Heavy lifting

Bill Clark sat on a folding chair in Clark’s Gym watching Abe Smith balance a 275-pound barbell over his head.

“You need to bend your body more and press less. You’re working harder than you need to,” Clark said, rubbing his short gray hair as he often does when he’s thinking.

“Wait…you mean like this?” Smith bent over until the upper half of his body was parallel to the floor, the arm holding the weight pointing toward the ceiling. He straightened his body and pressed the weight toward the ceiling. This move, called the bent press, is not seen in the typical fitness center.

“Much better, much better,” Clark coached, tapping his foot to the beat of the rock music blasting from a dusty radio. Smith dropped the weight to the floor with a loud crash.

“It doesn’t hurt at all,” Smith insisted. “If you do it right, that is.”

Joe Garcia, a 52-year-old software analyst with a burly 6-foot-1 physique, stepped up to the platform next, rubbing white chalk between his long slender fingers. He prepared to do the grip lift, which is difficult because lifters place their hands over the top of the bar instead of the bottom, so they can’t rest the bar on their palms.

As Garcia bent down to hoist the weight, Clark advised him to spread his hands farther apart on the bar. As Garcia smoothly raised the barbell, it appeared that Clark’s suggestion had worked.

No one can argue that Clark, 73, is not an expert on weightlifting. His gym, located on Grace Lane, is one of the last old-fashioned power-lifting facilities in the Midwest. The trophy case on the wall by the door of the gym is stuffed with dozens of his trophies and medals. He has been inducted into seven weightlifting halls of fame and holds about 150 United States All-Round Weightlifting Association records.

The records haven’t gone to his head, though. “It’s a lot easier than it sounds,” he said. “There are lots of different lifts. The record book includes crazy stuff like the finger lift. There must be about 8,000 records in that book.”

Despite all the ears and all the titles, weightlifting is just the sideshow to a 36-year career as a professioinal baseball scout, his role as the father of five children and a lifetime of civic action. In the 1950s and 60s, he was one of the first white men in Columbia to take a stand for racial integration.

After he retired from baseball in 2003, he lifted an enormous load of social and political activities and hasn’t slowed down since. He writes a biweekly column for the Columbia Daily Tribune, co-chairs the Democratic Central Committee, teaches an adult learning class about writing through an MU extension, and is involved in at least half a dozen social organizations. He continues to operate his gym, even as the membership has dwindled as fancy fitness centers have sprung up by the dozens.

During his scouting career, Clark traveled about 300 days a year, but he made the most of the time he spent in Columbia during the off-season. He started the Columbia Boxing Club in 1959 to give local teenagers something to do. This is when he got seriously involved in weightlifting. He bought some weights for his boxers, and he was surprised by how strong the kids were.

“I called the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) and asked when the state meets for weightlifting were, and I was told that there weren’t any in Missouri,” Clark said.

Clark decided he’d host them himself.

“I’d never even seen a weightlifting competition before,” he said. “I had no idea how to start one.”

Clark knew a weightlifting coach in St. Louis, who helped him organize the competition. In 1959 the first Missouri State Amateur Weightlifting Championship was held in the Armory.

“This community became sort of a center for lifting in Missouri,” said Clark, who began lifting weights himself at that point. By 1961, Columbia earned the honor of hosting the AAU national weightlifting championship at Jefferson Junior High School.

Clark’s contributions to weightlifting were only beginning. In 1962, he and five other lifters convinced the AAU to recognize power-lifting, which has more lifts than regular weightlifting and relies more on pure strength. Meanwhile, he began racking up his own AAU weightlifting titles and rewards.

His most proud moment in weightlifting, he said, was not an individual title or competition. In 1974 he single-handedly convinced the AAU to let him host a National Masters competition for weightlifters age 40 and older.

At that time, there was no separate division in the AAU for people of those ages. Clark organized the competition, even though AAU officials told him it would never work. At first, it seemed they were right. Only four people participated in the inaugural event, but in the following years the older age divisions became more and more popular.

Today, more people have registered in the Masters division than the under-40 age divisions of United States Amateur Weightlifting (USAW), which branched off from the AAU.

“It was my idea and I made it work,” Clark said with a proud smile. “I think that’s my most successful contribution to weightlifting. The older guys need to stay in the gym to show the next generation how to do it.”

But Clark was frustrated with USA Weightlifting because there were only five lifts to compete in, and he felt that there were many other kinds of weightlifting exercises being overlooked. In 1986, he and some other supporters of “odd lifts” broke off from USAW and formed the United States All-Round Weightlifting Association (USAWA). The organization offered competition in over 150 different weightlifting exercises.

“The USAWA made it possible for more people to compete because there are more kinds of lifts,” Clark said. “Now there’s something for everyone.”

A few months later, Clark got another idea.

“I decided that what I’d like to do was establish a gym and have a second income,” Clark said. “Then when I retired I’d have something to do and it’d already be up and running.”

Clark compiled all the equipment he’d acquired over the years, bought some more, and opened Clark’s Gym in 1987. Unfortunately, it was one of his few projects that wasn’t a complete success.

“Our society today is not interested in heavy lifting,” Clark said. “We don’t make any money on this place, but my wife and I decided that it’s our toy, and we’re going to keep it open.”

Clark said his gym can’t compete with fancy new fitness centers and their expensive machines and glitzy facilities.

Garcia and Smith are two of only six remaining members of Clark’s gym, and they are certainly glad that he keeps it open.

They love the old building, no bigger than a small apartment, with its rows of free weights and iron barbells. They don’t mind that the yellow tile is peeling and it’s a bit drafty. The handwritten record charts that line the walls, acknowledging the top lifters for each type of exercise, give the room a personal feel. The faithful members feel comfortable here.

“Bill is the reason I’ve been back here all these years,” Garcia added. “We clicked from day one. I can’t imagine what life would have been like the past 19 years without him and his gym.”

Clark still lifts weights occasionally, even though his joints hurt more as he gets older, and his muscles wear out more quickly. He is not finished in the weight room, though. He hopes to compete in the USAWA national competition next month.

Clark passed on his love for weightlifting to his daughter Kerry.

She remembers accompanying her father to weightlifting competitions as she grew up, and this inspired her to compete herself.

“I would hang out in the gym with my dad and the guys would keep telling me I could lift more, so I would keep trying,” she said. “It was my dad who convinced me to go to meets. I wouldn’t have gotten into it if it weren’t for him.”

Clark used sports for even more than family fun, a career, and recreation.

A graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, he did sports reporting for the Columbia Daily Tribune when baseball was off-season and he used his writing to make a positive impact on race relations in the community.

Rodney Kelley, a longtime friend of Clark’s, said he remembers that Clark was the only sports reporter who covered the all-black Douglass High School in the 1950s, when Kelley was in elementary school.

“He stood out in the crowd because he was one of the only white people there,” Kelley said. “Plus, he had a bald head and a bright red beard.”

“He was just as comfortable in Douglass Park as in a city council meeting,” Kelley said. “It made a big difference to see integration happening right in front of you.”

Today, Clark’s life is as busy as ever. One glance at the 2006 Smithsonian Institute wall calendar he uses to keep track of his time reveals just how full each of his days are. Clark’s doctor-like scribble covers literally every day of the month, indicating an activity or event he is involved in.

“A long time ago, I decided I was not going to have a one-dimensional life,” he said. “And retirement’s the same way. I don’t hunt, fish, or golf, but I sure stay busy.”