He had four brothers, Phillip, Vivian, Kelvin and Dilwyn, and three sisters, Marilyn, Susan and Shereen. The Owens family hailed from Llanidloes but moved south, settling in the village of Penwaunfawr, on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil. His paternal grandmother worked in the local mines while his grandfather Will worked in an ironworks and was an amateur boxer. His mother was born in Merthyr Tydfil, although her family hailed from Lydney in Gloucestershire, where her father had worked as a farmer. His mother's side of the family were of Irish ancestry. Both sets of Owen's ancestors had moved to the South Wales Valleys in search of work with increased steel, iron and coal production attracting workers from all over Britain. Owen's parents settled in a rented council house in Heol Bryn Selu on Gellideg housing estate in Merthyr. In his 2006 biography of Owen, Rick Broadbent described an adolescent Owen as "a sensitive, quiet soul, he was deeply in tune with the moods and needs of those close to him." Owen attended the local school, Gellideg Juniors. A mild-mannered child, he was described by his teachers as a "quiet, hardworking, and very good-natured and well-behaved pupil". By the age of seven, he was doing the family's weekly shop and his father later recalled that, when the family was infected by a flu virus, Owen "fed us soup and made sure we all had our medicine. He looked after us." Owen's father worked as a miner for 13 years but eventually secured a job as a moulder at a boot-making factory owned by Dunlop. His wife had suffered complications during the birth of the couple's seventh child and her health deteriorated so much that she was hospitalised for an extended period. Owen's father nearly placed his children into care to continue working but reversed his decision after receiving assurances that he would not lose his job. Amateur career Owen began to box at the age of eight, idolising fellow Merthyr-born boxer Jimmy Wilde. Along with his siblings Vivian and Kelvin, in the spring of 1962, he joined the Merthyr Amateur Boxing Club housed in a small hut on nearby Plymouth Street. Broadbent describes how, by age ten, Owen developed "some rudimentary ring craft and already had the boundless energy that would be his signature... His punches were light but his effort huge." Owen and the other members of his club travelled