Post by Stu-E Price on Jul 23, 2007 15:19:02 GMT -5
I don't actually know what fears my dad ever had. He has never shown any, except maybe that his kids are going to lose it, lose it all.
Just before World War II, my dad was named to two different Canadian amateur wrestling teams bound for international competitions. One trip to the British Empire Games was cancelled due to a lack of funding and the second to the Olympics was cancelled due to the outbreak of the war. Had that not happened, I believe my dad would have won a gold medal representing Canada.
During the war, when he was on leave from the navy, my dad would slip in and out of the New York area to wrestle in small matches for cash. He had to be careful because he wanted to keep his amateur status in case he did get a chance to wrestle for Canada in the Olympics some day.
He used to tell me stories about that time in his life. "I would work out in New York. I'd get on the exercise machines and wrestle. There were a bunch of these old crowbars down there waiting for the young punks like me to come and wrestle and they'd crank us up pretty good.
"One of my bunkmates was a fellow named Max Summersville. He slept on the cot underneath me on the ship. I got to know him a little bit. He had seen me in Edmonton because I was playing a lot of sports up there – basketball and soccer. I played pro football for a season with the Edmonton Eskimos at the time. I played cricket against John Bradman – the greatest cricket player of all time. He was even knighted.
"Anyway, Max Summersville and I had a two-week furlough and he wanted me to go with him to Washington, D.C. to visit his sister. So we hitchhiked from Cornwallis down through Boston and New York and Baltimore into D.C.
"Joe Carter was the light heavyweight champion of the world and he had a restaurant there. I saw posters of a wrestling match in the window, so I went in to have a cup of coffee and thought I'd have something to eat. I passed by this big fat guy in his fifties with these big cauliflower ears. He looked up and said, ‘Hey kid, have you ever wrestled?’ I said I had won the Canadian wrestling championship. Then he said, ‘I knew you wrestled by the size of your neck.’
"He introduced himself as Toots Mondt and asked me some questions about what I was doing. So I told him I was from Edmonton. He said, ‘Did you ever hear of a Jack Taylor up there?’ I said, ‘Yes, I watched Jack Taylor wrestle in 1932 in Edmonton. He wrestled Tiger Dooligan.’ The old bastard smiled, ‘You know, Jack Taylor? Jack gave me my first wrestling lesson in Greeley, Colorado in 1916.’
“I said I was in the Canadian Navy. He asked me to sit down for a bite to eat. We talked for about 10 or 15 minutes, and then he asked me to join his wrestling operation. He said, ‘I could use you here in Washington, D.C. You could wrestle in Joe Turner's arena.’ I said I couldn't right now because of the navy. So he said, ‘When you get out of the navy, come and join me.’ We kept in touch and when I got out, I met him in New York and he put me to work.”
When my dad came into my mom's life in 1947, he was fresh from the war. He was 30 years old in New York City and a Canadian. She had just turned 17 and he thought she was "a pretty little devil.” He also thought her sisters, Patsy and Betty, weren't bad looking either.
He regaled the girls with his war stories. He had witnessed some horrific events. One of the worst was watching a man decapitated on D-Day. The guy got drunk the night before and was terribly hung over. He belonged to the shore patrol. The next day they were making their rounds in the shore patrol car and he stuck his head out the window and started vomiting. He drove too close to the shore where there were lifeboats parked on the water, close to the edge of the street. There was a hook on one of the boats hanging off a long pole. It was sharp and sturdy, strong enough to hold a thousand pounds. It caught him around the neck as he drove past and pulled his head right off.
Dad met Mom through a friend of his named Paul Boesh, who was a lifeguard at Long Beach. When Paul spotted my grandfather Harry and his family, he went over and introduced himself. My dad used to go to Coney Island to work out. But Paul convinced him to come to Long Beach one Sunday instead and that was where Paul introduced my dad to my mom.
Tar from the ships had come in off the tide coating the bottom of her feet as she waded in the water. My dad gallantly offered to remove it for her. She said okay. So sitting side by side on a blanket, my dad gently scraped the tar off the bottom of her feet. I've always thought this was such an appropriate way for them to meet because he has devoted his life to watching over her in the 53 years since.
My dad's family were farmers, transplanted from North Dakota. His grandfather, Donald Stuart, was a senator there. My dad was born in a little farmhouse on the southern edge of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1915. His full name is Stewart Edward Hart. His father was Edward and his mother, Elizabeth. He had two sisters, Sylvester and Edrie.
When he was four years old his most treasured possession was a ball that he had made out of salvaged scraps of string or rags. Day after day he'd roll them together until it was the size of a small baseball. His father found him playing with it one day and snatched it away admonishing him that there was no time for toys on a farm.
That's how his father was. That hard old man lived into his 90s. My dad went to Mayfair School for grade one when he was six years old, then moved with his family to a farm at Forgan. Squatters burned their farmhouse down, driving the family into a tent on the outskirts of the property.
They stayed in that tent through the harsh Saskatchewan winter of 1929. Temperatures dropped to 40 below zero. To stay warm they kept their cow inside the tent with them. Most of the time she provided the family with milk, but it was so cold on some mornings it was impossible to milk her because the teats on her udder were frozen. They cooked on stones gathered for a fire pit outside the front flap. When they were done eating, they'd bring the hot stones inside to heat the small area. The harsh conditions were too much for Elizabeth who suffered from diabetes and died that winter. The rest of the family persevered.
When Dad was 11, he hunted for rabbits and squirrels with a slingshot in order to feed the family. His best friend was a pet hawk he'd raised from a chick. The hawk would retrieve the small animals he shot down. School was not an option. He had no shoes, just rags tied around his bare feet. Finally the Salvation Army stepped in. The Salvation Army has been a good friend to our family through the years. They fed and clothed my dad while he was growing up and he turned to them again for our clothing through some of the lean years when I was little.
In 1946 my dad had heard a lot about Harry Smith, the former treasurer of New York City. After he started dating my mom, my dad would take Harry for rides and Harry would call my dad, "son." My dad would be driving in a big, big old car. Harry Smith wasn't used to cars as he had always walked or run everywhere, so they would be driving down the street and Harry would say, "Turn here son," just as they had passed the turn. Harry didn't understand you needed more notice in a car than on foot.
My dad felt privileged to be in his company. He used to take Harry to the Atlantic Ocean. No matter how cold the water was Harry would dip his bad leg in the water. It felt so good that he would wade into the surf time and time again. Harry's leg was pretty well black and should have been amputated years before, but he refused the operation.
Harry had a lot of respect for my dad too. He recognized that my dad would have been in the Olympics had it not been for World War II. My dad was modest about what a great amateur wrestler he was. He still is today at age 85.
My dad and mom, Stu and Helen, married on New Year's Eve, 1948, during the worst blizzard of the century. Helen turned to her new husband and asked, "How long are we going to be in wrestling, Stu?”
"Only two years," he promised.
Just before World War II, my dad was named to two different Canadian amateur wrestling teams bound for international competitions. One trip to the British Empire Games was cancelled due to a lack of funding and the second to the Olympics was cancelled due to the outbreak of the war. Had that not happened, I believe my dad would have won a gold medal representing Canada.
During the war, when he was on leave from the navy, my dad would slip in and out of the New York area to wrestle in small matches for cash. He had to be careful because he wanted to keep his amateur status in case he did get a chance to wrestle for Canada in the Olympics some day.
He used to tell me stories about that time in his life. "I would work out in New York. I'd get on the exercise machines and wrestle. There were a bunch of these old crowbars down there waiting for the young punks like me to come and wrestle and they'd crank us up pretty good.
"One of my bunkmates was a fellow named Max Summersville. He slept on the cot underneath me on the ship. I got to know him a little bit. He had seen me in Edmonton because I was playing a lot of sports up there – basketball and soccer. I played pro football for a season with the Edmonton Eskimos at the time. I played cricket against John Bradman – the greatest cricket player of all time. He was even knighted.
"Anyway, Max Summersville and I had a two-week furlough and he wanted me to go with him to Washington, D.C. to visit his sister. So we hitchhiked from Cornwallis down through Boston and New York and Baltimore into D.C.
"Joe Carter was the light heavyweight champion of the world and he had a restaurant there. I saw posters of a wrestling match in the window, so I went in to have a cup of coffee and thought I'd have something to eat. I passed by this big fat guy in his fifties with these big cauliflower ears. He looked up and said, ‘Hey kid, have you ever wrestled?’ I said I had won the Canadian wrestling championship. Then he said, ‘I knew you wrestled by the size of your neck.’
"He introduced himself as Toots Mondt and asked me some questions about what I was doing. So I told him I was from Edmonton. He said, ‘Did you ever hear of a Jack Taylor up there?’ I said, ‘Yes, I watched Jack Taylor wrestle in 1932 in Edmonton. He wrestled Tiger Dooligan.’ The old bastard smiled, ‘You know, Jack Taylor? Jack gave me my first wrestling lesson in Greeley, Colorado in 1916.’
“I said I was in the Canadian Navy. He asked me to sit down for a bite to eat. We talked for about 10 or 15 minutes, and then he asked me to join his wrestling operation. He said, ‘I could use you here in Washington, D.C. You could wrestle in Joe Turner's arena.’ I said I couldn't right now because of the navy. So he said, ‘When you get out of the navy, come and join me.’ We kept in touch and when I got out, I met him in New York and he put me to work.”
When my dad came into my mom's life in 1947, he was fresh from the war. He was 30 years old in New York City and a Canadian. She had just turned 17 and he thought she was "a pretty little devil.” He also thought her sisters, Patsy and Betty, weren't bad looking either.
He regaled the girls with his war stories. He had witnessed some horrific events. One of the worst was watching a man decapitated on D-Day. The guy got drunk the night before and was terribly hung over. He belonged to the shore patrol. The next day they were making their rounds in the shore patrol car and he stuck his head out the window and started vomiting. He drove too close to the shore where there were lifeboats parked on the water, close to the edge of the street. There was a hook on one of the boats hanging off a long pole. It was sharp and sturdy, strong enough to hold a thousand pounds. It caught him around the neck as he drove past and pulled his head right off.
Dad met Mom through a friend of his named Paul Boesh, who was a lifeguard at Long Beach. When Paul spotted my grandfather Harry and his family, he went over and introduced himself. My dad used to go to Coney Island to work out. But Paul convinced him to come to Long Beach one Sunday instead and that was where Paul introduced my dad to my mom.
Tar from the ships had come in off the tide coating the bottom of her feet as she waded in the water. My dad gallantly offered to remove it for her. She said okay. So sitting side by side on a blanket, my dad gently scraped the tar off the bottom of her feet. I've always thought this was such an appropriate way for them to meet because he has devoted his life to watching over her in the 53 years since.
My dad's family were farmers, transplanted from North Dakota. His grandfather, Donald Stuart, was a senator there. My dad was born in a little farmhouse on the southern edge of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1915. His full name is Stewart Edward Hart. His father was Edward and his mother, Elizabeth. He had two sisters, Sylvester and Edrie.
When he was four years old his most treasured possession was a ball that he had made out of salvaged scraps of string or rags. Day after day he'd roll them together until it was the size of a small baseball. His father found him playing with it one day and snatched it away admonishing him that there was no time for toys on a farm.
That's how his father was. That hard old man lived into his 90s. My dad went to Mayfair School for grade one when he was six years old, then moved with his family to a farm at Forgan. Squatters burned their farmhouse down, driving the family into a tent on the outskirts of the property.
They stayed in that tent through the harsh Saskatchewan winter of 1929. Temperatures dropped to 40 below zero. To stay warm they kept their cow inside the tent with them. Most of the time she provided the family with milk, but it was so cold on some mornings it was impossible to milk her because the teats on her udder were frozen. They cooked on stones gathered for a fire pit outside the front flap. When they were done eating, they'd bring the hot stones inside to heat the small area. The harsh conditions were too much for Elizabeth who suffered from diabetes and died that winter. The rest of the family persevered.
When Dad was 11, he hunted for rabbits and squirrels with a slingshot in order to feed the family. His best friend was a pet hawk he'd raised from a chick. The hawk would retrieve the small animals he shot down. School was not an option. He had no shoes, just rags tied around his bare feet. Finally the Salvation Army stepped in. The Salvation Army has been a good friend to our family through the years. They fed and clothed my dad while he was growing up and he turned to them again for our clothing through some of the lean years when I was little.
In 1946 my dad had heard a lot about Harry Smith, the former treasurer of New York City. After he started dating my mom, my dad would take Harry for rides and Harry would call my dad, "son." My dad would be driving in a big, big old car. Harry Smith wasn't used to cars as he had always walked or run everywhere, so they would be driving down the street and Harry would say, "Turn here son," just as they had passed the turn. Harry didn't understand you needed more notice in a car than on foot.
My dad felt privileged to be in his company. He used to take Harry to the Atlantic Ocean. No matter how cold the water was Harry would dip his bad leg in the water. It felt so good that he would wade into the surf time and time again. Harry's leg was pretty well black and should have been amputated years before, but he refused the operation.
Harry had a lot of respect for my dad too. He recognized that my dad would have been in the Olympics had it not been for World War II. My dad was modest about what a great amateur wrestler he was. He still is today at age 85.
My dad and mom, Stu and Helen, married on New Year's Eve, 1948, during the worst blizzard of the century. Helen turned to her new husband and asked, "How long are we going to be in wrestling, Stu?”
"Only two years," he promised.