Conversations Over Coffee

 In the summer of 1972, I had been out of the Navy for about a year and had just completed my first year of college at Grossmont Community College in El Cajon. I had been training with the guys at the San Diego Weightlifting Club which occupied space in Balboa Park’s Federal Building which primarily functioned as a large indoor badminton facility...we had a small room in the north end of the building. 

Ralph Gardner was one of the local AAU officials who oversaw the olympic lifting and powerlifting competitions in the AAU’s Pacific Southwest region. My training partner at the time was olympic lifter Don Walker who had been the teenage national champion at 148 that year or maybe the year before. In those days, many lifters got their start in the olympic lifts, and also competed in powerlifting, or the “odd lifts,” as they were sometimes called. 

So, one day I get a call from Ralph, and he asked me if I would be able to help out at the powerlifting event that was to be held in conjunction with the California Police Olympics, in San Diego, and of course I said, “Yes.”

The competition was held at Leo Stern’s Gym in East San Diego, not far from my apartment. Leo Stern was a big name in San Diego, and even nationally as he had been the guy who coached Bill Pearl in his early bodybuilding career. Stern’s gym was on the second floor of a building that housed a laundry, just off University Avenue, and I rode my bike over there early that morning to help with the platform and warm up area setups. When the police officers started arriving, I was assigned to assist at the weigh-ins.

Now I was 22 years-old at the time and did not have much experience dealing with the police. My recollection of the police in my hometown, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was that they tended to be a humorless bunch, surly and unfriendly, and us kids tried to avoid them at all costs; so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

During the weigh in, my job was to record the names and body weight of each lifter on the scorekeeper's sheet, in the weight class they were competing in. It was all open division back then...no stratification for age groupings, and there were no female competitors (that was to be the way it was...until 1980 when Danni Hartmann became the first woman to lift in these games). 

My initial perception was that this was a fun group who were well acquainted with each other, and there was a lot of catching up and “ball busting” going on while they waited their turn on the scale. Former World Champion Larry Kidney, who was working for Pomona PD at the time, was waiting in line and I asked him if he was lifting in the newly minted 242 lbs. class. That got the guys going and Larry, who was going as a heavyweight, was quite a bit bigger than 242. He got some razzing in response to my question.

Once the lifting got started, I was spotting and loading and was really impressed with the quality. I specifically remember a 181 lbs. lifter from San Jose PD, Reno DeCaro, squatting 560 or 580 while wearing a pair of swim trunks...just checked the California Police Athletic Federation archives, and he totaled 1490 lbs. that day. He was competing against Greg Fried who did a 1325 total. Greg went on to become chief of police in Carlsbad and was still competing in the Police Olympics when I did my first police meet in 1980. Larry did a 1750 total, and he was destined to add about 500 pounds to that when he won his world championship gold medal...I’m thinking that may have been in 1983. 

After the lifting concluded, and before the awards were passed out, several of the lifters came by to thank all of us who helped out at the meet, and I got to talking to a couple guys from LAPD and LASO who were suggesting I look into law enforcement as a career. I had never remotely saw myself working as a cop prior to that conversation, but here I was, hanging with out with cops and chatting up our shared interest in weight training.

During the next three years I had a couple of other interactions with the police. One occurred at night when I was running across a shopping center parking lot trying to catch the bus I needed to make it to San Diego State University. It was a routine pedestrian check which was probably initiated when they saw this young guy sprinting across a parking lot while carrying a backpack. Once the officers checked me out, they apologized for causing me to miss my bus, loaded me into the back of the patrol car, and delivered me to the social science building on the SDSU campus. That raised some passersby eyebrows when they let me out of the car. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I would have expected that in Milwaukee.

During the next couple of years, I lifted in a meet at the LAPD Academy, and I began thinking seriously about joining up. That finally happened in 1979 when I got hired by the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, where I worked, and lifted, for the next 24 years. I’m still involved in law enforcement, working for the FBI as an intelligence analyst out of the Los Angeles Division...a career that now totals 44 years, and the seeds were planted in that 1972 California Police Olympics. 

I’ve added the link to those 1972 results below. Powerlifting was still a pretty new sport in 1972 as evidenced by the fact that the results were titled “Weightlifting.” Sometimes I like to go to those archives and read through the results. I recall the friends I made; the great lifts I witnessed; and the joy I experienced sharing my passion with some of the finest lifters and public safety professionals in the country. 

https://cpaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/1972-CPO.pdf

 I met Mike McDonald in 1968 when we were both in the Navy. I was assigned to the USS Paul Revere, homeported in San Diego, and he was a Hospital Corpsman at the Balboa Naval Hospital. At the time, we were both members of the "7 Seas Gym," which was owned by Gene Dickerson, a former Mr. California. The gym was located in a corner of the 7 Seas Locker Club, one of many locker clubs in San Diego. They came to exist because at the time sailors could not keep civilian clothes aboard ship. Most operated soda fountains and sold military uniforms and clothing. It was a real racket. Your locker rent was $10 per month, and we paid Gene an additional $7 to use his gym. With powerlifting being a relatively new sport, I was primarily an Olympic lifter at the time. Many of the Navy gyms on base didn't even have squat racks or benches, just some old, bent olympic bars and a scattering of rusty plates, so the 7 Seas Gym was kind of a Mecca for sailors who were serious about their lifting.

So one night I'm in the gym doing my overhead routine and in comes Mike. He introduces himself, and during the course of getting acquainted, he was from Minnesota and I'm from Wisconsin, he mentions he was a big fan of Mel Hennessy, one of the early bench pressers of that era. Mike asked if I was going to be around, because he was planning to go heavy in the bench, and asked if I could lift off and spot for him.

Of course I obliged and watched him warm up with 135, then 225. When he loaded up 315 I became a little concerned because he did not look like he could do that much. He proceeded to bench that weight like it was a broom stick for several repetitions. He worked up to a single with 405, which was also handled quite easily, and then finished off with some military presses with me. We became friends.

In December 1968 we, and several other lifters from 7 Seas, entered a powerlifting meet at San Diego State University. It was my first sanctioned competition and I believe it was the same for Mike. Back in those days you gave your openers to the weigh in official, and the bench press was the first lift contested, followed by the squat and deadlift. I still recall the official asking Mike for his opening bench, and Mike said 410 lbs.

So the guy shakes his head and said, "No, I need your opening bench, and Mike repeated, "410." There was an exchange of glances between the weigh in guy and some of the others who were in the weigh in area, along with obvious skepticism (back then everyone just lined up and weighed in...there was nothing private about your weight or your openers). I believe Tom Overholtzer, a national champion may have been present, along with Bob Zuver, who had recently been the subject of an article in one of Joe Weider's magazines had his Zuver's Gym team competing.

Anyway, the meet gets started and the weight is progressing upward as it did back then before the rounds system came into being, and the top guys, many of them heavyweights, came in when the weight passed 350 lbs. I recall one of the giants from our gym or maybe Zuver's opening with something like 390, then it was Mike's turn. He pressed 410 like it was nothing and went on to do 430, and he was on the map. All the top guys were coming around congratulating him, and he was beaming...totally self-conscious about all of the attention.

We saw each other for the last time in January 1969 when he was helping out as a loader at an Olympic meet I did in January 1969. I got my PR military press at that meet with 215 in the 165 lbs class. Later that month my ship pulled out for the Western Pacific, i.e., Vietnam, and I understand Mike ended up over there too.

We never saw each other again, but I sure read a lot about him. He was featured in Terry Todd's "Inside Powerlifting," a book about powerlifting and top lifters such as Larry Pacifico, Eddie Pengelly, and Jan Todd. Over the years Mike went on to establish world records in the bench for the 181, 525; 198, 570; 220, 596; and 242 (actual body weight of 230), 635.

Sadly, Mike passed away in 2018 at age 69. In the accompanying photo, he is shown with a cambered olympic bar...one of his inventions.

 If one were to do internet searches on the subject of powerlifting history, he or she would find dozens of entries. In this blog post, I’d like to share some recollections of what we experienced in the local meets in Southern California, circa 1972 through 1974. To begin, I’d like to go into support gear. In 1972, there were no rules...a lifter could pretty much wear whatever they wanted when they took it to the platform.

In San Diego, our local lifters found a sail maker who sewed shorts made of sail canvas. The first time I saw these was when Hilbert Murrillo, a lifter who owned a Chevron Station at 70th Street and El Cajon Boulevard, appeared in a meet wearing them. They were tight fitting and laced up in the front with a thick cord, much like a shoelace. In addition, Hilbert had a form fitted, leather torso wrap that covered from his waist line to about mid rib cage. Add yards of 4 inch Ace Bandage wraps, and he was ready to go. Hilbert was a very good lifter...I don’t recall his numbers, but I do

recall he was the top 148 pounder in San Diego.

For me, a married college student supported by just the GI Bill, and a monthly check from the Naval Reserve, I couldn’t afford the sail pants, but I did have some cut off, tight fitting Levis with about six inches of Velcro stitched into the waist and extending up to the rib cage, that I could pull tight. Add in the Ace Bandages and a belt, along with some dumb lookimg boots with built up heels, and I was ready to go.

So, powerlifting was well and good with all of us and the various home made support gear we used to add pounds onto our totals...but it was about to change. San Diego competed against some of the clubs and gyms from the Los Angeles area from time to time, and we even had some lifters from Northern California come down on occasion. But there were some serious rules changes about to come our way.

It happened at a local meet around 1973 when Hall of Fame referee Bud Mucci brought his Olympic Health Club lifters to town for one of our meets. They were a very good team and boasted several national level competitors to include Chuck Boornazian, Jim Vetrovec, and others. Unbeknownst to any of us in San Diego, the AAU had met and declared war on support gear. The sail pants, knee wraps, my jazzed up Levis, and all of the other tricks of the day were now illegal. Bud, being in the know and involved in AAU politics knew about the changes, and as the head judge, he about went ballistic when the lifters started taking to the platform.

As I was one of the first geared up lifters to appear on the platform, Bud called a halt to the proceedings as I was about to take the weight out of the racks to squat. He was like, “What the hell are you trying to pull here; What the hell is this?” referring to the blue Levi pants legs that extended below my singlet.

Gesturing to the warm up area, I told him “Everyone is wearing some type of support gear, so why are you picking on me?”

So Bud is now in the meet director’s face, threatening to pull the sanction when Bob Packer intervened. They conferred briefly, and Bud agreed that for this meet, he would ignore the new rules, but he would not allow anyone so attired to lift for records.

As I was the one who seemingly started the controversy, I felt that Bud was picking on me when he and the other judges red lighted my first two squats. After my third attempt passed 2-1, with Bud still throwing a red light, he made the comment, “Your technique is horrible...someone needs to teach you how to squat.” From that point on, and for about the next nine years or so, I always dreaded lifting in front of Bud Mucci, thinking he had it in for me.

Bud and I eventually became friends through the Police Olympics competitions. He was refereeing one of the old Venice Beach USPF meets in 1983, when a bunch of street gang members were disrupting the rules briefing with loud music, prompting the meet director to throttle one of them and tossing his portable stereo out of the weight pen. The gang members left, vowing to come back to shoot up the place. My car was parked nearby, and Bud asked me if I had a gun with me. I did, and retrieved it, and spent the rest of the meet looking over my shoulder...kind of a distraction as I was poised to score my first 1st Class total which would qualify me for the California Senior State Championships (Bill Hartmann and Tom Eldridge hosted that meet at  Hacienda Heights High School in 1983, and I got 3rd place).

The meet went off without a hitch, and a couple of the gang members did come back and were shaken down by the LAPD guys who were on the Venice Beach patrol that day. They ended up being handcuffed and carted off...for what, I don’t know.

Now getting back to the support gear issue, I never wore any of those sail pants, but I’m told the multi-ply gear they sell now had nothing on those. The AAU eventually relaxed the strict rules on knee wraps, and powerlifting proceeded along until the Super Suits came out in the late 1970s.