In 1974 at Earl Warren Junior High in Castro Valley, California, Lou Kruk was my PE instructor and Olympic Weightlifting Coach. He stood well over six feet, had an ice cream-cone torso, and showed off his tanned muscular legs with gym shorts. His full head of brown hair was longer than the other instructors. He often wore aviator sunglasses with a dark blue windbreaker or just a T-shirt. He appeared to have a formidable income because he drove a Porsche, owned a sailboat, and had a beautiful blonde girlfriend who looked like a fashion model. Kruk had a loud voice that reminded me of the famous disc jockey Wolfman Jack. He clearly loved music because often in our Olympic Weightlifting class, he’d play his favorite albums by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass.
Kruk was loved by us all because he was not a superficial muscle jock by any means. He had a strong moral code. He despised bullying, cruelty, stupidity, laziness, and mediocrity. One day in PE class, in which we had to climb a fifty-foot rope inside the cafeteria, some kids were picking on one of the school nerds, and Kruk stopped the class and admonished the bullies. “What’s with you people? Always kick the guy that’s down in the gutter. Is that it? It’s not bad enough that he’s already lying in the gutter? Does that feel good to you?” The bullies and their complicit friends appeared sincerely ashamed.
It’s safe to say Kruk was a father figure to many of us. We wanted to please him both athletically and morally. During the middle of the school year, Kruk’s brother died while hang-gliding and crashing into a rocky cliff in San Pedro. Hang-gliding was banned after the accident. Kruk took two weeks off and we mourned his loss. When he came back to school, he didn’t quite look the same and his vocal delivery had lost some of its oomph. The aura of vitality that surrounded him had diminished. We hated seeing the faded version of him, but ever so slowly, his spirit came back and once again he barked at us to be better people with the same intensity as before.
Nearly fifty years have passed since I last saw Kruk, and I’ve been thinking of him because last week I had a severe abdominal injury while working out in the garage and I had to go to Urgent Care where, thankfully, the ultrasound showed I did not get a hernia. So I’m taking a couple of weeks off, taking more Motrin than I’ve ever taken, and hope to get back to working out. It appears I can’t exist in a postworkout world. Some kind of weightlifting, whether it be kettlebells or barbells, is now part of my DNA, part of my daily structure and routine, and a necessary ingredient to achieving some kind of mental equilibrium. Kruk instilled that in me. As a tribute to my coach, I’m going to make a playlist of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, but I’ll skip wearing aviator sunglasses because my wife and daughters will laugh me out of the house.
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