The Powermen

The 1970s oozed machismo. It was a time when long hair, short shorts and big sunglasses went hand-in-hand with rare meat, American muscle cars and pumping iron. In the early part of the decade, Arnold Schwarzenegger was beginning his reign as Mr. Olympia, while across the country in Columbia County, a group of men in their 20s were beginning a journey of their own in powerlifting — a sport made up of the deadlift, the bench press and the squat.

That journey would take the crew of strongmen from a dingy attic at the Boys Club in Hudson to far away locations such as California, Texas, Canada, Hawaii and London — just to name a few.

The Beginning

What led each of the men to what would become a group called the Columbia County Powermen varies.

For Mike Burch, it was a dedication to fitness that was ingrained in him at a young age — lifting weights and running helped immensely with his asthma.

Dick Tracy and Bob Pendergast were always around the Boys Club and got sucked into the scene.

The biggest of them all, super heavyweight Joe White, started lifting while attending St. Mary’s Academy in Hudson. He bought his first set of weights in 1963.

There were others, as well, with Ed Card — a future bobsled Olympian —, Tommy Howard, and John Bowl becoming just a couple of the many mainstays. Some came and went quickly. Others competed and fared well at a number of events.

The two stars of the team were Burch and White, who would go on to become world-class lifters.

More than 40 years later, Burch remembers the first time he met White.

“I was at the Y in Albany and heard this big ‘boom, boom, boom,’” he said, noting that White was 365 pounds and chiseled. “It’s Joe White coming down the stairs and I ask if I can lift with him. He goes, ‘no, we’re going to be lifting a lot of heavy weight here.’”

Burch, who had been actively competing in weightlifting since attending Rensselaer High School, put 365 pounds on the bar and did 10 reps.

“From there we started the Powermen in 1972 with the Boys Club in Hudson being our main hub,” Burch said.

Pumping Iron

In the attic of the Boys Club — a dingy area with no windows or heat — bars bent, blood flew, men roared and weights slammed to the floor with so much intensity that some of the Powermen feared the floor would give way and weights would crash down to the main level.

“We were up on the third floor and one day I loaded the bar up to 965. Pete Brahm put an extra 25 on one side, so it was up to 990,” White said. “I didn’t notice it until I squatted it and I was lopsided. I couldn’t get the one side back up and dropped it. It busted the supports there and they put me down on the ground floor after that.”

The scene is as foreign today as a telephone booth with most franchise fitness centers not allowing a loud grunt let alone the free-for-all that was going on more than three decades ago.

While it was an intimidating scene, the Powermen were welcoming by all accounts — many new recruits came from a crew that worked with Burch at Niagara Mohawk, where he manned the jack hammer.

“I was just hanging around the Boys Club and they dragged me in,” Tracy said. “I was amazed by what they were doing — 100-pound plates jumping around like nobody’s business. I remember starting out with just one 25-pound plate on each side.”

It was hard for guys like Tracy and others to get their own numbers up since they would be the ones lifting the 100-pound plates onto the bar for White and Burch to lift. Big plates, on and off the bar, over and over.

“By the time we were done with their workout we would go to start mine and Joe would be yelling at me, ‘why can’t you get that up, you did it last week,”” Tracy said. “I just picked up thousands of pounds with his workout. I was spent.”

“Dick would always cry about that, but I’d make him lift it,” White said.

Once technique was learned and weight was gradually added to a bar, pushing up huge numbers came down to a mental battle.

Each lifter had his own method to his madness — a trigger that would send him into another zone and this is where Tracy really came in down the road.

“The psych was a challenge, everyone wanted something different,” he said. “Some needed a pat on the back, others a slap on the face.”

For some it was the Lord, for others it was pain — Tracy remembers one man sticking a 9-volt battery to his tongue before attempting a lift in competition. Others rubbed their forehead on the grit of the bar, sniffed ammonia tabs or stuck a thumbtack in their forehead. One time, Burch remembers needing an extra boost before a lift at a meet in Hudson, so he snapped a number of boards across his forehead that were stacked up in a back room — turns out they were meant for a karate demonstration later that day.

For White, it was as simple as believing in himself.

“I tried getting guys away from that other stuff. I could do anything I wanted if I just believed in myself,” he said. “When I first went to Marist College I had a 1.752 GPA. Twenty years later I went back with a different mindset and had a 3.96 at Columbia-Greene and got my Associate’s degree.”

Tracy got to know each man’s trigger on the team and became something of a powerlifting whisperer.

“I think with my EMT training, Health and Phys Ed training in college, the guys felt at ease with me,” Tracy said. “These guys are on edge, everything has to be perfect, and you have to have all of your ducks in a row at these huge competitions.”

Warm-ups would have to be done at a certain time — not too soon, not too heavy, not too late, not too light. If you suit up and get your knees wrapped too early, you can lose circulation. From the time your name is called in competition, a lifter has 60 seconds to get to the bar and lift. There was no room for error.

Tracy, along with a couple other men, became the go-to behind-the-scenes guys that made everything run smoothly for the lifter.

“I competed in a few meets, judged some and directed some local ones in Germantown and Hudson,” he said. “After a while I did everything behind the scenes to help these guys. I’d tell the judges where to set the bar height; I’d play music for them; coordinate travel. It was a really fun time.”

Heating Up

There’s a difference between the casual weight lifter and the competitor.

The group that made up the Powermen were dedicated, lifting at least three times a week, normally on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Each man had dreams of being named the strongest man in the world.

White’s journey began in high school, but really picked up when he went to Marist College for a year and won his first competition in 1966.

“Being the strongest man in the world has always been my dream,” a 26-year-old Joe White told the Register-Star in 1973. “I remember when I was in grade school I used to daydream in class of doing all kinds of feats of strength and I used to see all the strongman movies, like those starring Steve Reeves.”

By that time White was already a Junior National Champion and a National Powerlifting Champion, with the latter coming a year after starting the Powermen group. The sport was gaining steam across the country and the team from Columbia County was racking up titles along the East Coast.

“We were ranked in the Top 5 in the country at one time,” Burch said. “Me and Joe were the top guys, but we had a few others that would place third or fourth in competition. We put Hudson on the map.”

Pendergast lifted a couple times a week with Tracy before joining the Powermen and got his personal bests up to 420 in the bench, 450 in the deadlift and 400 in the squat. Tracy had personal bests of 365 in the bench, 405 in the squat and 425 in deadlift.

“I always worked out, but this was big time lifting. My first win was at Hudson High School. I still remember it, it was in the bench press competition,” Pendergast said, noting that he didn’t travel with the group, but competed in the local events.

One of Burch’s proudest accomplishments is when he and White won the Brooklyn Open — lifting the most combined weight for a team, just the two of them against seven other full teams.

Winning trophies wasn’t enough, though. They wanted world records.

White was the first to set a world record. In 1975, he squatted 925 pounds to break the record of 914. He was on the hunt to become the first man in the world to squat 1,000 pounds. He did it in practice, but it had to be done in competition to be truly recognized.

What better place to do it than in Hawaii.

Hawaii Record Breakers

There’s still a shroud of controversy hanging over the event that took place in Hawaii more than three decades ago.

White was on pace to become the first man in the world to squat 1,000 pounds in competition and there was no better place to clear the mark than on the picturesque island.

“I opened up with a 940 squat which was a world record right there, but they said that I wasn’t low enough,” White said. “One of the guys had a video camera and showed it to me and I had it.”

In competition, you get three tries. Instead of attempting 940 again, White told them to put on 1,000.

“It was all 45-pound plates and that makes a springy bar,” he said. “I went down three-quarters of the way and the weight got stuck and it threw me off.”

The third time judges gave him two reds and a white. With three judges observing each lift, two have to give a white for the attempt to count. White was disqualified.

“Two of the judges were the wives of two other competitors,” Burch said. “Those two gave him a red. In the squat, your thigh has to break parallel to the floor and sometimes Joe’s thighs were so big it was hard to tell if he broke parallel, even if his butt was almost down to the floor. That time he definitely had it, but they screwed him. He was the first guy to do it in the world in my opinion.”

White has no hard feelings about how it went in Hawaii. He would go on to squat 1,105 pounds with both Burch and Tracy spotting him, but he wasn’t the first man in competition to break the barrier.

“I could have done 1,200. I was doing 1,105 drug free when the world record on drugs was 934,” White said. “The guys spotting me were scared to death and I was the one doing the lifting. It was a lot of weight. Scary weight.”

World Class

For a time, Burch was ranked No. 1 in the world in the bench in the 181-pound weight class, putting up 440 pounds in 1972. He gradually moved up divisions, reaching 198 and finally leveling out at 220, where he ranked third in the world in the bench.

In 1978 he benched 550 in Pennsylvania. He did a 620 touch-and-go in 1986.

“Dick was my hand-off guy for that one,” Burch said. “In a legal bench in competition, you have to hold the weight there, it has to be still. In touch-and-go, it comes down quick, touches and it right back up.

“In competition, Ed Card was the best hand-off guy I ever had. He handed off to me when I did 550,” he added.

Burch was also powerful in the deadlift.

“In 1978 I pulled 800 pounds for five reps. Eddy got me so pumped up,” he said. “My father was there and my wife, who was pregnant at the time, was there too.”

Burch’s personal bests were 800 for five reps in the deadlift, 520 in the bench (620 touch-and-go) and 740 in the squat. He also curled 280 for 17 reps and maxed out in the curl with 440 pounds.

“Burch could have been the best at 220 if it wasn’t for some injuries,” White said. “He was doing some really good things.”

Burch credits White with much of his success, but also credits his wife as being key to how well he did.

“She was my dietician,” Burch said. “She made sure I was eating everything I needed to and made sure I had enough calories to go up in weight.”

When he was at 220, Burch’s two main rivals were Larry “Mr. Powerlifting” Pacifico and Mike McDonald.

“There was a meet in Utica one weekend and Pacifico flew in just to deal with me,” Burch said. “Mike McDonald was benching around 560 at the time, Pacifico was at 530 and I was doing 520. The Thursday before the meet I did 430 for five sets of five and in the last rep I blew my shoulder out.... I really think I could have gotten Larry that night.”

“You were on that night,” Tracy chimed in. “I think you could have done it.”

Olympic Dreaming

Powerlifting never made it to the Olympic Games, but Burch is confident that the United States would have come away with a Gold Medal had it been included.

“We would have kicked Russia’s ass,” he said. “We competed against international guys and beat them.”

Standing on a stage, attempting to outlift another man takes a bit of cockiness. That cockiness can make a turn for the worse in a hurry and Burch knows first hand how bad it can go.

Bobsledding was taking off in the late 1970s to early 1980s and the US team was in need of strong, fast athletes to push the sled. Where better to look that powerlifting gyms?

“Right after the Albany meet in 1979, I got a call from the AAU. They knew of my speed and strength,” Burch said, noting that he ran the 100 in 9.8 in high school.

Burch called up Tracy and the two went to Union College to try out for the National Team.

“We get there and the guy says ‘Mike, you’re on the team, you don’t have to do the tryout,’” Burch said. “My competitiveness, I had to do it.”

Burch went all out and ended up tearing his groin.

“It was so black and blue from bleeding internally. I shredded my groin,” he said. “My dream was to be in the Olympics and just like that it was gone. I still have my patch for being on the team, but I never made it to the Games.”

Tracy ended up taking Burch’s place on the team, but during one of the final trial run days he crashed and broke his ankle. He spent just three days in the hospital, but with it being so close to the Olympics, he was replaced and missed out on competing in Lake Placid.

Four years later, Card was on the bobsledding team. This member of the Powermen made it through training without any serious injury and competed in Sarajevo in 1984.

Closing Shop

The Power Men folded up after a meet in Albany in the spring of 1980 and reformed in 1987, folding once and for all in 1991.

“Powerlifting went a different route,” Tracy said. “The whole federation changed. You used to be able to enter a meet for $5 and compete. Now it can be more than $200. There were so many different federations at the end. It really ruined it.”

Mostly everyone from the original group still works out, 25 years after parting ways. Despite tearing muscles, blowing out knees and having arthritis, many of the men involved in the sport credit it for their continued good health to this day.

Burch has trained a number of lifters and was a strength coach for the Taconic Hills Titans football team during their state championship run. He can be found on YouTube, still lifting enormous weights out in Boston Corners, now in his mid-60s.

“It’s like a drug, it’s addicting,” he said, while in his home gym named Iron Den2. “I’ve never stopped lifting.”

White, from Columbiaville, lived in the Catskills for a time before requiring surgery on his knees. Local legend has it that he left the hospital after surgery and went straight to the gym, squatting 410 pounds for 20 reps.

While competing, White worked in a cement plant, which he says is the worst job ever. He later went into corrections and retired after 26 years. After living in Florida for a few years, he moved to Tucson, Arizona where the weather helps his ailing knees, ankles and back. He continues to go to the gym three times a week.

“I kept competing until I was 50,” he said, noting his last competition was at the drug free World’s meet in Disney. “I did 725 in squat and a guy half my age did 650.”

He won the event and decided to stop competing due to health reasons.

“I had to make a choice and I chose to live,” he said, noting that he went from weighing 365 pounds to a current 245. “I’m starting to walk with a spring in my step. I feel better now than I did back then.”

Tracy continues to get to the gym, as does Pendergast. The two worked out together for years after the Powermen closed shop.

None of the men can see something like the Powermen starting up again.

“It was part of that time period,” Tracy said. “It took a lot of commitment and the world is moving too fast today for people to give what those guys gave. Kids don’t know what they’re missing today, though, that’s for sure.”

“It’ll never happen again,” Pendergast added. “They were a really good bunch of guys. A lot of us still keep in contact to this day. It was like a family.”