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HM: Anyway, the problem was, with Dr. Hughes' program was that everybody from the West Coast, the PAC eight conference knew what Hughes was doing with these kids. So the coach from Stanford took a liking to Robert. And they used to have tri-meets at the UW where three of the PAC eight conference schools used to compete on the varsity level for University of Washington. And during that time they used to have the intermission periods, and they would run these young kids that were in Robert's age group in various gymnastic patterns to demonstrate what the young youth could do. And some of these kids were very good in their performance. And anyway, this coach from Stanford came up to me and said, "What would you think of having your son enroll at Stanford?" [Laughs] It was a kind of an interesting situation at that time.

TI: You must have been very proud of him, in terms of his ability in gymnastics.

HM: Well, he was everything I would have liked to be had I had that opportunity to go into gymnastics. He would be doing things like one-arm push ups, and he would do thirty of 'em on the left and right hand side in consecutive order. And then another crazy stunt he used to do was, he used to go upside down on his hands and walk across the basketball court, and then come back again. And he was doing all kinds of crazy stunts like that. But he was a good performer.

TI: So the Stanford coach, was he suggesting that Robert could get a scholarship to Stanford?

HM: Yeah, well, in fact that was what was offered right before Robert had this unfortunate passing at the Overlake Hospital. But he was a Nihonjin guy, by the way. Miyagawa was the guy's name and he took a liking to Asians and he wanted to make his Stanford gymnastics team number one in the country. And so, on Saturdays I used to go drop off Robert, and I knew they had lot of good coach material like Frank Ahern, and he would show Robert what he was doing wrong in some of the events. And he was kind of like an ad hoc assistant to Eric Hughes. And Hughes used to like Ahern to make comments because Ahern had done a lot of work in things like stretching exercises to eliminate injuries. And he was assistant coach at WSU for the football team. And during the time Frank instituted this stretching program for the football players, they did not have one single serious injury during that year. And so he was very emphatic about kids stretching and doing their warm up exercises properly before they started doing any of their stunts and events.

TI: And so there were books and things about this? Or when you mentioned Ahern, because I know Frank Ahern too, because I grew up on Beacon Hill and through football, track, cross country, he did a lot for the --

HM: He did for all the Beacon Hill area --

TI: For the community...

HM: And for the south end of Seattle. He did a lot.

TI: And he was -- I was there at the point where I think he was actually retired. He was -- this was in the '70s...

HM: Yeah.

TI: And the later, yeah, mid '70s and he was, yeah, it was almost like he was retired, but he was still coaching at Franklin High School and other places.

HM: And he was taking on even family situations where these kids, especially the black kids living on single parent families, they weren't getting the proper nutrition and stuff, so he would have them live at his place. I mean -- Frank was an extraordinary individual.

TI: Yeah, he really was. But --

HM: And the more I got to know him, the more I thought, "This is the kind of people we need in the community." But he would take extreme interest in kids, in trying to help them and so this, I felt, I was out of my realm, because here's Frank and some of these other coaches that would bring their own kids into the Hughes program.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.