Claude was very focused on athletics. Some notable facts:
As a youth in Altadena, CA Claude anointed himself in wintergreen oil and threw a barbell like a discus up the driveway like a Greek Olympian.
As a youth in Pasadena he used to run home after school every day. At a young age he ran a 5 minute mile. He liked swimming in the ocean and got way too much sun in his younger years.
He practiced punting footballs for hours, sometimes at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena. He was a student of LeRoy Mills. “In 1932 Mills, a pipe-smoking former punter for Princeton, wrote Kicking the American Football, the first full-length book on the subject. It was Mills, in fact, who coined the phrase “coffin corner” to describe the sideline inside an opponent’s 10, an area where the opposition could effectively be buried.”
He was a gymnast and could work on the pommel horse. He could walk on his hands. Several times he’d walk on his hands and his keys would fall out of his pants pocket. Steve saw a home movie of him walking the length of a high dive board on his hands and then doing a somersault dive into the pool.
He was a boxer and competed at 135 lbs in a golden gloves tournament in Pasadena in 1949. Rosemary told her brother Steele that Claude was fighting and Steele was very upset because he erroneously thought the Golden Gloves were a brass knuckles tournament.
He held a St. Louis city swimming record for his age group in a short freestyle race.
In New Jersey, he used to run in the neighborhood and in the winter he ran laps in the living room. He also would play football with the neighborhood kids, playing QB for both sides. once there was a kid playing with us who claimed to be the cousin of OJ Simpson.
When we lived in Crestwood he immersed himself into a project formulating a new metric for baseball players. It involved all their offensive statistics that he compiled in a different way to give a better picture of their effectiveness. He put a lot of time and effort into it. He also had an interest in the Strong men throughout history as well as Pro wrestling and big game hunting. We always had a subscription to Sports Illustrated, Sporting News, and Sports Afield.
At age 50 without practice he could throw a football with perfect spiral in a line drive for 30 yards.
He was a great student and player of golf. Jack Nicklaus was a favorite as he was great even though he had small hands and needed his wife to help open jars in the house. He was also a big fan of Lee Trevino. Dad scored rounds close to par and was elated when he scored birdies.
Some feats of strength:
- In 1959 he took a 100 lb. dumbbell to Nebraska. He could press it over his head with his right arm. So could Grandfather George when he was 60 years old.
- He practiced the technique of tearing phone books and I saw him tear a thick phone book in half.
- He could hang from a pole sideways.
He had a repertoire of tricks that he did with his stomach, where it looked like his abs turned into ropes, and then a smooth wave action commenced.
He shared his love of athletics with Steve and Scott, coaching little league, and spending many hours throwing baseballs and going to the driving range to hit golf balls. He gave us practice and tips so we played on the Lutheran High South golf team. He took us to St. Louis Cardinal pro football games and we got to see the players emerge from the dressing room on their way to the bus. We were in awe of how huge the players were and how thick their necks were. He took us to the last baseball Cardinal’s game at Sportsman Park in 1966.
Growing up in California he was exposed to bodybuilding at a young age, and wanted 18″ arms. He was a disciple of Joe Weider and admired Arnold Schwarzenegger. He trained a young man Jim who was an aspiring body builder. Jim entered the Mr. St. Louis contest and Claude helped prepare him by shaving upper body hair and liberally applying oil to better show off his physique.