I noticed there was a special on PBS this evening called "Faded Glory: The Von Erich Story". I've never been a huge wrestling fan but have always been intrigued by its popularity and by the athleticism of some of the wrestlers. When I think of wrestling, I immediately think of the Von Erich's. They are probably the most athletic of all professional wrestlers. And, they grew up here in the local area so I was even more interested to learn about their lives. I had seen portions of this show before so I thought I would tune in and see if I could catch the rest of it. I tuned in late so I didn't get to watch the whole thing but I did find it interesting.
First of all, I learned that the funeral for David Von Erich was held at our church, First Baptist Denton, which I did not know before.
I also learned that Fritz Von Erich (the Daddy) held the Conference record for throwing the discus at SMU. Kerry Von Erich was also a world-class discus thrower and competed for the University of Houston. He was scheduled to compete in the Olympics, but that was the year that Jimmy Carter boycotted the Olympics due to political reasons and the USA didn't compete. Kevin Von Erich spoke about this in the TV show and I really liked his comment. He said, "I don't know if Jimmy Carter has ever worn a jock in his life, but he really messed up some people's lives when he boycotted the Olympics."
Another interesting fact that I already knew (but that a lot of people don't realize) was that Kerry Von Erich had a motorcycle accident northwest of Lake Dallas and injured his foot so bad that he had to have about half of it amputated. He spent the last several years of his career wrestling on a prosthetic foot and nobody knew about it. Just goes to show how athletic he actually was.
I have a coworker who has worked at our office at Lewisville Lake since the early '80's and he has told me several stories about the Von Erich boys and how they used to hang out around the lake. One day he showed me the house they grew up in and the location where they found Mike Von Erich's car when he committed suicide near the lake.
Oh, and there last name was actually Adkisson.
Like I said, I've never been a big wrestling fan, but I thought this was interesting. I do remember going to watch one of the Von Erich's wrestle in person when I was about 5 years old at the Van Alstyne High School football stadium. I don't remember which of the brothers it was - all I remember is one of the "bad guys" spitting into the audience when people were trying to get autographs.
Here is a youtube video recap of the show I watched.
I can tie this to hunting after all. I will leave you with this picture. This is from the bunkhouse at the deer lease this past season. This was Friday Night Smack Down featuring "The Irish Assassin", "Mad Dog Magee", and an unidentified masked man thought to be "The Mysterious, Crazy Ernest T. Bass."
