[Tom Ryan]

I’m not sure where she lives, Al, but I am hoping Larry will enlighten me. One address I found for her is in Metropolis, IL. They have periodic Superman celebrations there (http://www.supermancelebration.net) since “Metropolis” was the name of the fictitious city in the TV show.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), my Superman cape is long gone. If I do eventually speak with Noel Neill over the phone, I believe that will be a “new personal record” for the oldest person I have spoken to over the phone, breaking the record set when I spoke with my 90 year old uncle a few months before he died a few years ago. The oldest person I have spoken to in person is one of my high school math teachers, whom we invited to a joint high school reunion in 2010. She was 95 at the time and proud of it (!)… and still alive as far as I know. The oldest person I have corresponded with by e-mail is the legendary local sportswriter, Furman Bisher, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 93. I corresponded with him several times over the years, starting in 1983. He may have been the greatest sportswriter of all time, definitely in the top five. Al has had some kind words for my writing at times but Furman was in another league, as he was a great, great writer (and highly decorated) whose columns I had read since the 1950s and marveled at his writing ability. I felt honored to have finally met him and spoken with him briefly at a Georgia Tech sports lunch gathering in 2010. A year or two ago I asked him if it bothered him that he was not in the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame (he has been nominated but not elected) and he told me that he didn’t know that there was a Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. 🙂 Bill Clark knew him as Furman wrote an article about Bill several years ago. I will be calling Bill in a few weeks but I assume that news of Furman’s passing has reached Columbia.

[Tom Ryan]

I watched the Boyer stone lift video and, yes, that was not a legal hip lift, but the hip lifts that Al mentioned were supposed to have been performed under IAWA rules. Yes, Eric, many records would fall if these guys trained to break IAWA records, but a hip lift is a tendon and ligament lift, not a muscle lift. Of course with many professional strongmen competing, it is logical to think that some of them will also be “off the charts” in terms of tendon and ligament strength.

Speaking of “super men”, I have recently been in contact with the biographer (and friend) of Noel Neill, as I had been thinking about her recently. The name won’t mean anything to most of you since she was before your time, but she played Lois Lane in the Superman serials in the late 1940s and replaced Phyllis Coates in the Superman TV show that was on during the 1950s when Ms. Coates decided not to return after the first season. I was a big fan of that show and even had a Superman cape when I was about 10 years old. I never mastered flying, however. 🙂

Noel is ranked #101 on the official list of the world’s oldest living actors and actresses, as she is 91. She had hip surgery in 2010 after she tripped in her living room. There is an article on the Internet in which her biographer stated that he was not sure she would survive the surgery because of her advanced age and it was stated that she was in considerable pain.

He told me that she is recovered and is doing fine, and at the age of 91 is not unhappy. She does walk with a cane, however, and does so gingerly. I am going to write to her (I assume that she doesn’t use e-mail) and will ask Larry which of the two addresses I found for her I should use. I also found a phone number, which may be out of date and calling would be intrusive, anyway. I am going to refer to some specific Superman episodes, so I will see how good her memory is. 🙂 Maybe I will get lucky and she will invite me to call her.

Noel was a model before her Superman days and her World War II pinup was supposedly second only to Betty Grable’s pinup. Here is how she looked in her Superman days, with George Reeves doing more or less a one-arm Zercher with her. Hey, imagine what Superman could have hip lifted. Boggles the mind. LOL

[Tom Ryan]

[b]Quote from casinonman on February 29, 2012, 19:24[/b]
I liked this one also, I know for myself I could never impose a no swearing rule I would never be in the gym then as I would have to kick myself out 🙂

Jesse

Actually, Jesse, I recall one occasion when Bill couldn’t comply with the rule, either. It was on one of the Record Day events, when Bill competed despite having an infected finger. The nail had turned black and I think a small part of the finger had also turned black (don’t recall for sure). Some of you know that Bill will do all kinds of finger and hand deadlifts on such days. Well, he did one such lift and then started yelling and cussing up a storm when his finger started killing him. I thought about jokingly pointing to his “no profanity” sign but thought better of it because I figured that he probably wouldn’t be amused. 🙂

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

[b]Quote from JWCIII on February 14, 2012, 09:01[/b]
I will say this: When I was a kid, my granddad did “lever” exercises with broom sticks and other things like that. He exercised all the time and if he were raking leaves he would take the rake by the end and lever it up in front and the in back, then maybe move it in a circle. So, when I was a teen and started lifting I did the same thing and every once in awhile I throw these into my grip training.

I think levering is a great way, and underutilized way, to work the grip and forearms. However, I think the weaver stick lift is….well….kind of a stupid lift for the purposes of keeping records. You just don’t have much of a way to differentiate between lifts and consistency in how the lifts are done.

Thom,

Words can not express my true feelings about you trashing my best lift … and one of the very few lifts that I could still do in my 50s and 60s! LOL

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

I have been trying to find the article that Terry Todd wrote, in which he explained how Grimek performed the lift, which certainly did not conform to USAWA rules and may have even violated some IAWA rules for the lift. I don’t know which issue the article was in, however, and I am not even certain what magazine it was in, so it has been like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Consequently, I gave up and sent Joe Roark a message. He replied and informed me that he is on vacation and won’t be back to his files until Sunday or Monday.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

I did see Wilbur Miller lift when he was a young man, as he competed in the 1964 Olympic Tryouts, finishing 5th in the heavyweight class. Wilbur wasn’t really an Olympic lifter but he did compete in many Olympic lifting competitions. He was good at the quick lifts and made the 3rd highest snatch (308) at those Tryouts, trailing only Schemansky and Gubner and doing more than better known and much heavier lifters Sid Henry and Lee Phillips were able to lift, in addition to Tommy Suggs and future stars Gary Deal and Joe Dube.

The one thing about Miller that stands out in my mind is his tremendous hand strength. He did his deadlifts with an overhand grip, as I recall, and was the national record holder when he made 715 in 1964, at a time when powerlifting was just getting started in this country. That was extremely impressive for his era since he usually weighed only about 245. In fact, he appeared on the cover of Lifting News performing a heavy deadlift with an overhand grip and I believe that photo may be the one that I cut and pasted below.

I look forward to reading about what he was able to do a few days ago at the age of 79, but I am probably not going to be very surprised. 🙂

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

[b]Quote from joegarcia on January 29, 2012, 21:14[/b]
Actually, at home I almost always workout in socks. Just a habit that start some time ago.

Joe,

You have a rough idea of the condition that my feet are in. I’m surprised that your feet aren’t also falling apart! Not at any point in my life could I imagine myself working out without shoes. Ouch!

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

I’m still not believing that photo. If the weight is 153 lbs. and the bar weighs 44 or 45, then those large plates average slightly under 14 lbs. each. Not if they are made out of iron!

Of course there are some plates that don’t weigh very much that are used in women’s and junior competitions, but if a woman called for the equivalent in kilos of 153 pounds (69.55 kilos), the loaders almost certainly wouldn’t put four plates of that size on each end of the bar!

This photo looks like something that might be used in an advertisement. Maybe a caption like “Believe it or not, weight training can turn your grandmother into an elderly Wonder Woman. 🙂

I would guess that woman must be at least 75. Can a woman that age deadlift 153 or more? Sure, it has been done. Almost 40 years ago there was a woman whose name may have been Helen Zinsmeister. She was 76, I think, and gained a measure of fame by deadlifting 180 or so. I’m sure I have a photo of her, but I can’t find it.

She appeared on one of the leading talk shows of that time and deadlifted 135. The host struggled to lift it and I am not sure he got it off the floor. I think she figured he was probably messing with her, so she said “That’s only 135 pounds”.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Congraulations, Thom. Very nice honor.

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

I don’t recall any photos being taken at that meet. Taking photos inside a prison might not have been allowed anyway.

What would also be fun to see would be a video clip of Ed doing one of his unsupported leg presses — in his 80s. I’ve seen him do that and I’m sure that Joe has also.

Speaking of Zercher lifts, I don’t believe this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hTQniUN3AE
Aluminum plates?

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Excellent lift, Steve.

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

As Joe said, Frenchie may still be “inside”. As you know, the Zercher Meet that year was held at the prison in Moberly, MO. The lifters who could go home when the competition ended were me, Steve Schmidt, Ed Zercher I and Ed Zercher II, and Al Springs. (Bill Clark weighed in but did not compete.) The other competitors were already “home”.

So the reason you don’t see Frenchie’s name in subsequent Zercher meets is that the only way he could compete would be if the meet came to him, and that didn’t happen after 1987.

Yes, that 1987 contest was quite a meet. Sid Littleton was a rather quiet guy who let his lifting do his talking and he was an outstanding lifter. Pound for pound, he and Steve were just about evenly matched.

Frenchie was a pulling machine! It was quite a sight to see him do a straddle lift. There were 16 lifts contested that year so pacing oneself was imperative. If Frenchie had participated in a record day and had performed only a straddle lift (or a hack lift), I think he could have made a really huge lift. Frenchie was a bit brash, unlike Littleton, but he was certainly strong!

I have wondered about him over the years and I just did some further checking. On 8/25/04, Stanley L. Frenchie was charged with violating the conditions of his supervised release by committing a burglary at an apartment complex in St. Charles, MO, for which he was sentenced to serve 22 months.

Where is he now? Good question. I think he may be living in a house in St. Louis, but he is not the owner of the house. Al, I think you and Thom should find him and interview him for a story, which I’m sure would make interesting reading. 🙂

That Zercher Meet was somewhat of a misadventure for me. I was a faculty member at the Univ. of Iowa at the time and I drove down from Iowa City. I was scheduled to give a seminar talk on the day that I was to depart. Some graduate students would not have been able to attend at the scheduled time, however, so I agreed to give my talk later in the day.

That turned out to be an unwise decision because I then had to scurry to get to Moberly in time to get at least a fair amount of sleep. To say that it was not exactly a balmy day would be to put it mildly as the temperature was zero as I was driving through Missouri, and ice was forming on my windshield inside the car! My car was practically the only one on the road … except for the state trooper who informed me that I was going 69 in a 55 zone and proceeded to write me a speeding ticket! I had never gotten a speeding ticket before (unlike Bill Clark who was collecting them from various states during that era :-)) and I informed him that he was ruining my perfect record. Not surprisingly, he disagreed with my assessment of the situation. 🙂

Writing a speeding ticket on a night like that with the roads practically deserted might have motivated me to coin the now-famous expression “C’mon man”. 🙂

Of course I probably wouldn’t have been driving that fast if I hadn’t moved my seminar talk to later in the day. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

So at that point in time, a story of my meet participation might have had a title like “The Life and Times and Travails of Tom Ryan on His Way to Prison”. Something like that. 🙂

It was still cold as the devil the next morning when Bill and I arrived at the prison simultaneously. I had not met him previously, although I had seen him a year earlier when I competed in the National Masters in Olympic lifting, and he immediately said something like “What is a southern guy doing in this part of the country?”, alluding to the temperature difference when we had just gotten out of our cars.

The meet spectators were several inmates and it seemed like all of them were smoking. At times it was hard to see clearly across the room because of the smoke.

I had not practiced virtually any of the lifts before, so I really didn’t know what to expect. Of course I had done clean and jerks for years but by then I was over the hill as an Olympic lifter. So Steve beat me by 5 pounds, as I believe we had the two highest C&Js.

As was the case at every contest I entered in which the harness lift was contested, the side rails were way too short for my height, so it was quite a sight to see some inmates scurrying around trying to find blocks of wood to jack up the side rails.

The hand-and-thigh lift, which was always just about my worst lift because of my long arms, was the last lift that was contested. Being totally unfamiliar with the lift and not being sure if my grip would hold out, I used a standard deadlift grip, which resulted in me tearing my biceps tendon in my left arm, which had the underhand grip. That was on my first attempt. Bill gave me the lift because he said the weight was up.

So I “left prison” that day knowing that I had just had a unique experience … and I hoped that my arm would heal quickly.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

I can certainly relate to your comment on the Jefferson lift, ET. Some of us have a hard time with that lift. The first time I did one in competition was at one of the Zercher meets, in either 1987 or 1988. Me and the bar would turn a lot when I did the lift, prompting Bill Clark to say I was doing “an airplane propeller lift”. 🙂 I believe I did 400, which I guess was a fair poundage under the circumstances, but certainly I could have done a lot more if I could have pulled the bar straight up.

[Tom Ryan]

[b]Quote from dinoman on January 5, 2012, 11:00[/b]
haha I KNEW THAT – I was just “testing” you!

I assume you mean the “Part 2” thing. Buck “O’Neil” also?

[Tom Ryan]

[b]Quote from dinoman on January 4, 2012, 10:28[/b]
Joe, Welcome to the club – you’ve just been “Ryanized”. LOL

I made the spelling correction in the story. That is the beauty of website stories – corrections can be made at any time with just a “click”. I do think it is very important that the facts be accurate in stories, because you never know who might reference this material in the future. There is lots of misinformation on the internet and I don’t want to be part of that. I DO appreciate anyone who notices mistakes and points them out to me (thanks again Tom!). Al

“Ryanized”. Right, Al. LOL Well, I have to Ryanize you again, Joe, as in Part 2 you referred to Buck O’Neil but you had his last name misspelled as “O’Neal”. (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_O%27Neil). As the latter states, he was the oldest person to ever have a plate appearance in a professional baseball game, which occurred when Buck was 94. Then he died a few months later. As you said, Joe, he and Bill were friends up until Buck’s death and I know that Bill had a high regard for him.

Regarding Homer Brannum, please note, Joe and Al, that “Brannon” is also in Part 2.

[Author]

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