Kurt Thomas

I had a late start in gymnastics. 16 yrs old. Somehow ended up a walk-on at UCLA (took a yr off after I graduated high school).

One of the driving inspirations for me was Kurt Thomas. He had me living and breathing gymnastics. Back then, there was no YouTube videos. No instagram. No internet. The only way I could see good gymnastics was when one of the 3 networks on television would televise a competition, with the color-commentators dramatizing what you were watching and providing backstory for the athletes.

When I was 16, I lived in Austin, Texas. One of the books I checked out from my high school library was "Kurt Thomas on Gymnastics". I ate it up, page after page. From beginning to end It wasn't dry reading but colorful. And after every 2 weeks, I'd check the book out again. (I wonder if anyone else ever got to read it?).

I spent my last 2 years of high school in California (military brat). Instead of attending my high school graduation, I went to International Gymnastics Camp in Pennsylvania. There, from the cantine store, I found the book, "Kurt Thomas on Gymnastics", which I think may have been out of print (I certainly couldn't find it in any bookstore; and there were no online Barnes and Noble, Borders, or Amazon to check and order from). I bought 2 copies.

And I still have them.

Kurt Thomas made it cool to be a male gymnast back when most other boys were doing traditional American sports.

In Memory....

.....Never forget.

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Transformation

"Death is a transformation- perhaps a bit more radical than puberty...Death is not sad; the sad thing is that most people don't ever really live at all."

-Socrates, Way of the Peaceful Warrior

He looked up, greeted me, and said casually, "Joseph died this morning."  I fell back against the station wagon behind me, sick at the news of Joseph's death and Soc's callousness.

Finally, I was able to speak.  "How did he die?"

"Oh, very well, I imagine," Socrates smiled.  "He had leukemia, you see.  Joseph had been ill for a number of years; he hung in there for a long time.  Fine warrior, that one."  He spoke with affection, but almost casually, without a trace of sorrow.

"Socrates, aren't you upset, just a little?" He laid the wrench down.

"That reminds me of a story I heard a long time ago, about a mother who was overcome with grief by the death of her young son.

'I can't bear the pain and sorrow,' she told her sister.
'My sister, did you mourn your son before he was born?'
'No, of course not,' the despondent woman replied.
'Well then, you need not mourn for him now.  He has only returned to the same place, his original home, before he was ever born.' "

      -Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, pg 137

‘How does one become a butterfly?’ she asked pensively.

‘You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.’

‘You mean to die?’ asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.

‘Yes and No,’ he answered. ‘What looks like you will die but what’s really you will still live. Life is changed, not taken away. Isn’t that different from those who die without ever becoming butterflies?’

-Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers

Thoughts and prayers for the friends and family- to those who knew, admired, and loved Super Dylan