The Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame, Part 2

 In the last entry, I had made my way into the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and was mingling with a crowd of barrel-chested men, as well as their families. Not being a barrel-chested man myself, there was no doubt I wasn’t going to fit in here, and that was pretty much case. The people that I did talk with were pleasant enough, but they knew and I knew I wasn’t exactly an amateur wrestling fanatic. 

I did strike up a conversation with a man who had the image of two wrestlers, one behind the other, with the wrestler in front seemingly on his hands and knees, and suddenly I found myself understanding how the Iowa Supreme Court could allow gay marriage—if one of the big sports in a state is two men grappling with each other for several minutes, that state isn’t going to be too grossed out by the idea gay sex. Also, didn’t the Greeks used to wrestle each other in the nude?

After mingling a bit, I sat at a table populated mostly by ex-wrestlers, but also by a couple named Mike and Bev Chapman, who publish a magazine called the Iowa History Journal (http://www.iowahistoryjournal.com/). There’s no other way to describe Mike Chapman other than to say he loves Iowa more than anyone else I’ve talked with. It’s not an arrogant type of love, either, where he believes that Iowa is the greatest state in the union, bar none. It’s the type of love that would inspire a man to go out and track down Miss Iowa from 1954 and 1956, who also went on to become Miss USA and Miss Universe, to interview her about her reign and what she had been doing since (marrying a Texas oil baron). To even have the capacity for those kinds of facts reveals a lot about a person.

Somewhere during this time, the meal was served. A thick pork chop, corn, salad, rolls and some kind of tort. I could go on for a bit about how I’ve had more and better food for the price tag, but I overheard some of the other diners rave about the food, and two things struck me. First, this was a meal that probably many an Iowa farmboy has sat down to over the years. Second, I was definitely not the target audience for the dinner. It’s obvious in retrospect—you have Iowa wrestlers from the northeast corner of the state coming to be at this induction ceremony, an area that is chock full of farms. What better way to honor the wrestlers of the region than by serving up a meal that could just as easily have come from the kitchen of their home? It was kind of nice if you considered it that way.

And then, the ceremony. I listened to the first inductee, one Bob Buzzard, talk about his experience wrestling in Iowa, and how his father trained him over the years in a way that would either make a great movie training montage or an incident report to Child Services. As he talked, I thought about what this meant. The people that were here for the induction ceremony had a love for amateur wrestling that would put some of the most die-hard Trekkies to shame. They more or less dedicated their lives to the sport, dragging their wives around with them wherever they went as they wrestled, coached other wrestlers, and in some cases tried out for international teams. Then, long after those days, they came to Cresco to be remembered. On one hand, it seemed futile. How can you put in all that time, all that effort, year after year, only to eventually give it all up? On another level, I felt sad for these people. They had dedicated their lives to this sport. Not for fame, and definitely not for money. Most people don’t get that kind of clarity in their lives, and if they do they usually devote it toward something like becoming rich or famous or making some technological or scientific discovery. Then there were the men who had devoted their lives to wrestling. It seemed like the crowd should be bigger, somehow. That the kind of effort the hall of famers put forth should be acknowledged, if nothing else.