Because of the pandemic and that stagnant period of time before vaccines were available, I (like most people) suffer from an affliction where I occasionally find it difficult to differentiate between the year 2020 and 2021. For nearly seventeen months, The Stark Center, as a physical space, was closed to the general public as well...
Year: 2021
“Big Ricky” Comes to The Stark Center and Other New Artifacts
Last month, The Stark Center opened a new exhibit featuring sculptures by David Deming and Michael Deming. It’s called Degrees of Fitness / Sporting Bodies; if this is the first you’ve heard about it, click the title for more detailed information about the exhibit. I highly encourage everyone to make a trip to The Stark...
Rogue Fitness Honors Terry Todd with Documentary Premiering at Austin Film Festival
The H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports announces the premier and theatrical release of The Commissioner of Power, a feature-length documentary about the life and work of Terry Todd, Ph.D. Todd was the founder (with his wife, Jan) of the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center in the College of Education and taught in...
A Surprise Gift from Artist David Deming
For 15 years renowned artist David Deming and I shared The Forty Acres—as we call UT’s main campus—but our paths never crossed. Deming was in the Art Department teaching sculpture, then serving as chair of the department, and finally as Dean of The College of Fine Arts until he moved back to his hometown in...
STRONGMAN PROJECT Celebrates the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo by Looking Back at the Golden Age of American Weightlifting
According to weightlifting historian John Fair, the Golden Age of American Weightlifting was defined as the period from 1945 to 1960. It was a time when American athletes regularly populated the podiums of international weightlifting competitions. In fact, counting from the Paris World Championships in 1946 through the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, the United...
Celebrate Juneteenth with Mark Henry at The Strongman Project
In celebration of tomorrow’s Juneteenth holiday, I’ve published a new Feature over at The Strongman Project all about the life and strength career of Mark Henry. In a 2009 blog post titled “Broad Shoulders,” Terry Todd explains his detailed method for accurately measuring the width of Mark Henry’s shoulders. In the post’s final sentence, he...
Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month with Tommy Kono
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which provides an opportunity for our nation to pay tribute to the many Asian and Pacific Islanders who enriched America’s history and established its future prosperity. In celebration of AAPI Heritage Month, I highly recommend that everyone check out Indomitable: The Tommy Kono Story, an on-line exhibit produced by...
The Terry Todd “Special Issue” of Iron Game History
Since we began Iron Game History in 1990, we’ve dedicated a full issue of Iron Game History to one person as a memorial tribute on several rare occasions. The last person to be so honored, in fact, was Olympic weightlifting gold medalist Tommy Kono whose life is detailed in a special double issue of IGH...
Photographs from the Anna Hiss Collection
This week at The Stark Center, I’ve been thinking a lot about the history of women’s fitness and physical activity here on The Forty Acres. On Wednesday night, we were fortunate to host the University’s distinguished Tower Fellows. After our director, Jan Todd, addressed the visitors and told them about how the Stark Center was...
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