Editor’s note: Al Lesar spent 32 years in the “South Bend Tribune” Sports Dept. He covered everything from Notre Dame sports to high schools to the South Bend Class A baseball franchise, to every other sports issue in Michiana. He’s now retired and living (without a snowblower) in Tennessee, but still keeps the pulse of Northern Indiana.
South Bend’s “Corner of Champions” will never be the same.
The Mayor of Walnut and Dunham streets has died.
Tom Lynch, one of the most down-to-earth fellas to make an impact on the city’s West Side, passed away recently at 84. He left a legacy that went well beyond the four walls loaded with more than 400 photos that contained his old-school gym fresh out of central casting.
Dust that was around when Lynch’s Gym opened in 1984 is just a bottom layer now. Free weights that were scuffed then are just rusted now. The lack of TV monitors and fancy equipment is obvious. The “No Women Allowed” policy was strictly enforced for 40 years.
“When someone new would come in, we’d say, ‘It's the rainy season. That means we’ll have showers,’” said Derek Dieter, a gym member since the beginning. “We’d say, ‘Tom has a rain barrel on the roof. He catches the rain. Grab a bar of soap and he’ll dump a bucket on ya.’”
You get the idea. Lynch’s Gym was a relic, a monument to the old-school stereotype of what workout areas were before they got chic and trendy.
There was nothing chic and trendy about Lynch — just meat and potatoes, salt of the earth.
“I was scared the first time I went in there,” said Dieter, who was a South Bend Police officer at the time. “This was a guy who walked the talk. He was jacked.”
In 1984, Lynch was still riding his Mr. Indiana 1968 bodybuilding honor as well as being a pro wrestler, mixing it up each week with guys like Dick The Bruiser, Wilbur Snyder and Moose Cholak.
Once Dieter got to know Lynch, his perspective changed.
“He was just a guy who lived down the street, a former Marine,” Dieter said. “I wanted to learn Olympic lifting. He spent a lot of time on technique with me.”
When it was time for work, it was serious, but, when it was time for fun….
With about a dozen cops being regular lifters at the gym, crazy stuff is bound to happen.
“We would push trucks down Dunham Street,” Dieter said. “This guy had a really big truck. We got behind it, but it wouldn’t budge. There was a kid in the cab steering. Tom looked over and said, ‘Bobby, get your foot off the brake!’”
Then there was the time several officers were going to have a race down the street. A bank was located nearby. Nate Cannon, an officer who worked the midnight shift with Dieter, felt he was a favorite to win.
“We – everyone but Cannon – agreed that we wouldn’t run,” Dieter said. “When Tom said ‘Go!’ Nate took off running and we all jogged behind and yelled, ‘He robbed the bank! He robbed the bank!’”
Dieter’s three sons — Gehrig, Nolan and Thurmond — learned all about physical development at Lynch’s Gym.
Gehrig played five years of college football, his last at Alabama. He has a Super Bowl ring to show for five seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs. Nolan was a backup quarterback at Bowling Green and Thurmond wore his Lynch’s Gym shirt while working out in Iraq with the U.S. Army.
“Police officers gravitated toward the place,” Dieter said. “It was inner-city. It was a place you could wear your torn clothes and not worry. Tom loved the police.”
He also mourned with the police. In 1997, Paul Deguch, a regular at the gym, was gunned down in the line of duty. Lynch sealed his locker as a memorial, and it remains sealed today.
“When Annette (Deguch’s widow) and her two kids, who were 3 and 5 at the time, came by to see his locker, I lost it,” Dieter said. “It reminds you that any of us might not come back sometime.”
Now, it’s The Mayor who’s not coming back.
“Lynch is an icon,” Dieter said. “He’s kind of my hero.”