By: JOHN MACKOWIAK
The kids chant his name, as Donald Reinhoudt—the freshly retired director of the Chautauqua County Youth Bureau—positions a long nail in the palm of his hand.
The chanting gets louder when Don places a rectangular piece of pine wood on his lap. He pulls his hand back, and in one swift motion, drives the nail through the board.
The strongman sits on a faded green bench on the barn red stage of Camp Gross’s amphitheater and wipes the sweat from his bald head. After thanking the boys and girls for their enthusiasm, Don asks them if they have any questions.
“Could you lift a car?”
“Could you break a tree?”
“Do you know my dad?”
Even though he receives the same questions everywhere he goes, Don maintains his upbeat tone. He politely answers all of the questions before moving on with his program of strength and positive messages.
He doesn’t visit with young people to showcase his strength. His strongman feats are merely used as devices to keep the kids’ attention, he insists. Don says that he goes to schools, camps and juvenile detention centers to deliver a message of hard work, perseverance and hope.
“The message is that, never sell out on your dreams, that it doesn’t matter if anybody else believes in what you believe in. It’s nice if along the way your family or your friends could believe in what you do, but what’s important is that you believe in yourself, that you can achieve anything in this world that you want to. We don’t need to take drugs to get high. Get high on life. You don’t need any of that crap, just believe in yourself,” Don said.
Anybody who has grown up in Chautauqua County over the past 20 years has probably heard Don’s message. Many, including myself, have been inspired by Don’s life lessons.
I’ve been a counselor at the City of Dunkirk’s day camp at Camp Gross for the past five summers. Don has sat on that stage and talked to the kids close to 20 times over the course of those summers. The message is the same every time, but the words never seem to lose value.
When Don retired from the county youth bureau, he left behind a huge void that might never be completely filled. And it’s not just big shoes that need to be occupied.
It’s big shirts and big pants, too.
Don speaks from his heart. When his heart tells him that he has effectively transferred his message to his Camp Gross audience, he picks up a rusty metal bar and wraps a piece of cloth around the center of it.
Fearlessly, Don bites down on the cloth-covered section of the bar. With the bar clamped in his jaw, he uses all of the strength in his massive arms to bend the bar into a U-shape.
“Don! Don! Don!” the children incessantly scream.
I encourage the kids to yell louder, to motivate the strongman.
Sweat drips down his bald head. Pain is written across his face, but Don refuses to give up. He’s bent bars before, and this time will be no different.
His massive, flexed biceps pour out from the gray tank top that covers his prominent chest. His legs—jammed inside a pair of black jogging pants—are like tree trunks firmly planted upon the wooden planks of the stage.
It’s a hot and humid Tuesday in July. The sun’s rays shine down on the big man and the campers. Despite the heat and humidity, neither the kids nor Don will quit.
The kids sit on wooden boards—painted the same color as the stage—that are propped up on cinder blocks. It’s set up as stadium seating, with multiple rows lining the side of a grassy, Cassadaga, N.Y., hill. Behind the stage, which has captured the complete attention of the entire audience, a murky green swamp simmers in the summer sun.
It’s a diverse group of kids—most from the inner city of Dunkirk. They range from recent kindergarten graduates to junior high veterans.
Sitting behind the campers, my fellow camp counselors—high school upperclassmen and college students—and I quickly find ourselves shouting louder than the kids we’re watching over.
Don steadies his back—similar in stature and strength to the Washington Monument—for one last heave.
He cranks his arms together in a slow and steady motion, and he accomplishes his goal. He takes the bar from his mouth and holds it up for us all to see.
The once straight metal bar has been transformed into a horseshoe shape.
Don drives the bent bar into the moist soil in front of the stage. He cracks a joke about his post-retirement options. He could start a company that makes croquet sets, he says with a smile.
Well, retirement has come for Big Don, but no croquet set company is in the works.
He’s no longer employed by the county, but he’s staying active. And not retirement active—shuffleboard, bingo, card parties and other things of that sort—but prime of your life active.
He’s cut down on the instances and distances he travels to perform his program, but Don continues to deliver his message in the Dunkirk, Fredonia and Brocton schools. He regularly visits the juvenile detention center in Falconer. And he still lifts weights that are heavier than most could even budge.
The Image Fitness Center, situated right on the lake in Dunkirk, is Don’s home away from home on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Four days a week, the strongman grips onto the weights at the gym and works his mountainous muscles.
Some Chautauqua county residents thought Don would put down the weights when he retired. After so many years of straining his back, legs and arms, the average retiree might give up the taxing labor. But not Don.
As a regular at Image, Don didn’t figuratively walk from the gym and into retirement, but, literally, he could have.
His retirement party was held at the Clarion Hotel—about one city block east of Image.
It was a setting that seemed a bit out of the ordinary for him.
The carpeted, Clarion conference room was filled with community members—dressed in their Sunday best—who contributed to, or were touched by, Don’s success. There were only a handful kids—only the children of Don’s friends and family.
Missing was Don’s usual attire of jogging pants and a T-shirt. Instead, he donned a suit and tie. The sight would have been unfamiliar to school children across the county.
What was familiar was the way he spoke to the party guests. He took the time to sincerely thank each of them for coming. He told many of them that they were very special to him. He hugged everyone.
As the salads were being served to each of the round tables dispersed throughout the room, former County Executive Jack Glenzer roasted Don.
He didn’t embarrass the big man, but he did warmly complement him.
In a humorous tone, Glenzer said that many of his constituents claim that the best move he made during his tenure as county executive was appointing Don to the position of Chautauqua County Youth Bureau Director.
With his slender and tall wife Pam sitting next to him, Don unleashed his friendly smile. The party guests chuckled.
County Executive Greg Edwards spoke after Glenzer. He acknowledged the fact that letting Don leave on his watch might be one of the worst things that could happen to his administration.
Edwards agreed with Glenzer’s assessment of Don, saying that the best decision he made as county executive was keeping Don on board.
Before the Muscles
Glenzer was a long-time friend of his father, Don said.
Having known him since he was a young man, the former county executive knew Don before he was the world’s strongest man, when his muscles weren’t yet capable of lifting 1,000 pounds worth of Playboy bunnies—a record he set during the World’s Strongest Man competition.
Donald Reinhoudt Sr., Glenzer’s friend and Don’s father, passed away a number of years ago. He was only 60 years old when he died after a heart attack. At age 88, Don’s mother, Marie, still lives independently.
Marie and Don Sr. ran a successful accounting business in Fredonia for a number of years.
You wouldn’t guess it from his career path, but in college, Don followed his father’s footsteps. He pursued a degree in accounting.
He worked for his father for 10 years before Don Sr. died.
Though he says that he and his father were as different as day and night, Don draws inspiration from his father. While running his business, Don Sr. constantly demonstrated a strong work ethic. That’s what inspires Don.
“Sometimes when you’re younger you think you have all the answers, but when I worked for Dad after I got out of school and I spent a lot of time in his office, I realized what a man he really was,” Don said.
He does have his degree in accounting, but that’s pretty much where the similarities between Don his father end. Don Sr. lived as a businessman, and he was into politics. Though Don worked for the government, he constantly avoided the politics.
His passion isn’t business or politics—it’s athletics, especially lifting weights.
Don’s parents were his toughest critics—his high school teachers were a close second. But he never let criticism get in his way.
“I never gave up on my dreams, and it would have been easy to do so. ‘If I hadn’t lifted weights, maybe I would do better at school,’ that type of thing from Mom and Dad because they were some of my worst critics,” Don said.
The naysayers were harsh. It affected his self esteem. He said that some of his teachers, after calling him dumb, would tell him that he was wasting his time with athletics.
But he ignored the negativity and relied on sports to boost his self-image.
“[Lifting Weights,] that’s where I got my self esteem from because I didn’t have a lot of self esteem. I had teachers at Fredonia, especially this one teacher, that always called me stupid. ‘If you didn’t play football, maybe you wouldn’t be so stupid.’ What an awful thing to say to a kid.”
Sports gave Don what he couldn’t get in school. He didn’t excel as a student, but it wasn’t because he spent his time focusing on athletics. It’s because he had a learning disability.
“Back years ago in the early 60′s, a lot of that went on. They’d come up to me and say, ‘Too many hits to the head, Mr. Reinhoudt, is that why we can’t learn?’ Well, I have a learning disability. I didn’t know about that. Reading is really hard for me. That’s why I didn’t do well in school, but I overcame that with sports,” Don said.
He learned about the value of hard work from his father and applied it to sports. He might not have had A’s on his report card, but he starred on the football field, on the basketball court and during the field events at track meets.
Sports took Don to college. With a track and field scholarship in hand, he attended Parsons College in Iowa. According to the American Strength Legends website, it was there that coaches introduced Don to what became his life’s passion—weightlifting.
The Muscles Grow Quickly
Don quickly climbed the ranks of the world’s best weightlifters. By the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, his name was already known throughout the weightlifting world.
Coming up during the early days of powerlifting, Don set high standards in the first chapters of the sport’s history.
“I’m really one—and I’m really glad that I am—I’m one of the founding strong guys,” Don said.
It didn’t take Don long to realize that he was destined to be a strong man. In 1972, he placed third in the powerlifting world championship.
“I knew [that I would be a strongman] then because that was the first worlds that I went to, and I did very well. That meant an awful lot to me because the competition was so tough, and I was able to get a third at a worlds. That’s not too shabby, and I just kind of knew that I was on my way.”
From there, his career took off. He won championships for seven years after 1972. Don won the world powerlifting championship every year from 1973 to 1976 He is widely considered to be the strongest man in world from 1973 to 1980.
In 1978, Don competed in his first World’s Strongest Man competition. He finished in second place his first time around, but he won the competition one year later, officially making himself the World’s Strongest Man in 1979.
His trophy room is awe-inspiring. The room connected to his living room is filled with shiny statues, plates, rings and keys—former Buffalo Mayor Jimmy Griffin gave Don the key to Erie County’s largest city in 1980. In 2000, Don was given the right to open the city of Jamestown, when the mayor gave him the city’s key.
One wall is filled with framed certificates. Each one marks a world record that he set while competing in strength competitions. Having set 51 world records, the wall isn’t nearly big enough to fit all of his certificates.
“I framed some of the cooler ones and hung them up on the wall,” Don said.
A brass statue of a man with large muscles hoisting a barbell over his head sits in a prominent position, on the top shelf in the center of the back wall. The trophy commemorates his success in the World’s Strongest Man Competition.
Joining the brass man on the top shelf are other World’s Strongest Man trophies along with large silver plates that Don was awarded while he was dominating the sport of powerlifting.
It’s a lot of stuff. Don likes to show it off, but he doesn’t want his life narrowed down to a stack of brass muscles and big silver plates.
“I’ll sit in here sometimes and think where did all those years go. You just digest part of your life that you had,” he said.
Don retired from strongman competitions in 1980 and focused on his future. He wanted fulfillment that went deeper than a few shiny objects commemorating his success as a strongman. That’s what he got from his career as a youth worker in Chautauqua County.
Big Don in Little Brocton
When he retired from competition in 1980, Don was forced to decide what to do with the rest of his life. He could go out west, where powerlifting is popular and some strongmen make healthy wages, or he could stay in Chautauqua County, where he is recognized and adored.
The reality of the decision was money or recognition. He might be able to make more money by going west, but he wouldn’t be able to maintain his “celebrity” and friends if he moved to California.
“I probably could have maybe, who knows, made more money if I had left and gone out to California—where strength is really huge—but I’ve never been a dreamer where I wanted to sacrifice everything to take a chance,” he said. “God gave me a special a gift, and I’ve tried to use it in the best way that I could. And that was by staying put right here in Chautauqua County.”
Big Don has a little bit of an ego going, too. The license plates on his navy blue Nissan sedan read, “BIG DONR.” He likes that people know him. He knows his muscles and face are well-known throughout the county, and he enjoys the occasional pat on the back, friendly embrace or free lunch.
“Even like little Brocton, when I would come back, they had parades and, of course, there are signs here. People are so nice to you, thinking that a local boy could make it to the top. You get into the bigger areas, people could care less. I like to be noticed. I like to be remembered.”
Having lived in Brocton for many years now, he realizes that the town isn’t growing. It’s not a place that will attract new people. He says that he doesn’t care what the county looks like or what attractions it has to offer.
The people are what keeps him in Chautauqua County.
When the region was hammered with snow at the beginning of March, one of Don’s neighbors—without the promise of compensation—plowed the Reinhoudts’ driveway. Don didn’t ask; his neighbor just did it because it’s a nice thing to do. Don insists that things like that don’t generally happen in bigger cities.
“It’s an area where people really care about you. I know that I share that with a lot of kids up in Brocton. Of course, a lot of them think this a dumpy town, but when you look at the big picture of people—what people are about—It’s a great place to live,” he said.
The feeling is mutual. The community loves Don, and Don loves Chautauqua County. He’s a county-wide father figure, supporting Chautauqua’s youth and encouraging them to pursue their passions.
Sitting in his yellow-carpeted living room, Don and I talked for a long time about his experience as a resident and youth worker in Chautauqua County. Don was casual and comfortable—he was sprawled out on a leather sofa—while we spoke, but he interrupted the interview about 15 minutes in.
With an “enough about me” tone, he displayed his caring and compassionate side—the side with which many of the young people in the county are familiar.
“I don’t mean to embarrass you at all, but you’re just the neatest young man,” Don said to me.
“When I met you up at Camp Gross a while back, you’ve just always been a really together young person. I’ve told Pam (his wife) a lot about you. I said, ‘that’s a guy that’s going to go places.’ You’ve got nice personality, a great disposition, you’re so good with the kids and you’re just so polite.”
“Well, I really appreciate that,” I replied bashfully.
Don wore standard athletic attire—navy blue jogging pants and a black t-shirt that had a bulldog and the words, “Brocton Bulldogs” on the right breast. The sleeves of the shirt were folded up twice over.
“I appreciate you being that way, too, because that’s so important to me—to see that happening with young people, have goals and dreams and all these things that you have going on for yourself,” Don said. “And gosh darn it, you’ve got those work ethics, and those are the things I try to push with the kids. As you’ve heard me say many times, whatever you choose to do in life, give it the best shot you’ve got and never quit,”
As I began to turn red, I thought about the strongman’s big heart.
Then, my mind wandered back to the beginning of this century, when Don and his well-known heart underwent an extensive surgical process. Doctors performed six bypasses.
Don’s Strongest Muscle—His Heart
Don’s been called the nicest guy to ever participate in the sport of powerlifting. He often tells kids that he loves them. He’s quick to give a hug. He genuinely cares about other human beings.
So when his friends—which basically means the entire population of Chautauqua County (myself included)—heard that his heart was failing him, the general reactions were shock followed by sadness.
Residents of Jamestown, Dunkirk and everywhere in between were afraid that the county might lose one of its greatest assets—the compassionate director of its county youth bureau.
Knowing that he has a history of heart disease in his family and having heard doctor’s assessments, Don didn’t have much time to ponder his options. The surgery was urgent.
“A very scary time. I just turned over to the Lord and said, ‘God, it’s in your hands, if I’m supposed to pull through this.’ I had a very short time left because I was plugged up pretty bad,” Don said.
The strongman, who had pulled a 20,000 pound truck, who had used his teeth to lift 550 pounds, who had bench pressed 626 pounds, was fearful for the future but faithful to his religion. As strong as he is physically, Don might be stronger in his faith.
The big man prayed for strength from the even Bigger Man.
“That’s one of the most humbling things,” Don said. “Here, one time of your life, you’re on top of the world and being very powerful and then another time of your life, you’re at the mercy of God’s hand.”
As Don prepared to go under the knife at the Cleveland Clinic, there was a public outpouring of support. The man had supported and motivated the county’s youth for years. The grief-stricken population of Chautauqua County knew that they had to help their friend in his time of need.
Teachers had their classes write him letters. People who had been personally inspired by Don called him on the telephone. The Fredonia State men’s hockey team pulled behind Don, who had been serving as the team’s strength coach, and sent him their constant support.
Radio station WDOE-AM in Dunkirk sent Don an audio tape of a production that they made with the community’s help. Listeners called into the station and voiced their support for Don on the air.
It all helped to boost Don’s spirits.
“I was really flattered with the schools and so many people—when I was out of the area down in Cleveland—the letters and the phone calls and all the things that I got to keep my morale built up,” Don recalled. “I was away for about a month, and kids to teachers to just everybody, I just got so much support. That helped me an awful lot.”
The doctors at the Cleveland Clinic successfully fixed Don’s heart, but the recovery process wasn’t easy.
After the surgery, which left a large scar on his chest, Don went through a bout of depression.
Don Reinhoudt—a man who always seems to be upbeat, who works as a motivator, who is remembered in powerlifting circles for being a friendly competitor—was seriously depressed and forced to work through a series of challenging frustrations.
While rehabilitating in Cleveland, he stayed with his sister, who lives near the Cleveland Clinic.
When showering one day at his sister’s house, he dropped the bar of soap that he was using. He tried to bend down to pick it up, but he just couldn’t do it.
“It was so depressing. Here, I picked up all these thousands of pounds, and now I can’t even bend over to pick up soap,” he said.
Today, Don has no trouble bending over to pick up a bar of soap, or a barbell.
But at the time, Don was really struggling with all of the obstacles in front of him on the road to recovery. Days and weeks passed, but he eventually pulled himself from the dumps.
Taking time off wasn’t making him feel better, so he went back to work.
It was job, working with young people, that picked him up. He couldn’t preach an upbeat message of hope and hard work without believing in it himself.
“You just have to keep going on because you can’t feel sorry for yourself all the time. Sometimes you do, because that’s just the way life is, but you can’t dwell on that forever. My job helped me out with that, telling myself, I just got to get this going because I really love working with young people,” he said.
The relationship between Don Reinhoudt and the youth of Chautauqua County has been a two-way street.
The encouragement, motivation and love has traveled in both directions. The county’s youth has needed Don, as much as Don has needed the kids.
Big Don’s Legacy
Don always tells his audience that he loves them. Not like a rock star tells an arena full of fans, but like a father says to his kids.
He says that it’s something that all people, not just children, need to hear.
Whether he’s speaking to kindergärtners at Dunkirk’s School 7, campers at Camp Gross or juvenile delinquents at the Falconer Detention Center, he always ends his program by saying, “I love you.”
About a year ago, after finishing his program at the detention center, a young woman approached Don.
With tears streaming down her face, she asked Don if she could speak to him for a minute.
“Nobody’s ever told me that they loved me before. Nobody’s ever told me that I was important or that I was special,” Don recalls her telling him.
Don knew that she was a tough kid. The place is filled with young people that are headed to tougher facilities.
He threw his arms around her and pulled her in for a tight embrace.
“’Well, I love you,’ I said. “I’ll probably never see you the rest of my life,’ but I said, ‘I hope I gave you something today that you always remember that you are special and that you are important,’” Don said.
Don decided at that point that he would never stop telling people that he loves them.
“There may be just one out there that needs to hear it. I need to hear it, and I’m sure you do, too. We need that, and some kids don’t get that at home,” he said.
Don has conquered many obstacles and has accomplished many goals, throughout his 63 years. But his greatest accomplishment wasn’t his 51 world records. It wasn’t his powerlifting championships. It wasn’t his World’s Strongest Man title.
He says that his greatest accomplishment was what he did for the youth of Chautauqua County.
He wants to remembered as someone who cared, someone who tried to do something for his fellow human beings.
When he was inducted into the Association of Old Time Barbell and Strongmen Hall of Fame in 2006, Don was given a painting that depicted him during the prime of his career. It’s mounted on the wall adjacent to the wall filled with world record certificates.
In the detailed piece of artwork, Don, with a full head of hair and wearing a tight, brightly-colored weight suit, grips a barbell. He struggles, while his etched arm muscles flex and the veins in his neck bulge.
I was lost in the painting, when I heard Don put down the trophy that he was looking at. It was the unimpressive wooden trophy he was given for placing third at the 1972 World Powerlifting Championship.
After putting the trophy in its place, he walks towards one of the two chairs in the room. After having both his right and left knees surgically repaired, his walk has become more of a waddle.
His legs were once his strongest asset, but now he is forced to take soft steps.
He slowly settles down in a chair and looks from trophy to trophy. Don’s dark curly hair is gone, and his muscles have lost their definition.
I can’t read minds, but his thoughts were visible. He did something with his life, something more than win trophies and lift weights.
Obviously, sitting in that room with me wasn’t a near-death experience for Don, but his life was flashing before his eyes.
His daughter Molly, a doctoral graduate student at Ohio State.
His son Ben, who runs a landscaping company. Even though he inherited size and strength from his father, Ben never seriously pursued sports like his dad.
His first wife Cindy, who was world-class strength athlete herself. She and Don rotated the roles of competitor and coach throughout their marriage.
His parents, who instilled the values of hard work and optimism in their son.
The youth of Chautauqua County, to whom he has been a surrogate father for more than 20 years.
The men he triumphed over in competition. The people he’s worked with as a youth worker.
And the love of his life, his current wife Pam, who might be as caring and compassionate as Don. He only met her three years ago, but Don says that he feels like he has known her his entire life. They married on Valentine’s Day 2007.
Don and I were silent.
We were both buried in our memories.
It was at that point that I realized that it’s not the trophies and the tales that make the man. It’s the people that he encounters along the way.
