Many in amateur wrestling may not realize that our sport lost a giant to the same debilitating disease 75 years ago: Ed Gallagher, legendary head wrestling coach at Oklahoma State, who lost a long battle with Parkinson's at age 53.
Meet coach Gallagher
Edward Clark Gallagher coached the Cowboys from roughly World War I (1916) to just before America entered World War II (1940). In that timespan of 24 years, Gallagher guided the wrestling program at Oklahoma A&M (as the school in Stillwater was called until the late 1950s) to 19 undefeated seasons, winning eleven NCAA team titles. The Cowboys lassoed a 138-5-4 overall record for an amazing .952 winning percentage (a greater win ratio than most all-time great college mat coaches can claim). Gallagher coached 22 wrestlers to earn 37 individual national championships; seventeen of his Cowboys wrestled in Olympic competition, with three winning gold medals. Because of these accomplishments, Ed Gallagher's name adorns the arena at Oklahoma State ... and he was named one of three "Best Wrestling Coaches" in an online poll of wrestling fans for the NCAA 75th Anniversary Team honors in 2005. (The other two coaches so honored: Iowa State's Harold Nichols, and University of Iowa's Dan Gable.)
Ed Gallagher"Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic and progressive movement disorder, meaning that symptoms continue and worsen over time," according to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation website . "Nearly one million people in the US are living with Parkinson's disease. The cause is unknown, and although there is presently no cure, there are treatment options such as medication and surgery to manage its symptoms."
Back in Gallagher's time, there were no treatment options ... or at least, none which were proven or widely available. Coach Gallagher traveled to Europe with his son who was a physician, for the stated purpose of watching the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but also to seek out potential treatments from a doctor in Austria.
A Cowboy wrestler weighs in on his coach's condition
One individual who was on the front lines of Gallagher's battle with Parkinson's was Stanley Henson, a three-time NCAA champ for Oklahoma State (1937-39), with a near-perfect 31-1 record, including 12 falls. Henson, now age 98 and a retired surgeon living in Colorado, is considered by historians to be one of the greatest college wrestlers of the pre-World War II era; some have gone as far to say Henson would rank among the all-time greats of any era.
Ed Gallagher with one of his OSU wrestlers"Mr. Gallagher had Parkinson's disease, which is a progressive nervous disorder, characterized by rigidity of the arms, a shaking tremor of the hands, a partial facial paralysis, and a walk leaning forward as though to propel himself. He had stopped driving his car, and he could hardly talk. He would sometimes sit on his hands during a match to keep them still. When we shook his hand before going out to the mat, we would take hold of it carefully and gently. It seemed so fragile."
"Mr. Gallagher had trouble caring for himself because of his illness. During my senior year, I was captain of the team. I drove him in his car. I roomed with him on trips and dined with him. When he ordered a meal, I would order the same thing. I would then cut the meat in small pieces, butter the bread, put his glass straw in the milk, and then just exchange plates with as little fanfare as possible.
"He accepted it without comment. How it must have hurt, but he never complained. He knew we all loved him.
"Mr. Gallagher was a sweet and gentle little Irishman who had us mesmerized without him or us even knowing it. As one of his wrestlers said, 'He made us wrestle better than we could.' You just couldn't lose for him."
Optimism right up to the end
Oklahoma State wrestling fans may not have fully realized what Stanley Henson and his fellow Cowboy wrestlers knew all too well about the mostly private battle that their coach was waging against Parkinson's. Most newspaper accounts and other publications covering the Oklahoma State wrestling program and its coach in the 1930s did not mention Ed Gallagher's condition ... or, if they did, tried to present an upbeat, optimistic picture of the situation.
For example, the 1940 Redskin yearbook concluded its report on the 1939-40 season with this upbeat message: "With two intercollegiate champions and several intercollegiate runners-up returning, Coach Gallagher should have little trouble turning out another national championship for Oklahoma A&M College for 1940-1941."
A year earlier, the printed program made available to fans attending the February 1939 Gallagher Day dedication of the building that was later named in Gallagher Hall was no less optimistic. Randle Perdue, sportswriter and long-time friend, wrote, "The big news about Ed Gallagher is that he is improving in health! In recent weeks he has found a new medicine, the results of long search by his son, Dr. Clarence Gallagher, and evidently it is effective. Ed has gained nearly twenty pounds in weight. He is more cheerful, more hopeful. He is optimistic about the future. In fact, he has made a date to go quail hunting next fall. It will be his first in about five years. When Ed gets back to quail hunting, it will be the Ed Gallagher of old."
True to Randle Perdue's prediction, coach Gallagher did get to take a hunting trip to Colorado in August 1940 ... very much against the wishes of his wife, Austella. When he returned, he became ill with pneumonia ... and died in a hospital in Oklahoma City, just one week shy of his 54th birthday.
Ed Gallagher's funeral was held in the brand-new building that had been dedicated just 18 months earlier on Gallagher Day with a dual meet featuring Oklahoma State vs. then Big Ten power Indiana University. Thousands showed up for the service which included a number of his former Cowboy wrestlers, including a good number who had become college wrestling coaches themselves. Newspapers around the country referred to Gallagher as "the Dean of Collegiate Wrestling" and "the Knute Rockne of the Mats" (referring to the legendary Notre Dame football coach killed in a plane crash a few years' earlier).
While Ed Gallagher has been dead for 75 years, his legacy lives on. The building dedicated in 1939 is still the home for Oklahoma State wrestling, having been significantly expanded and upgraded in 2001, and with a new name, Gallagher-Iba Arena. What's more, the school continues to give the Gallagher Award to a Cowboy mat great of the past.
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