'Dan Gable: This is Your Life' was terrific

CORALVILLE -- The event feting the life and times of amateur wrestling legend Dan Gable Friday at FRY Fest was very well done.

It wasn't overly sentimental, but it sure had a lot of feeling. A host of wrestling dignitaries, as well as former Iowa athletic director Bump Elliott and football coach Hayden Fry, were panelists who helped celebrate Gable's career and personality.

How great it is to give people their due while they can still enjoy it. Gable was surrounded by people who influenced him and vice versa. Video tributes from Frank Gifford and former Iowa men's basketball coach Lute Olson added to the program.

What struck me most, though, is the sincere and total respect shown Gable by his former wrestlers who have gone on to good things themselves in and out of the sport, people like Wisconsin head coach Barry Davis, current Iowa head coach and assistant coach Tom and Terry Brands, Mark Ironside and Chuck Yagla. Dr. Mitch Kelly, an associate professor in the College of Education at Iowa, spoke at the event. He walked on to Gable's program in the 1980s, worked his way up from the lowest man on the team's totem pole into someone who won a key match as a senior in a dual against Iowa State, and credits Gable as the biggest influence on his life outside of his family.

There were a lot of laughs (wrestling people don't come with filters, and can laugh at themselves), and there was a lot of passion. Passion about wrestling and about life itself.

One of the highlights, in my opinion, was when 30-year U.S. congressman Jim Leach sat with Gable and offered some observations. Leach was a state champion wrestler himself in 1960 at Davenport High School. Leach, now the chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, is a longtime friend of Gable's. Forget the politics. This nation sorely needs more statesmen like Leach, someone who uses intelligence, eloquence, and civility to make his points.

"Sports has a vastly higher ethic than politics," Leach said. "There's no such thing as an athletic directyor who would hire a coach who says he doesn't respect the opponent.

"In sports, you have referees. In football you get a flag if you clip someone. In basketball, fouls are called. Wrestling has referees. In politics, there are very few rules and no referees. There are conflicts of interest. People are rewarded for being negative. The playing field is tilted. In wrestling, the mat is level.

"There's no more equalitarian place in the world than a wrestling mat. Everybody's equal and nobody can hide. There's something about wrestling that brings out a discipline that doesn't exist elsewhere."

Then Leach spoke about his friend.

"I think a new word should be introduced to Mr. Webster: Gableism. It's a noun. It means a competitive ethic, competition done the right way."

He said Gable has a soft side, and suggested we need more of that from our political leaders. "Toughness, but also some softness in the right way."

Here are some more photos I quickly snapped off at the event. The baseball bat is autographed by Derek Jeter, Gable's favorite team since boyhood.