(Eric with traveling group - he is on right.)Chapter 15
Dr. Hughes was born on 9/1/23. He competed in high school gymnastics in 1936 at Victoria, B.C., and also at the Victoria Y.M.C.A. Eric went to college at the University of Illinois where he was coached by the great Hartley D. Price. College was interrupted by WWII, and he enlisted in Canada (R.C.A.F.) as a pilot. After the war, Eric traveled with a touring acrobatic group called the The Aristocrats of Balance. He also participated in track and cross country as well as gymnastics. Graduated from the University of Illinois, he then was a teaching assistant at that university for a year and a half as he finished his Masters Degree. Eric then taught at Bemidji State Teachers College in Bemidji, MN. from 1948-1950. He was hired to coach hockey! (Remember - he is Canadian.) He started the gymnastics program there, and also was an assistant coach of the Men's Football Team.
(Eric with traveling group - he is on right.)
He went to U.W. in 1950 for their doctorate program and started a children's program. Eric started the U.W. men's team which was officially recognized as a major sport at the university in 1956. His team won the National A.A.U. Championship in 1968 and 1969 and took second in the N.C.A.A championships in 1965. Some of the more accomplished U.W. men who Eric influenced were Charley Denny, Mauno Nissinen, Yoshi Hayasaki, Sho Fukushima, Mel Cooley, and Steve Wejmar.
He served as Vice President of the National Association of College Gymnastics Coaches and was selected Western Coach of the Year in 1963 and 1965. He was Pacific Northwest 
A.A.U. Gymnastics Chairman from 1954 to 1963. Eric was Vice-Chairman of the N.A.A.U. Gymnastics Committee and a member of the National Technical Committee. In 1961 he was the coach of the U.S. team that toured Czechoslovakia, Poland and the USSR. In 1966 He took the Husky Club on a tour of Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In 1968 he took them to Asia. He was manager of the 1972 Olympic Men's Gymnastics Team.
Eric was one of the founders of Gym Kamp and he held coaches' clinics and invitationals. Two books, Gymnastics for Men and Gymnastics for Girls, plus numerous articles were written by Dr. Hughes.
In 1973, he was inducted into the Helms Gymnastics Hall of Fame. Eric is a U.W. Hall of Fame inductee, and he was inducted into the first USAG WA. Hall of Fame 2002.
From interview with Eric Hughes by Lee Bjella 3-5-02
In conversation with Eric about Hartley Price-his coach at Ill. Champlain -Urbana:
"My education was split by the 2nd World War. I started there in 1940. nd he was there. The war came along and he went into the service before I did. I went into the Canadian service. Then I got discharged before he did. He was in there a long while. So I got in after him and discharged before him. I came back (to college) in '45. He wasn't back yet - he came back about a year after that."
On other notable gymnasts personalities of his era:
"Chet Phillips coached at the Naval Academy when I started coaching here.(UW) Joe Giolombardo never went beyond the high school coaching. West - I used this a lot too." (Talking about 3 books I brought to show him. Leopold Zwarg's Apparatus and Tumbling Exercises; Price, Keeney, Giallombardo, Phillips Gymnastics and Tumbling; and Wilbur West's The Gymnastics Manual.)
"Leslie Judd - he's a famous old coach. Judd turned out a lot of guys. A lot of his students went on to be gymnasts and gymnastics coaches. Zwarg - the first book I used more that any other, then the Naval Book and then West."
The summer of 1948: He was working on tour with a gymnastics act; "we were booked in WA. State some, in BC, in Alberta. Most of our work had been in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Wisconsin, all of the states right around there. But because I was from the West Coast, I asked our agent can you book us out west? He booked us in several shows in WA. State, B.C. and Alberta. I had made arrangements to stop at Bemidji for my interview on my way back to finish the summer. I was interviewed by the president of the college there - Sattgast. He hired me right on the spot." He was at Bemidji State Teachers College for 2 years. That fall he met his first wife. They were married in Bemidji in the summer of 1950. Her last name was Rossbach - her father was full German and mother was full blooded Indian. She was from the Red Lake Indian Reservation near Bemidji. (This is where the author went to college for a P.E. degree and was on the Women's Gymnastics Team, but never heard of Eric until coming to Washington.)
He loves to canoe, and was very good at it, winning many races and in 2003, he still teaches at a Seattle club. He raced professionally. One race was 712 miles from Bemidji (the beginning of the Mississippi River) to the end of the Mississippi River, in which he won $2,000. His income from a year teaching at the college was $3,000! He also coached the B.S.T.C. hockey team the two years he was there. When I asked him, amazed, what he knew about hockey, he turned and looked at me and said, "Well I was born in Canada!". Eric and his wife left Minnesota after the 1950 summer session and he started at U.W. in the fall. (Hated the deer flies in Bemidji.)
Here is a good place to tell the story about Eric's first weekend at U.W. He went and looked at the equipment and noticed the vaulting horse was the old fashioned kind that had one end that went up. It wasn't a regulation vaulting horse. "So I came back down, with a saw, pulled back the leather covering on the end, cut off the end of the horse, and sewed the leather back down, nice and firm. The next morning he got a call from a very angry Russ Cutler who said "What did you do to my vault!?." Eric laughs when telling this because Russ was so mad. Eric says he told him he was just making it legal.
"At the U.W. in 1950 - The men's program was not a competitive program. It was just a club. Boys and girls were separated in those days. The girls were up in Hutchinson Hall and the boys were down in the Pavilion. Once the club got started, there were a bunch of girls up in the Hutchinson who really wanted to come down, so I said, "Hey! We'll have a co-ed night one night a week. Come on down." Tuesday night or whatever. And we had a pretty good co-educational group going there for a while there and then Ruth Wilson who was the head of Women's P.E. saw my boss, Russ Cutler. (The guy who really flew into a rage when I cut up the horse.) She came down and saw him and she said, "One of your instructors has our girls down in your gym! Men don't know how to teach women. Boy, you stop this right away." So he called me into the office and he chewed me out something awful. I could tell he was just trying to hold back a laugh - he could hardly hold it back. I had to stop the women. We did get approval sometime later. But I don't know how that came about. Where I proved to them I know the difference between a man and a woman."
"We actually competed in the spring of '51. But I entered about 3 or 4 guys in a YMCA meet. And that was the 1st competition. Gymnastics was much more common in B.C. in the '50's than here, and we went up to B.C. and entered a couple of meets up there. That was probably 1952. It was still a club. It wasn't that organized back then so they weren't officially called a student club. A group of students who wanted to do something just started and formed a group. I don't think we ever signed papers and became an official student club. 1955 or '56, Harvey Cassell was the athletic Dirctor- he established it as a minor sport. (There were major and minor sports in those days.) Three years later we raised to the status of Major sport. I started the program, they called me the "father of UW gymnastics program"! They dropped for financial reasons, some men's sports about the time of Title IX. I think it was about 1980. That it was officially dropped. Jim Holt came in. I resigned as coach two years before it was dropped, but stayed on as a P.E. teacher. My assistant '78-'79 was Dick Foxall. (Eric was on leave but still was listed as head coach.) He took over and coached for two years. Then he went to Eastern Montana. And then he went to Oregon. Jim Holt was a Washington State Gymnast and Tacoma Lincoln High School gymnast. He had come over here and had been helping Dick Foxall as a volunteer. And when the program was dropped he said, Hey - let's just keep turning out."
On Augie Auernheimer.
"He was my office partner when I first came to the U. He was an old Turnverein man. And was quite elderly when I came, probably in his 60's. He was the oldest guy in the department. He retired right after I came - 1 or 2 years later. He knew something about gymnastics. The Turners were the best there was around in those days. But it was pretty much all East."
On the 1932 Olympics:
"It was kind of a farce, the '32 Olympics. Were held in the U.S. and the host country could throw in events and I think there were only 4 entries and the host country decided to hold tumbling as an event. There were 3 US participants and 1 from somewhere else. This was in L.A. Americans won, I think, two out of the three medals. The foreigner picked up one of the medals, and our other guy was 4th."
On George Lewis:
" George Lewis was born in Montana and spent just about all his life in Seattle. (George) went to Roosevelt High School. He took over as a volunteer coach at the Seattle "Y". When I came in 1950 I was just trying to get organized at the U, new job, working on my doctorate program, and everyone said you've got to meet George Lewis. You and George Lewis are exactly the same. I just didn't have time. About three months later, finally I met George. We became friends and kind of worked together. I kept getting calls at the University from parents. And I started my boys' children's program on Saturday. "Can't you take girls?" "No, I'm not allowed to have girls in my gym." Every week I got two calls, I'll bet you, so I finally talked to George. I asked if he could have girls in his program down at the "Y". He said "sure I can have girls." Why don't you kind of specialize in girls and I'll work with the boys and we'll get both boys and a girls program going." This is about the time that Eric wrote an article on George called "George Switches To Girls."(Possibly for the WA. State Bulletin).
On girls gymnastics:
"Women's gymnastics was very new. And anyone like George with a good gymnastics knowledge - well his girls got better than anyone else's girls so fast! One National Championship his girls took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd and 5th in the all-around in a National Championship meet! He took 4 out of the 5 top places in the all-around. They won the National YMCA Championships year after year. They won the team championship of that - quite a few years. This would have been in the '60's or '70's. Joyce Tanac, Dale McClements (Kephart), Carol Camp, Lona Woodard, Cleo Carver and then there was a girl who could have been the best of them all. Even better than Dale and Joyce, but she couldn't quite stick to it. She would come and go. Laurel Anderson (Tindall) was a little after these girls. Carolyn Pingatore was in that group. She is still around. She works for Albert Rossilini, former governor of the state who still has a business going of some type. I talk to Ping every once in a while."
On creating the gymnastics program at UW:
"Paul Smith was here, he came about one year before I did and had a gymnastics background from the Southern Illinois University Carbondale. I think Hubie Dunn went to Southern Ill. I think Paul was younger than Hubie but I think they knew each other at Southern Ill. Paul taught gymnastics classes, but didn't seem to have the drive to start an actual gymnastics program. And when I came, I did have that drive. That was one of the things that I wanted to do."
"I started one at Bemidji, and I started one here. (Russ Cutler was his boss.) Augie was in the men's P.E. department at the time. They had gymnastics classes but no after school program of any type. (Eric was the only coach. Cutler was the P.E. Dept. head.) Athletics and P.E. at the University were never the same department. Intramurals came under P.E. Intramurals is now a separate unit but it was a division of Physical Education then and for many, many years. But Athletics and P.E. have always been separate at the U. And of course there isn't any P.E. anymore. They were always at loggerheads. There was no love lost between the two departments. Whenever there are two separate programs headed by two separate people and they have to use the same facilities - we want it for our classes and they want it for their sports practice. There's bound to be conflict."
"I started the children's program which I got paid for. On Saturday mornings and that actually mushroomed into one night a week. I had my better kids (boys only). Then there was enough pressure that I also started a girls program up in Hutchinson, but I didn't teach it myself. The first person I hired for that was....I had three different women. The girls program was run just like I ran my boys program. I was the coordinator for it because I was on the faculty and it was run through the University Extension program."
"Carol Eisner was a medium good gymnast. Good dancer - she actually went to the ripe old age like in her 30's to New York to become a professional dancer. Linda Rodella Luna was a good gymnast. She ran my program for me - the girls program - for years and years. But I had two prior to her."
On Balance Rails:
"They had about 15 of those in Hutchinson Hall. When I started the girls program, I went up on another Saturday morning and I bolted a 2x4 down the top of a balance rail to make it the correct width."
"There was also a boom which was a round timber that was usually against the wall of the gym and one end could swing out and be fastened with cables. This boom could be raised and lowered on the two uprights."
On Girls at U.W. -the early program:
"They were not a team, they were a club. It was not recognized by the U.W. as a team. It was somewhere in between "Play Days" that women used to have - they weren't allowed to compete as a team against other Universities. But 
four or five U's might get together on a Saturday and have a Play Day. That era and where woman's athletics are now. The UW did not recognize them as a team, but somehow through the woman's P.E. Department, they competed representing the U. They were not a team in the Athletic Dept."
On his recreational teams:
"Saturday mornings we had shirts that specified their levels. If they completed the first quarter they automatically got a UW Beginner shirt. They were advanced by ability. We had Junior, and Intermediate, and then Advance and finally when I started my evening program and had the older kids, they could earn a Leader shirt. I used them to assist in my classes. They got their classes free for assisting with the Saturday morning classes."
Eric's son Kip, was gymnast but not for the U. He ended up coaching for a while then moved away.
(Picture at left Eric with his Exhibition Group in Bemidji, MN. Eric is on the bottom.)
Eric went to Bemidji State Teacher College (later Bemidji State University) in Bemidji, Minnesota. Eric was head Hockey coach, and
assistant Football coach. He started the gymnastics program and a traveling exhibition team.
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Eric in air |
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Rae Rossbeck -(Eric's future wife) Eva Kuznia Joyce Ajkelin Mary Spillone Jean Sanberg Glenn Hymer Bruce Jamieson Harold Westby Ed Slovag Bill Carlson Rollo Buck |
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Eric is middle bottom, and Rae is the lady on his right.
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Rae and Jack Dempsey at BSC |
Football Program, 1948 -Eric coach 2nd from top |
Eric starting canoe race from mouth of Mississippi River to Gulf of Mexico. Eric and partner won. Eric said he earned more in that race $2000 than he did teaching and coaching at BSC that school year! Notice Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox in background. This is in Bemidji. |
Eric coach of BSC Hockey Team. Eric is on right in 2nd row. |
