Often Imitated, Never Duplicated

To borrow my friend Padraic's oft-used phrase, "so there I was..."

...a cold November morning, I'm 19 years old and standing in an airy gymnasium in my Reebok shorts learning how to get bodyslammed in preparation for an upcoming six-man tag team wrestling match that night featuring myself, as The Golden Child of course, and several of my classmates at Stonehill College. Out from behind a curtain walks an older gentleman with the assistance of a cane. A rubber band holds his beard in place. It's Captain Lou Albano. Wow. Suddenly, learning how to take a proper bodyslam is unimportant. I've got my eyes on Captain Lou as he gingerly strides toward the ring and proceeds to shout words of encouragement - not to a champion wrestler but to us guys, a bunch of college kids just learning how to do the moves. This guy was one of the biggest guys in the WWF when I was a kid. He disappears a little while later, reappears, then disappears again, just another wrestling veteran getting ready for another night's work.

Later that evening, after The Golden Child's team scored a pinfall victory with the help of numerous chaotic occurrences, I came upon Captain Lou in the hallway congratulating us on a job well done. He wasn't totally coherent (it's arguable if he ever was), and he had dropped about 100 pounds but he was still larger than life, even at his advanced age (which probably felt like dog years after all the time he'd spent in the ring). "Often imitated, never duplicated." This was a guy who was one of the most hated heels in all of wrestling, one half of "The Sicilians" tag team, and later manager of like 15 WWF tag team champions (including the British Bulldogs). He played Cyndi Lauper's dad in MTV music videos and Super Mario on Saturday morning cartoons. He was a big advocate for multiple sclerosis research. One of the biggest oddball personalities of that quirky decade known as the 1980's. When I met him, he was rambling on about something to do with an encounter with Willie Nelson. Guy was all over the place. And now Captain Lou is gone.