Juozas Žukas

Jonas Juozas Žukas (October 29, 1915 in Chicago, Illinois - July 7, 1981) was a Lithuanian basketball and tennis player.

Biography

Žukas lived in northern Chicago, near Ogden Park, and was known as Joseph "Joe" Zukas. His first visit to Lithuania was in 1930, where he worked as a sports instructor in the physical culture department in Kaunas. He would later be part of a delegation of Lithuanian American athletes from Chicago that went to the 1935 World Lithuanian Congress in Kaunas, and stayed there teaching tennis and being a part of the national basketball team. He played basketball for CJSO Kaunas.

In 1939, he returned to the United States, and lived in Tucson, Arizona, where he died on July 7, 1981.

He won a gold medal with the Lithuania men's national basketball team during the EuroBasket 1937 in Riga, Latvia.

State awards Knight's Cross of the Order of Vytautas the Great (1937)