Chapter 15 |
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DR. ERIC LESTER HUGHESAlso read about Eric at: Mill Creek Living Article June 2015 Dr. Eric Hughes was born on 9/1/23. He competed in high school gymnastics in 1936 in Victoria, British Columbia, and also with the BC Provincial Recreation Club. Eric went to college at the University of Illinois where he was coached by the great Hartley D. Price. College was interrupted by WWII, and he enlisted in Canada (R.C.A.F.) as a pilot. After the war he returned to Illinois where he participated in cross country and track as well as gymnastics. During these years, Eric also traveled with a touring acrobatic group called the The Aristocrats of Balance. Upon graduation, he became a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois for a year and a half as he finished his Masters Degree. Eric then taught at Bemidji State Teachers College in Bemidji, MN. from 1948-1950. He was hired to coach hockey! (Remember - he is Canadian.) He started the gymnastics program there, and also was an assistant coach of the Men's Football Team. (Eric with traveling group - he is on right - his first wife is pictured.) In 1950, Eric moved to Seattle and went to the University of WA for their doctorate program and started a children's gymnastics program. Eric also started the UW men's gymnastics team which was officially recognized as a major sport at the University in 1956. His team won the National AAU Championship in 1968 and 1969 and took second in the NCAA Championships in 1965. Some of the more accomplished UW men who Eric influenced were Charley Denny, Mauno Nissinen, Yoshi Hayasaki, Sho Fukushima, Mel Cooley, Jim David, Bob Hall and Steve Wejmar. He compiled a 109-17 record at UW. He served as President of the National Association of College Gymnastics Coaches and was selected Western Coach of the Year in 1963 and 1965. He was Pacific Northwest AAU Gymnastics Chairman from 1954 to 1963. In 1961 he was the coach of the U.S. team that toured Czechoslovakia, Poland and the USSR. In 1966 He took the Husky Club on a tour of Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In 1968 he took them to many countries in SE Asia and in 1970 to five countries in South America. He was the coach of the 1972 Olympic Men's Gymnastics Team in Munich. (pictured at left) Eric was one of the founders of Gym Kamp (Camp Waskowitz) and held coaches clinics and invitational gymnastic competitions. Two books, Gymnastics for Men and Gymnastics for Girls, plus numerous articles were written by Dr. Hughes. In 1973, he was inducted into the national Helms Gymnastics Hall of Fame. Eric is a (UW) Husky Hall of Fame inductee, and he was inducted into the first USAG WA Hall of Fame 2002. (pictured at right) From interview with Eric Hughes by Lee Bjella 3-5-02 (Updates in 2003 and 2014) On other notable gymnasts personalities of his era: Talking about 3 books I brought to show him: The summer of 1948: Hughes was at Bemidji State Teachers College from 1948 to 1950. He married one of his students (Rae - his second marriage) there in the summer of 1950. Her last name was Rossbach - her father was full German and mother was half Amercian Indian. She was from the Red Lake Indian Reservation near Bemidji. (Bemidji State University is were this author went to college for a P.E. degree and was on the Women's Gymnastics Team and later was assistant coach and then head coach, but never heard of Eric until coming to Washington!) Eric loves to canoe, and was very good at it (and still is, even in his 80's at the time of this writing) winning many races until giving up competition in 2003 at the age of 80. He still (as of 2003) teaches at a Seattle club. He raced professionally. One race was from Bemidji (the beginning of the Mississippi River) to Minneapolis, in which he won $2,000 as the second place team. His income from a year teaching at the college was $3,000! He also coached the B.S.T.C. (Bemidji State Teachers College) hockey team the two years he was there. When I asked him, amazed, what he knew about hockey, he turned and looked at me and said, "Well I was born in Canada!". Eric and his wife left Minnesota after the 1950 summer session and he started at UW in the fall. (He hated the deer flies in Bemidji.) (Update, 2015, Eric is now 91 and living in Mill Creek, WA. He had a heart attack in the summer of 2014.) Here is a good place to tell the story about Eric's first weekend at UW. He went and looked at the equipment and noticed the vaulting horse was the old fashioned kind that had one end that went up. It was no longer a regulation vaulting horse. "So on a Saturday, I went down to the gym with a saw, pulled back the leather covering on the end, cut off the wooden end of the horse, and sewed the leather back down, nice and firm." The next morning he got a call from a very angry Russ Cutler, the head of the P.E. Department, who said "What did you do to my vauling horse!?" Eric laughs when telling this because Russ was so mad. Eric says he told him he was just making it legal. "At the UW in 1950 - The men's program was not a competitive program. It was just a club. Boys and girls were separated in those days. The girls were up in Hutchinson Hall and the boys were in the Pavilion. Once the club got started, there were a bunch of girls up in Hutchinson who really wanted to join, so I said, "Hey! We'll have a co-ed night one night a week. Come on down. We had a pretty good co-educational group going there for a while there and then Ruth Wilson who was the head of Women's P.E. saw my boss, Russ Cutler. (The guy who really flew into a rage when I cut up the horse.) She went to his office and said, "One of your instructors has our girls down in your gym! Men don't know how to teach women. Make him stop this right away." So he called me into the office and he chewed me out something awful. I could tell he was just trying to hold back a laugh. For a while I had to stop having women in our club. We did get approval sometime later, but I don't know how that came about. I guess I had to prove I knew the difference between a man and a woman." Early History at University of WA On Augie Auernheimer: On the 1932 Olympics: On George Lewis: On girls gymnastics: On creating the gymnastics program at UW: After considerable pressure from the community I started a children's program for girls on Saturday mornings in Hutchinson Hall but I didn't teach it myself. The first person I hired for that was....I can't remember. Three different women who did teach the classes over the years were Ann Cannon, Carol Elsner and Linda Luna. The girls program was run just like I ran my boys program. I was the coordinator for it because I was on the faculty and it was run through the University Extension program." "Carol Eisner was a good gymnast, good dancer. She actually went to New York at the ripe old age, like in her 30's, to become a professional dancer. Linda Rodella Luna was a good gymnast. Ann Cannon was one of the pioneer coaches for girls in the Northwest." On Balance Rails: "There was also a boom in Hutchinson Hall which was a huge round timber that was fastened against the wall of the gym. One end could swing out and fastened with cables. This boom could be raised and lowered on the two uprights. Students did uneven bar type stunts on this boom." On Girls at UW - the early program: On his children's program: Eric's son Kip, was a gymnast at Hale High School. He ended up coaching in several different Seattle High Schools for a while then moved away. (Picture at right: Eric with his Exhibition Group in Bemidji, MN. Eric is on the bottom.) 2015 - September During the 1970 trip to Bolivia, Gunter Bohrman and the UW team toured. It was not a pleasure trip by any means. Eric said, "We worked!" They tried to take a day trip to Lake Titicaca to the ruins. They were staying at a military college and they all boarded the military bus. There was, of course, a revolution going on and they traveled up to 15,000 feet and were going across a plateau. They were stopped at a blockade and the interpreter told Eric to go out and talk to the soldiers. Eric got off the bus and immediately had a machine gun in his belly. Eric explained what that they were a gymnastics exhibition group and that they wanted to see the ruins. Finally the soldier said he would let them continue, but that there was another checkpoint five miles ahead and they might not be so nice. They turned around and headed back to the college. He mentioned that 13 year old Peggy Rowan was with on the trip and he was given power of attorney. She was the main reason he felt he needed to turn the bus around. He said Peggy was such a good gymnast they wanted to take her on the trip. Early Bemidji State College Sports, 1948-1950 - Scenes from 1940-1950's Memorial Hall:Eric went to Bemidji State Teacher College (later Bemidji State University) in Bemidji, Minnesota. Eric was head Hockey coach, and
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