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http://www.charleston.net/stories/042504/moo_25wrestle.shtml

Sunday, April 25, 2004 

Still feeling the loss of Lou Thesz 

BY MIKE MOONEYHAM 
Of The Post and Courier Staff 

Professional wrestling lost one of its greatest champions and most
beloved goodwill ambassadors when Lou Thesz passed away of
complications from open heart surgery at the age of 86 on April 28,
2002. From the day he first won wrestling's most coveted title on Dec.
29, 1937, to the day he died nearly 65 years later, Thesz represented
the profession with class and dignity.

While the sport lost an icon, his wife, Charlie, lost a soulmate. Two
years after his death, she still feels the loss as painfully as if it
were yesterday. To commemorate the anniversary, she plans to scatter
some of his ashes Wednesday in the Chesapeake Bay. Many of their
friends will join her.

"I do understand the significance of the two-year mark. I cannot seem
to get to an emotional two-year place," she says. "I am thankful
friends are not pressing me to date or introducing me to friends.
Since they knew Lou so well, they understand my plight -- who could
possibly measure up? I am moving on, but lots of Lou comes with me."

Life, she admits, has lost most of its "zing." She left Florida, where
they had moved several years ago, and returned to the Virginia coast,
where they had spent their happiest years. They enjoyed living in an
area where many of Lou's wrestling contemporaries had taken up
residence after retiring, but didn't care for the extended humid
summers. She and Lou had lived in Norfolk longer than either had ever
lived in one place, and made wonderful friends there.

"I have made a few new friends, but have reveled in the old ones," she
says of her new home. "It is wonderful to be around friends with lots
of Lou history. These people knew him as a friend and neighbor and
loved him for who he was as a person. I love to hear him worshipped
and adored, but loved because he was a terrific human being is a
better balance for me."

She's renting an old house on the beach in Norfolk that some friends
had bought. Lou, she admits, would have not been as excited, but she
does hear his laughter throughout the place. She loves her new job at
an arts center in Newport News and going on band and choir trips with
her own tour company.

"Being back on the Chesapeake Bay is great for me, too. At times, I
can almost see my 'ancient mariner' out in his johnboat dropping his
crab traps. He loved living on the bay, and we are both home. I have
some ashes left and will scatter them in the bay. So many friends here
would love to be there, too."

Ashes already have been scattered in St. Louis, where Lou was born,
and in Japan, where he is revered as an icon. She also plans to send
some of those ashes to longtime friend Sammy Mohuaki, who wrestled
under the name Sam Steamboat, in Hawaii. Tim "Mr. Wrestling" Woods had
taken ashes to scatter in his backyard shortly before passing away
several months after Lou.

"I do find some peace here. I am hoping scattering the ashes will be
good for all of us," she said.

When Lou died, says Charlie, he left with no regrets. He lived every
year, every day, to the fullest. Thirty years his junior, she's trying
hard to do the same. "Life is just plain old boring without Lou -- and
I stay busy!"

One of the most haunting memories of Lou's illness, she says, was a
get-well card from a fan that said, "I know you will be fine because
you are Lou Thesz."

"I think that pretty much says it for how we all felt," says Charlie.
"Poor Baby! He did have us all convinced he was invincible, and it
made us all feel as if we were, too -- on a diminished scale, of
course."


--- Internet Rex 2.29