Headshot of Paul Dimeo
December 3, 2012February 12, 2020
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A Historian at the Crossroads of History

In early September 2012, Dr. Paul Dimeo, arrived at the Stark Center on the University of Texas campus.  Dimeo, a professor and sport historian from the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland, has been visiting UT as a Fulbright Scholar, and he has been using the archives available at the Stark Center and surrounding areas. “I wanted to come [to Texas] specifically because I had already been working with Dr. Hunt…It’s also the kind of information and archives that are available here [at the Stark Center],” said Dimeo.  “It’s probably the best anywhere for what I’m interested in doing.” Dimeo...

November 30, 2012April 19, 2023
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Basketball and American Culture: A Special Symposium featuring Bill Bradley

NBA Hall of Fame member and former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley said it best.  “[Basketball] is the gift that never stops giving.  The game is full of great joy and a great memory.  It needs to be celebrated.” As part of the campus-wide celebration, “The Naismith Rules of Basket Ball”, Bradley spoke at the November 29th Basketball and American Culture: A Special Symposium, presented by the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center.  Bradley, who was educated at Princeton, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, in addition to his storied basketball career which included a 1964 Olympic Gold Medal and two NBA championships...

November 2, 2012June 9, 2020
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Stark Institute for Olympic Studies Hosts 1968 U.S. Olympic Team Reunion

On Saturday, October 27th, more than 40 Olympians who represented the United States in the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, along with spouses, friends, and family members, arrived in Austin for a special reunion weekend. The reunion was organized by the Stark Center’s Dr. Thomas Hunt, the 1968 US Olympic Team’s reunion coordinator, Tom Lough (1968 Modern Pentathlon) with assistance from Desiree Harguess, and Cindy Slater.   It was a two-day affair and included an extensive program at the Stark Center on Saturday followed by a BBQ lunch. The highlight of the presentation to the Olympians on Saturday was the...

May 16, 2012March 23, 2020
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Iron Game Historians

Until a week ago, here at the Stark Center things had been humming at a higher rate than ever during the spring semester, at least as far as the “doing” of History is concerned. I say that in part because David Webster, Scotland’s venerable chronicler of the strength sports, had been here with us since early January–engaged in research on several projects and especially on a book about the history of wrestling, which he’s coauthoring with his friend and fellow Scot Willie Baxter. (This will be just one of the more-than-30 books written by the indefatigable Webster.) But besides David...

February 13, 2012February 12, 2020
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Another Weider Gift

In 2008, Joe and Betty Weider donated a second million dollars to the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas, and as a way to thank the Weiders for their many contributions to the fields of exercise and health as well as for their financial support to the university, The Joe and Betty Weider Museum of Physical Culture was established within the Stark Center. In addition to the million dollars, the Weiders also gave almost all of their personal art collection relating to the field of physical culture. A small part of that...

November 4, 2011March 23, 2020
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The Weider Museum Documentary

The reception to celebrate the official opening of the Joe and Betty Weider Museum of Physical Culture was private, and only invited guests were allowed to take photographs or to videotape the occasion. Almost 200 professional photographs—taken by several leading photographers including John Balik, the publisher and editor of Iron Man magazine and Robert Gardner, a longtime fashion and sport photographer who also worked for the Weider magazines for decades, are already up on our website [editor’s note: we are working to re-create this page]. As for moving images, the main video team was from MUSL, a group intent on...

July 18, 2011May 28, 2024
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We Give You…The Hackenschmidt Scrapbook

The main point of today’s post is to announce that we have just placed on our Stark Center Research Page a digitized, searchable version of one of our most important documents—the almost 600-page scrapbook owned for decades by George Hackenschmidt, the World Wrestling Champion during the early part of the 20th century. The entire scrapbook is included on our site, and it is very gratifying to the Stark Center team to be able to make this unique artifact available.

May 27, 2011February 12, 2020
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The Stark Center Welcomes NASSH 2011

The H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports is pleased and even a bit proud to have played a role in attracting the annual conference of the North American Society for Sport History to the University of Texas at Austin. Based on the latest projections, approximately 210 sport and physical culture historians will spend three full days in Austin giving papers, hearing papers, attending meetings, and enjoying the fellowship of like-minded folk from North America as well as the wider world beyond. What’s more, quite a few of the people coming to the conference are either coming early...