Minnesota Memories: Diving and jumping: athletics, Duluth-style
December 26, 2011 at 6:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
In the east end of Duluth, near 61st Avenue and Superior Street, is Lester Park, with a beautiful, winding river, large boulders and deep pools of water ideal for swimming and diving. Then we lived in a big, two-story house at 1105 N. 51st Ave. E.
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I can relatate to both of these wonderful stories: When i lived at 5817 Tioga street in Lester Park, back in the 40′s and early 50′s, I remember hearing my brothers talk about jumping into the ‘deeps’, one summer day a siren was heard going up the 7 bridges road two blocks from our house, my brothers jumped on their bikes and chased after it. An hour later my brothers returned pale-faced and told us they saw the firemen pull their friend’s nude, lifeless body from the water!
As a winter sport the local older boys had built a ski-jump on the east side of the hill which separated the two rivers in the park, they used a roll of snow-fence for the jump structure and packed ‘tons’ of snow above and around it. My oldest brother bought some real jumping skis with cable bindings and double grooves, really fancy. Then we moved to a new house near Chester Bowl. My older brother, having a lot of jumping experience, jumped on the small jump once. I wasn’t there at the time but he told me he learned the meaning of the expression ‘ass-over-tea-kettle.’ He never jumped there again, but he met some good jumpers at the Bowl, Gene Kotlarek was his hero he told me.
I still have tears in my eyes after reading the story of the 10 year old boy who moved away never to jump competitively again. How wonderful of the older guys to ‘take him under their wings’ and coach him and bend the rules to let him have his ‘day in the sun’!
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