STRENGTH ON THE OUTSIDE COMES ONLY
AFTER STRENGTH ON THE INSIDE

By Peter Vuono

     After being inspired in the late 1950's by George Reeves and Steve Reeves, all I ever wanted to be was strong like my beloved dinosaurs! After receiving a vinyl covered weight set, I trained for hours daily and for decades (50 years in all) and I made only moderate success. I was a state champ in 77 and a North American deadlift champ in 90. For decades, in my classroom, I had a poster on the wall that read,"Strength on the Outside Comes Only After Strength on the Inside".  Olympian Jesse Owens  once said," Awards become corroded and friends gather no rust". Boy, was Jesse right. I never paid attention to the true meaning of the poster and I paid a big price for trying to obtain strength.
    I broke my back, have a severely arthritic knee and shoulder, two bicep ruptures and a quadruple bypass. I'm still in the gym feeding my muscle dysmorphic self; and for what? This is where my pal, teacher Phil Fortin comes in.
    Phil and I taught together at Brockton High. He always had the uncanny ability to make me laugh EVERY time I encountered him.Comedian Victor Borge once said that,"Laughter is the closest distance between two people" and this is what endeared me to Phil. He was like this with EVERYONE!
   As life went by, Phil encountered huge difficulties. He suffered through two hip replacements, a triple bypass and he also BEAT prostate AND colon cancer!!! His last malady was that he successfully had a brain tumor removed!!  I went to visit Phil in rehab upon his return.His positiveness and jocularity remained in spite of the fact that he had every apparatus including a trachial tube inserted into his tired body. He again made me laugh as if we were back in 1980! Here was a guy exhibiting the kind of strength that I never had  in spite of the fact that he had never lifted a weight in his life!!!
  Phil was always a great coach and teacher and here he taught me a lesson that shines so brightly like a beacon in a dark moonless night. Phil taught me that just maybe, I should have paid a little more attention to what that poster collecting dust in my classroom had said; that "Strength on the Outside comes only After Strength on the Inside".