A mural of the Arc de Triomphe forms the backdrop for a few of the hundreds of trophies Schemansky has won over the years. Norb, still very fit at the age of 48, pauses to reflect on the many championships he brought to the United States and the little recognition he received for his efforts.
The Woodward Avenue gym was quiet and empty. There was no clanging of iron and steel, no bursts of energy and muscle; and there was no sound of lifters straining in effort, encouraging one another, or bantering back and forth. There only existed the silence of a vacated home returned to, silent cold musty, never quite the same, but filled with memories.
Norb Schemansky, after the 1972 Senior Nationals and Olympic trials in Detroit stood erect, still thick and muscular at age 48, looking for the next to the last time at the gym where he had trained for so many years. On his next visit, he would move out.
This was the final resolution, and the impact that an era has definitely ended, that a world champion athlete has retired, hits hard especially when you are there to hear the words and witness the final goodbyes. No one goes to the gym anymore. No one lifts. Those who have keys don't use them.
Schemansky paused before a mantel on which sat trophies his club had won over the years.
"The trophies. What will happen to them?"
"I don't know. Jack will probably do something with them. Our team used to win every year so they quit giving them."
Norb shrugged his heavy shoulders and grinned knowledgeably in resignation, as if that move were typical and expected.
Above the mantel was a scene of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It reminded him of an exhibition he had given October 17, 1954, in Lille, France, when he had jerked the Apollon Bar three times in succession.
"Rigoulot trained eight months to lift it," Norb said. "John Davis lifted it, but he fainted and dropped it and bent it. I jerked it the first time, even with the bend in the bar. I knew I could do 363. The only thing was to get in the groove, the rhythm. I practiced the groove a few times, and then put it away," he chuckled.
"The bend in the bar makes it difficult to hold because it slips and the weight turns and shifts in your hands. I held the bar so tight, I didn't even turn in my hands. I didn't know this until I was through."
Norb didn't linger long before the Paris scene, though one could almost hear the cheers of the crowd at his success. It was a feat that Al Ackerman, Detroit news and sports commentator describes with excitement:
". . . that men and women were crying in the streets of France in awe and rapture and joy over this man who had jerked the bar three times in succession."
He paused before a picture of Clarence Johnson, asleep in a rocking chair. Norb read and enjoyed what had been written beneath the picture: "Our glorious president, hard at work."
He grinned. "We used to write things in the magazines, too," and Norb moved to find an old copy of Strength & Health. After blowing the dust off, he thumbed his way through looking for captions that had been written just to amuse the lifters. He read some and chuckled. "Just for fun. That's why we did it. Like we used to bring pictures of girls. We'd write things if a guy liked a certain one or something. Nothing bad."
Schemansky sat on an old sofa in the gym and relaxed. "It's not a fancy place, but it's comfortable. There's a back room there where you could take a nap if you wanted. The lockers are back there, too." Abruptly, Norb got up and with the sure, purposeful, and confident strides which mark a great athlete, headed for and disappeared into the locker area. He returned quickly.
"Here's a picture of me when I was Mr. Michigan in 1953 . . . I was injured and couldn't lift, so I entered this contest." He shrugged. "I was in good shape. Didn't know anything about posing -- some spend hours in front of a mirror practicing. Gave them a back pose or two and a couple of arm shots and that was it. The photographer won a blue ribbon with this picture."
Not this photo, but it's a new one to me.
Norb's eyes twinkled. "I don't know if it was the pose or the photography." To an observer, it was obvious that the muscular back and arms on display were in large part responsible for the blue ribbon. Norb smiled again, a trifle embarrassed, a little proud, but amused by that episode in his life.
"In a month or two, this will be cleaned out," he said after a pause.
"Whose are the weights?"
"Mine. Someone's been stealing them. The small ones they can carry away in their bags. I'll store the weights in my garage or give them away, maybe, if it's to someone who's serious. Not just to anyone. Maybe I'll sell them. The pictures? I don't know. Jack may do something with them."
The photos were mostly of Norbert Schemansky, the man, the lifter, whose career of excellence spanning four decades may well go unmatched. He has enough other memorabilia, enough pictures, without adding more. He has enough trophies cluttering his home without adding the ones from the gym. Of the approximate 300 he has garnered, only about 50 are still displayed at his home. Most of them aren't worth much except for one or two foreign ones, which were more like works of art and indicative of the foreign attitude toward his sport.
"Not much else to see," Norb said, and with the purpose which has characterized his lifting and his life, he led his visitor out, shut off the lights, closed the door, and turned his broad back on what had been.
On the last day of September, Norbert moved out of the gym. He did it with no fanfare, and with no recognition. His only companion was his friend, Jack Katchmar, who operated the gym. The weights now rest in Schemansky's garage, perhaps there for a long time.
Today, probably the greatest lifter America has ever produced looks as fit and capable as he did ten or more years ago. Few men will ever acquire and then retain the muscular build and physique that Norb has. He stands erect and walks briskly and athletically. His arms and shoulders have the same breadth and thickness which characterized him when he was lifting. His chest is thick and his midsection is solid. The man's forearms are still as phenomenal as they have always been. Perhaps the only hint of his age are the gray sideburns. Norb says he doesn't know when they came. He has the walk, the manner, the bearing of a great athlete, enough so that one man stared at him for some time. The man finally said to Norb, "You must be somebody!"
"That's some recognition," Norb observed, partly in jest, but just as much in seriousness, because for all his successes, for all his triumphs, he has probably never achieved the total recognition and fulfillment a champion such as he deserves. What he does have is the knowledge and satisfaction that comes from achieving because of himself, no one else. It was his dedication, His sacrifices, HIS sweat, muscle, and brawn.
Schemansky worked long and hard to become a champion of world class and stature, and though he achieved and was successful, he holds some bitterness and has some bitter memories of the past. Few are connected with his performances. He cannot understand the duplicity with which people admire strength on one hand, and then knock his sport. He finds it incongruous that some sportswriters laud other athletes for their strength, yet look down their noses at athletes who perform in Norb's kind of arena.
He laughs at Wilt Chamberlain being touted for his strength. "Someone said that Wilt could lift 450 pounds over his head. I doubt that he could lift 250. As for his lifting a Volkswagen, that's a kiddy car. He's not really strong in the field of strength, though he may be strong for a basketball player."
"Willie Horton (Detroit Tigers outfielder) is always talked of as being so strong. He and little Ray Oyler collided. It was Horton who was knocked to the ground. Why do they thrive on being strength athletes, when they really aren't?"
Not that Norb wants to thrive on being a strength athlete, or a strongman of note. "These things get out of hand. Once I lifted, or tilted, a spool weighing 2,000 pounds. Well, what I really did, some guy figured out, was lift maybe 500 pounds." There is a stigma attached to his sport. "A lifter is always expected to lift this, lift that. Someone is always wanting me to try something, even something as simple as tearing apart the plastic that holds a six-pack of pop cans together. Why do I have to prove anything? The proof, as I see it, came during the competition."
When he wasn't competing, however, and though it cost him and he got no money, he was asked to, and gave countless exhibitions at YMCA's. Boys Clubs, schools, colleges, even prisons. "I'd be the only guy to give an exhibition. The others, the professionals, would do nothing and get their 500 bucks. I'd do something and get nothing. Then they're (the professional athlete) always put on a pedestal."
"An amateur," Norb bluntly stated as he continued, "is considered an athletic bum, an unpaid bum. You can't get recognition because you can't get money, and yet your achievements are greater. In lifting, what is there is verified. It's not bullcrap (like the Wilt Chamberlain story). There isn't any money, so the majority has to come out of your own pocket. If you don't work, you have to be a bum. To be an amateur, you have to be one."
"What is lifting weights if it isn't work? One time I figured it out and I'd lifted enough weight to lift the Queen Mary. As far as work, I've done my traveling early. I can work the rest of my life." Norb went on to say that he had worked and supported a family. At times he was out of a job because he chose to compete. On occasion he took time off, without pay, to compete; and when he was out of work that kind of publicity ballooned and became more important than his sport and his lifts.
Because of incidents like this, Norb, for all his victories and world records, does not spew out fond memories. "The good things? There aren't any. The worst part of competing was coming home." In spite of words like this, which are often reason enough for him to be misunderstood, there were good things. Most were connected with lifting accomplishments, but few good thoughts were concerned with the evils with which Norb has been upset for years.
Blunt, outspoken, honest, filled with a satiric candor, Schemansky has had words about the Michigan AAU, the Olympics and officialdom. At times, Norb is an anomaly, a man of contradiction. He appears to disdain recognition, yet he feels he should have it for what he has done. And he should. He doesn't seem to care openly that he is not in the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, yet he and many others do not understand why he isn't. It is unfortunate that he is not judged on his achievements and merits, which are overwhelmingly better than a speedskater who entered the Michigan Hall of Fame after winning one gold medal. Maybe instead of lifting the equivalent of the Queen Mary, he should have skated the equivalent of the Atlantic Ocean. Norb, also, does not care to display his still 20-inch biceps, though he has them. Yet he entered the Mr. Michigan contest and didn't mind an article which described his body from head to toe. In typical Schemansky fashion, he reacted, "It was something good, wasn't it?"
He questions and is suspicious of "higher-ups" and some writers. The article, "Looking For a Lift," published in Sports Illustrated in 1966 was not what Norb expected it to be. "It wasn't the story of a champion, was it?" It was about a champion, but the treatment was intended to ignore his accomplishments and concentrate on his lack of work and Jack Katchmar's futility about Norb's lack of attention. Norb mentioned another example of a writer's inaccuracy. "When I first started lifting, I told a sports writer: "Why does a guy golf? Because he's buggy about golf." So the next day, the headline came out: "Golfers Are Buggy."
"Getting hooked" on lifting, as Norb once described, is not entirely accurate, either, of why he began and continued. Schemansky explained it simply enough: "It's human achievement. Records are there to be broken. You do it because of you, yourself."
Some men play gold, some play fastball, others prefer to put the shot, and still others prefer to climb mountains, or whatever form their enthusiasm takes. Norb lifted weights longer and with more consistent excellence than any other heavyweight in history; longer than Vlasov, who Norb inspired; longer than Anderson or Davis or Hepburn, during a career which found him competing in four Olympics.
Each time he won a medal: a gold, a silver, bronze twice. In addition Norb has been World Champ three times, which is like adding three more gold medals. Never has he finished lower than third in international competition. He won nine national titles, set about 26 world records, collected roughly 300 trophies, and by "giving them a couple of arm shots," collected one blue ribbon.
Continued in Part Two.
Enjoy Your Lifting!
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