How great to get the copy of THE GIRONDA NEWSLETTER. Thanks a lot!

Reading through it sure brings back pleasant memories (The gym was green back then, with lots of spots on the floor). And a spider bench, do you remember the spider bench? Without question the best curl bench I ever used.

Bruce Chastain was working there, and then Bill Kugler. Great guys. Bill Smith, Ray Routledge, Larry and Dave, Jack LaLanne in the mornings with his dog, George Hamilton in that damned white car of his. Clint Eastwood. Other faces I remember, but names I forget. Russ Warner.

The towel curl. Did you invent the towel curl? Chuck Hicks! John Tristram. Glen somebody…

And all over it that half-cigar you never smoked, and friend, the real concern, the care and the personal involvement you had for everybody in the place. I remember your telling me how when you were young you used to drive cows from Burbank to North Hollywood and never crossed a paved road. Does anybody live upstairs now?

I wish all gym and fitness people could just take one workout in your gym. We’d have better people, I know (You were right, then…I never forgot it: You told me a gym can have the most expensive equipment but it’s who’s in charge that really counts. HOW TRUE THAT IS).

I know you consider yourself as hard as iron and sometimes nasty. Do you still yell about form…across the gym? Are there enough lockers in the back? Do you still toss a caber? (I do…back behind my house. 20-25 feet max.) (Great technique play for quarterbacks!)

Vince, along with David Ogilvy and Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill, you are a hero of my life.

God bless you always.

Bob Kleinnermann

(MuscleMag, December 1983)