Hey guys I found this posted on the internet, anyone know some of these guys??
As a teemager going to AAU sponsored events, the first at the old now defunct San Jose Civic Arts Center around 1963 I was utterly shocked to see Bill Stathes, a Mr America runner up and damned good Olympic lifter come on stage for lifts with a cloud of freshly exhaled cigarette smoke enveloping him. Stathes owned notoriety then for having been stabbed in the back several times by a perp, his back so thick the knife did little good. Smoking was pretty common at events in those days, in part no doubt due to the commercials featuring the Marborol Man as icon of masculinity - that he died of emphasema was not well known!
Drinking? Hell it was real common. One of the Bay Area's best powerlifters, Johnny Yamamoto died due to a head on collision on the Mountain View- Alviso Road in the late 60s, drunk at the wheel, taking his life and those of several others in his car. I also remember taking second place in the middleweight event of the California State Power lifting championships in Fresno, summer of 64 - hotter than hell - Peanuts West doing an incredible 460 bench press, cheating like hell, with Big Stever Marjanian both spotting and intimidating the judges into three green lights - after which Bill was hunting for some wine to do the night - he later died of a heroin overdose on the beaches of Santa Barbara - there's a fund still collecting money for a grave marker.
Worse still, thanks to Dr Craig Whitehead, was the energizing move from dianobol to meth to compensate from over training. Craig and his wife were convinced their home in Fairfield was bugged, so they shot it up with gunfire - he was a eye doctor at Travis Airforce Base then - his sentence in the mid sixties was public service so he jumped from the frying pan into the fire becoming the road physician for the Grateful Dead (as they say, what would Jerry do? likely cocaine and heroin).
My best friend and training partner after high school was Bob Kemper. In the 71 Pan Am games he set the last press record in the 242 class with 418. powerful boy. roids, meth, then lsd did not bode well with him- hell, he couldn't handle alcohol without a Jekyll/Hyde reaction - at 8 or so he'd come home with his little brother and sister to the Kemper Ranch in sunnyvale to discover mom dead from suicide. in those days there was no post- traumatic therapy, so he just stuffed it. roids by themselves feed substance addiction disorders and a host of psychological diseases, amplified by other therapeutic and recreational drugs.
flyod page. incredible bodybuilder of the golden age from palo alto, ca. back in training and boozing in the mid 60s a fatal heart attack claimed him
the list goes on. just because the old timers filled in culturally defined machismo roles and abuses never makes those abuses right or attractive. it's just worse today with 20-30 polypharmaceuticals.