficial result for Sanstøl.
 

(These bouts could have been so-called "newspaper decisions." Boxing historian Luckett Davis provided us with the results of these early fights, which we have included in our record of Pete's bouts. He said he performed a search of Box-Sport, a German boxing newspaper that has been published since 1920. He also did some independent newspaper research, and consulted the 1979 edition of Pugilato.)

---

Pete then traveled to Paris where he picked up the language there, too, and a weakness for French cooking. By now he had learned to speak and read Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German and French fluently. He would learn two others.

He was now fast on his way to "seeing the world." He was living in Paris during one of its golden periods. The famous "Lost Generation" of expatriate American artists and writers, including Ernest Hemingway, was living in Paris at this time, too.

Soon he was annihilating what competition there was for him in Europe. He set his sights on America. America was the one place he had always wanted to see and experience. His mother had once visited the United States. He had never been there, but from what little he knew it seemed a country where a "person was accepted and judged by what he could do, and that was worth something." The Knockout magazine (April 1, 1933 issue).

America offered opportunity and excitement. And now that he was a professional boxer it offered something to which all athletes aspire -- a world championship. Eventually. But how could this cocky little Norwegian get there? He couldn't just hop aboard a ship and show up on the streets of New York. He needed an "in." He needed connections. He needed someone.

That's when he met Lew Burston, a well-known New York manager and authority on boxing. Burston was born in New York, circa 1896. He had been a theatrical agent before getting into boxing after World War I. He had been in Europe hunting for talent when he discovered Pete training in a Paris ring. He was impressed. Pete was a whirlwind. He was clever and intelligent. He had color. Burston introduced himself and offered to bring Pete to New York. He didn't have to ask twice.

By September 1926 Burston had taken over Pete's management. Burston bought out Pete's contract from Undersrud, agreeing to pay the former manager 27½% of Pete's earnings for the next five years. Yikes! Yet, Pete loved and held Harald in high esteem for the rest of his life. His first professional manager had been his number one fan, supporter, coach, guide and friend in these early days. On September 21, at the  suggestion of Burston and Thomas Van Dyke, Champs Elysees Theatre manager Rolf de Mare offered free use of his venue for a gala benefit arranged by Americans in Paris to raise money for the "French sinking fund." Those who offered their services free of charge included the Dolly Sisters, Josephine Baker, Harry Pilcer, Jenny Golder, June and Jack and Toto the clown, and boxer Rene DeVos, the European Middleweight Champion. (Burston would soon become DeVos's manager.)

Meanwhile, teen-aged jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt was providing the banjo accompaniment to Guerino's accordion band at a Paris dance-hall in Rue Monge. In October Panama Al Brown arrived in Paris from New York. (The Ring, August 1985 issue, p. 27.) That was when these two young boxers, Al Brown and Pete Sanstol, first met, Pete later wrote in his memoirs. They both had no idea of what lay in store for them, or their destinies as a result. And, on Halloween, the legendary Houdini died of blood poisoning from his ruptured appendix.

For some reason Pete didn't have another fight until December. Or maybe the two fights in Paris that we cannot presently document occurred during this gap. The 1935 Norwegian article we mentioned earlier reported that Pete had eight fights in Paris and Belgium; one of which was against a gentleman named Istedenfor. So far, only six bouts can be documented. On December 15 he defeated Kid Travers by a TKO in the fourth round, then five days later knocked-out Maiolino in the third. In January and February of 1927, Pete won ten-rounders over Pierre Dussol, Henri Poutrain and Marcel Sebban; and had a three-round TKO over Maurice Huguenin. Based on these fights, the French reporters started to call Pete "The Little Carpentier" after the legendary old-time French boxer Georges Carpentier, who was having his last fights at the time.  It is obvious that the reason they did was because Pete's fighting style was similar to Carpentier's -- even in these early days of Pete's professional career, although Pete did not yet possess a superb knockout punch, or so it seems. According to those who saw Carpentier in action -- or actually fought the man -- he was described as:

fast, he could punch with both hands, he was a knockout puncher, had a terrific left hook. He had good footwork, he had speed, and he knew every angle of the ring. He knew how to feint, he knew how to duck punches, he knew how to block them, he knew how to use good footwork.

Tommy Loughran, quoted in Peter Heller's book In This Corner...! (1973), p. 121.

Carpentier, "The Orchid Man," had 106 total fights -- scoring 51 KOs -- and fought in every division from flyweight to heavyweight! (The Ring, March 1982, p. 19.) When Max Schmeling's father took him to see a Carpentier fight film as a young boy, Max decided then and there to become a boxer himself. Pete informed Vi Menn in 1975 that he had in fact met Carpentier himself, probably after the Frenchman had returned from fighting in the Pacific Northwest of America in early 1927:

Jeg bokset et års tid Tyskland og vant de fleste av mine kamper. Så ble jeg flyttet over til Paris, hvor jeg møtte George Carpentier – en annen venn for livet. Jeg forsatte å vinne mine kamper, og så bar det til London og Edinburgh. [On October 5, 1999, Mr. Medhaug translated this for us as follows, "I boxed for a year or so in Germany and won most (?) of my bouts. I was then transferred to Paris, where I met George Carpentier - another lifetime friend. I continued to win my fights, and was then off to London and Edinburgh."]

Autographed Photo of Pete in a Parisian Photography Studio - 1926 (It reads: "With best regards Pete Sanstol New York City Sept. 9-1927") ________

From his ring earnings Pete bought a small interest in his father's sardine factory.

In January 1927 Lew Burston received an urgent telegram from Undersrud, "LARSEN SICK SEND SANSTOEL AT ONCE TO BOX ANDREN ... SAVE SITUATION"  It is unknown whether Pete did in fact fight Andren.

Pete did return home to Norway to bid farewell to his family, probably after his trip to England and Scotland. He then collected what little belongings he had and set off for America. He was a week at sea and anxious to see the Statue of Liberty and to plant his feet on American soil. Then he saw it silhouetted against the Manhattan skyline. He was there! Pete had learned some English and is reported to have exclaimed as he disembarked, "America, I love you!" (The Knockout magazine.)

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