Golden Oldies Gymnastics Reunion

C'mon guys - where are the photos from Wasson and Ranum and Hinkley and North and South and East and West and Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson and Palmer and and and and.........?
AND, I'll say it again - I seem to remember competing against
CSU, DU and UNC
SO I'm sure they had teams and therefore
MUST HAVE
team pictures!

Kirk Rose
Fairview, UNC

Pat,
Just had my 3rd open heart 4 weeks ago, the end result was a stroke and my left side is not so good from the ear down and my ability to get around is pretty impaired. I will try to get a blog and pic together and mail it off, but looks like I am on the sidelines for awhile.

Hope all goes well,
Kirk

Kirk is second from right and was part of the '65 State Championship team.

This is the DU Team Championship '65
(another photo from the Truman archive which goes all the way back to Charlemagne)

Who are these old guys from 47 years ago? And where are they?

Ohh. here we go: Courtney Willis Aurora 1^st, Bill McFillen Lincoln 2^nd,Bobby Fisher TJ 3^rd,John Tracy Lincoln 4^th,Jim Rathbun Palmer 5^th,Rich Blanton Lincoln 6th

Tumbling Winners State Championship 1961
First – Jim Ryan
Third – Fred Brigham
Fifth – Joe Byrd
All Aurora High School. Winners Stand drawn and lettered by Don Robinson, used at gymnastics and track meets for many years.

Cliff Gauthier (we still want photos)

After graduating from DU, I taught math at Merrill Junior High in Denver for one year while staying active in judging high school and college gymnastics. The next year I got a masters at CU in kinesiology before signing on to teach math for two years at Westminster High School. While teaching at Westy, I also took over for Doug DeWitt as the coach for the final two years of the DU program. I have an interesting story about the old athletic facilities at DU being condemned during the team’s last year at DU.

My next step was to marry Linda and immediately head off to teach and coach at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. The grand plan was to work at W&M one or two years and then head back to Colorado. It is now 36 years later and I am still coaching men’s gymnastics at W&M and married to Linda (she is a saint). http://tribeathletics.com/files/mgym/2008/MGYM08.pdf is the address for our men’s gymnastics brochure which will give you a bit of an update on the sport and much more information on me and W&M if you wish to subject yourself to that.

Linda and I have two daughters, Julie and Jeri, and five grandkids (Alexis 20, Leigh 18, Jasmine 16, Aubrey 9 and Lauren 5). Julie lives in Arlington, VA and has the two youngest grandkids while my youngest daughter Jeri and the three oldest grandkids live with us in Williamsburg.

Rich Murahata

Gymnastics played a significant part in my left for several decades after graduating from Fairview. I went to Michigan State University majoring in chemistry (an interest fostered by Mr. White) and was fortunate to be on a team with the likes of Dave Thor, Toby Townson and Ed Gunny. Ed used to urinate on the “rips” in his hand to help speed the healing. He didn’t have the nick name “Buggy” for nothing. I did get to see Mr. White on occasion when we competed at OSU. Moved to New Haven, CT for graduate school at Yale majoring in Pharmacology and got to continue with

gymnastics as (unpaid) assistant to Don Tonry’s men’s team and then Barb (nee Galleher) Tonry’s women’s team. Also got to hang out with Abe Grossfeld who was coach at Southern Connecticut and Muriel Grossfield who had her own gym in New Haven. Through Muriel and her contacts, I got to watch the US women’s Olympic team (Cathy Rigby, et al) training at Yale, and drove equipment from Madison Square Garden to Chicago for the Russian tour. Don got me a competitor’s membership in the New York Athletic Club which allowed me to compete at AAU meets for a couple a seasons. Did a post-doc at UCLA where I got to hang out in the gym with Art Shurlock, Makoto Sakamoto and a bunch of future Olympians. Competed Sr. Olympics for a few years before and after moving to Scottsdale, AZ to work for the Dial Corporation. Did get down to ASU and work out with Don Robinson a couple of times, but injury seemed more and more likely so I switched to tennis and - amazingly enough – volleyball, as probably the shortest setter in the adult leagues.

Moved from Scottsdale to Memphis to work for Plough in 1986 and the following year to Edgewater, NJ to work for Unilever. Okay, so Graceland wasn’t a big enough draw to keep me down South. As a large multinational company, Unilever provided opportunity to travel and I made multiple short visits to Europe as well as lesser visits to South America and Asia. Was posted to India for 6 months and then Indonesia for 13 additional months. Indonesia was an incredible experience, as Surharto had just been deposed, and the country was a bit unstable. Seven years ago I moved from Unilever to Hollister Incorporated – a medical device company, not the clothing company, but we do appreciate the publicity. Now live in the Chicago area with my wife nearly 3 years, Renee Bevis. We met on a blind date several years ago, and she’s good enough to follow me through the secondments to India and Indonesia and the move to Chicago.

Except for my letterman’s jacket, that seems to have shrunk a bit (darn dry cleaners anyway) I don’t seem to have anything from the Fairview days. However, in looking through my college scrapbook, there seems to be a disproportionate number of pages taken up by gymnastics. Must say something about its importance in our lives, the MG issue from March 1970 in which Pat, Gary and I are pictured as collegiate captains speaks to the caliber of Colorado high school gymnastics. What great memories!

P.S. Since I don’t do anything terribly athletic anymore, I’ve joined a barbershop chorus! Credit to Tom Proulx, Pat and everyone else who tolerated my singing on the team bus.

More Golden Buffs: (We're waiting for CSU, DU and NCU, even AFA to check in!)

The 1963-64 Team.

This first one is for the really old guys - Some of the faces are familiar but who wants to name all of them?