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The big weightDate: 24.01.2007
Posted by: Anabolic Info Team United States
Physical Culture collection goes uptown in north end zone.
The University of Texas campus has statues of U.S. presidents, a Roman goddess, Confederate generals, a Heisman Trophy winner, a football coach and a trial lawyer.
Hardly anywhere is there mention of a man who was instrumental in the early development of the school and one of its proudest traditions, the Longhorn football team.
That will change when the Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sport opens in Royal-Memorial Stadium in time for the first football game this fall.
The 27,000-square-foot center was made possible by a $3.5 million pledge from the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation in Orange. It's part of the $176.5 million stadium north end zone project that will add premium seating and push the capacity at Royal-Memorial above 90,000 when completed in 2008.
The Stark center, which will be part of UT's kinesiology department, is a labor of love for UT professors Jan and Terry Todd, so much so that they've sold their ranch on the oak-lined banks of the San Marcos River and are moving to South Austin to cut their commute and concentrate on the center.
Todd, a former UT tennis player and weightlifting and powerlifting champion, began collecting weight training materials in 1956. Eventually, the Todds built the largest archive in the world in the field of physical fitness, strength training and bodybuilding.
For years, their Todd-McLean collection, which included everything from scholarly works to early muscle magazines and historic dumbbells, was shoehorned into the old, out-of-the-way Anna Hiss gym on the UT campus. Space became even more cramped as the Todds continued to acquire collections.
Terry Todd said recent additions include materials from the late Abbye "Pudgy" Stockton, one of the first female bodybuilders and a star performer at California's Muscle Beach scene in the 1940s, the "Belle of the Barbell" as the New York Times recently called her. Another acquisition is a 16,000-volume golf collection of the late Dallas businessman and UT graduate Edmund Hoffman.
"It will be somewhat museum-like and somewhat library-like," Todd said. "We'll have revolving displays. We have artifacts and quite a bit of art."
Todd said one of the features will be a large reading room where students and others can stop in and look at current magazines and recently published books. It's among the additions, such as a food court, aimed at making the north end zone complex a student-friendly place beyond game days.
Todd said it's fitting that the new center will bear Stark's name.
Stark was many things to the University of Texas. According to Todd, he was one of the first devotees of weightlifting there.
Stark originally arrived on the UT campus an overweight, overprotected heir of an East Texas lumber fortune. In 1910, when he was a senior, Stark was the student manager of the UT football team. There was no athletic director in those days so it was Stark who drew up the schedule, arranged the travel and shooed reporters off the sidelines. Stark also bought the team blankets with the Texas Longhorns name and a logo on it, which was how a nickname for the Varsity finally stuck.
Todd said that in 1913 Stark went to Philadelphia to train with Alan Calvert, whose Milo Barbell Co. had become the nation's first barbell manufacturer in 1902.
"That was the center of weightlifting and he came back quite a bit lighter and stronger and a believer in weight training. He did it for a long, long time," Todd said of Stark.
Beginning in 1919, Stark served six four-year terms on UT's board of regents. He spearheaded the campaign to build Memorial Stadium, donating $100,000 for the project. In the Saturday Evening Post in 1937, the "Angel of the Longhorns" acknowledged also handing out that much money in loosely collected loans to UT athletes, including such stars as Clyde Littlefield and Bohn Hilliard.
Stark was rumored to be behind the firing of three Texas football coaches, and he pushed for the hiring of D.X. Bible for the 1937 season for what as considered a scandalous sum at that time, $15,000. Bible revived Texas football fortunes but removed Stark from his customary seat on the Longhorn bench, sending him up into the stands with the words, "No team can have two quarterbacks."
Stark died in 1965 but had established the Stark Foundation in 1961 for public charitable and educational purposes.
Todd said the nicer, more prominent digs in the planned Stark center should help in attracting more material.
"I think more people will say this is a good place for this collection to go," Todd said.
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