Today’s story comes from a personal perspective, about a person who’s been in my life for close to 50 years. Bryant Stamford was the Fitness & Nutrition columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper since 1976, and I’ve been reading the C-J and his column pretty much non-stop since 1979. He was also a professor at Hanover College. He retired from the paper and the college just last year.
When my wife and I got married and moved to Louisville, the first thing we did was subscribe to the paper, of course. You had to back then. There was no Craigslist or Marketplace. No Indeed or LinkedIn. No source for news other than the nightly TV broadcasts (before CNN and Fox!) And we’ve been subscribing and reading it ever since, even today. So when I read that Bryant was posting his very last column late last year, I just had to interview him and share his story.
“I wrote a column every week for 50 years,” says Bryant, “and I was not a professional writer when I started out. I’d sometimes have to do 6 drafts of a column before it was polished enough for publication. As for topics, I just drew from my own fitness and nutrition journey quite a bit. I did a lot of things wrong, so that always makes a good story … what not to do! And I was always talking to people, getting new ideas from the things they’d ask.
“You can imagine there’s been a lot of change in the world of fitness and health over a 5 decade span. The fads that came and went. Heck, I started before jogging and running was even a big popular thing. And all the diet and nutrition trends, I had my hands full. I’d do my research, maybe try it on myself, and then share it with my readers. I guess it was pretty well received because the column was syndicated in 100 papers eventually.”
One of the things Bryant tried on himself, and influenced me to try also, was intermittent fasting. It’s a simple diet routine where you just limit the number of hours a day you eat. “It’s been a game changer for me,” explains Bryant. “I lost quite a bit of weight and it stays off. Plus it helps with blood sugar, blood pressure, and a whole host of benefits.” I’ve embraced it myself and it really works.
But Bryant has a Hanover/Madison connection, as I mentioned, and he has some fond memories of his time in our community. “I started at Hanover about 20 years ago,” Bryant says, “and my wife and I initially lived on campus in an apartment. We met a lot of folks from Madison and made a lot of friends.
“I was a professor at UofL for many years, and I wasn’t looking for a change. At some point I got an email from Hanover about a job. I deleted it. Then 2 weeks later another email, so I started talking with the dean. At first it was just consulting on how to set up an exercise physiology program, but eventually led to a full time professorship. We did some outside the box things in our department, like using human cadavers for our anatomy courses. Most students don’t get to work with a body until med school, but we were preparing our students at a much higher level than most other programs.
“I’ve been lucky, you might say at the right place at the right time with the right skillset, just as health awareness was taking off 40, 50 years ago. I had several great careers, as a teacher and a writer, and I’m still consulting with law enforcement about exercise training. I get back to Hanover every few weeks now, to have lunch with my old colleagues and just to stay active. It’s been a good life, and I’m far from done yet.”
HOT TIP OF THE WEEK
One sure way to tell the weather is changing in Indiana’s Music City, aside from the wild temperature swings, is the sheer number of bands playing this weekend. When things warm up in Madison, the music scene gets hot! I’m seeing 9 bands on Saturday alone. A couple of shows of note, Vintage Lanes is continuing their experiment with Saturday music, this time with a duo singing all Taylor Swift songs … should be a lot of fun. And Joe at Rivertown Grill alerted me to a new band he has booked called Reckless X, which he says is a raucous tribute to 80’s hair band classic rock. Lots more going on all over town, including a free classical piano concert at the Presbyterian Church on Friday at 7:00.
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