A Man You’ve Never Heard Of

Discovering an iron pumping, ballet dancing, former Marine wounded at Iwo Jima who credits weightlifting with saving his life and others.

“A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong.”

-          Mark Rippetoe 

Old Magazines

Have you ever flipped through an old newspaper or magazine from a time before you were born, or maybe even, before your parents were born? 

Unlike old books, old periodicals truly reveal the time and place they’re from. First, there’s the advertisements, hawking new products now considered ancient. Then there’s the photographs and models, all evoking an America that’s all but a memory—an America before television, the highway, and fast food.

Finally, there are the letters to the editor which are pure gold for the likes of me. That's because these letters bring otherwise forgotten people to life. Let's face it... you, me, and everyone we know will one day be invisible to future generations. But for one former US Marine turned ballet dancer, I’ll do my best with this post to keep his name alive just a bit longer.

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After reading the “Forever Young” chapter in my book, where I celebrate my lifelong love for bodybuilding mags, a friend mailed me twenty copies of “Strength and Health” which he inherited from his long-deceased iron-pumping grandfather. Published during the 1940s, these paper treasures reveal America’s fitness craze at its infancy.

Edited by the great Bob Hoffman—a World War I vet, founder of the famous York Barbell company, and father of modern weightlifting—“Strength and Health” ushers me into an older age when “a gym” meant a concrete floor, iron plates, and a jug of milk.

Flipping through the pages, I smiled with every old ad selling crusher grips, head straps, iron boots, posing briefs, doorway pull-up bars, and the rugged beauty of a well-defined male physique.

A Midnight Read

While I go to bed early on the weekends, I’m a night owl during the work week. (I have my quirks.) Often, I’ll lift weights at 8pm, eat dinner at 10pm, and then pop a melatonin sometime thereafter. But before I climb into that warm bed, I often dive into my books and magazines. Last Tuesday night, I dropped three copies of “Strength and Health” on the dining table at 11pm, opened the pages, and off to meathead heaven I went.  

Flipping through the third magazine close to midnight, I soon found a letter to the editor, entitled “Athlete Makes Inspiring Comeback,” written by Chuck Maxcy of Laguna Beach, CA. I wonder what weightlifters considered “inspiring” back in 1949? I thought. I soon found out.

In his letter to the editor, Chuck said he enlisted in the US Navy at age eighteen as the war in the Pacific raged full tilt. After becoming a Hospital Corpsman (i.e. a combat medic), Chuck checked into a Marine Corps infantry division. (There are no medics in the Marine Corps, so Navy “corpsman” fill the role. Think of them as “grunts” trained in emergency medicine.)

Soon Chuck and his entire Marine division embarked on Navy transport ships, steaming west across the Pacific toward a tiny five-mile long and half-a-mile wide island called Iwo Jima. Though he didn’t know it at the time, Chuck and his brothers-in-arms were about to fight in, which to this day, is the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history.

Enroute to Iwo, Chuck noted that he and a few buddies, “kept in fine shape working out with landing craft drive shafts and shackles from anchor and cargo chains.” Right then, I fell in love with this guy.

During his first night on the island’s black volcanic hellscape of hidden caves, grim pillboxes, exploding shells, and burning corpses, Chuck credited his fitness for saving a Marine’s life:

“I carried a 180-pound Marine about half a mile on my shoulders. Put him down every few seconds to keep from being spotted… my last get-up lift took about 30 seconds of will over matter… [and] I finally got him back so he could be evacuated the next morning.”

Despite being “depleted from the nervous mental and physical strain,” Chuck still managed to work out during the battle. During a brief lull, he said, “I worked out at the volcano…”

Okay, barbarians. Let’s pause. After two weeks of the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history, Chuck decided to PT on Mount Suribachi, the volcanic hill where five Marines and a Navy Corpsman famously hoisted the American flag. What a savage. Moving on….

After two weeks in battle, Chuck tells the editor, “I had a premonition that something awful was going to happen.”

Filled with dread, he told his platoon commander, who admitted to having the same ominous feeling. Two days, that lieutenant was dead. And when a Marine tried to save him, he too was “shot dead,” Chuck writes.  Soon after, Chuck’s luck ran out.

While evacuating another “wounded buddy” from his platoon, Chuck said, “I caught an explosive caliber machine gun bullet in the face… [and] lost the anterior third of my upper jaw together with the roof of my mouth, the tip and base of my nose, and part of my lip.”

With half his jaw hanging along his chest, Chuck said, “I held the facial and carotid pressure points with my right hand and held up the lower jaw with my left.”

After crawling to a nearby fighting hole, a jeep eventually evacuated Chuck “in a hail of bullets” to a first aid station. Holding the pieces of his face together, Chuck said he was unrecognizable. When he told passing buddies from his rifle company who he was, “they’d just turn away and swear”—not wanting to think about what was waiting for them back at the front. Looking back, Chuck writes, “I was the only one that had confidence that I’d survive.”

A few days later, surgeons credited Chuck’s survival to his “fine physical condition.”

Active Recovery

After cinching pieces of his face and jaw together, a field surgeon became outraged when Chuck slipped off his stretcher and did “about 20 floor dips and deep knee bends” with his jaw wired shut.

Weeks later, Chuck was medevacked to Hawaii, and eventually, to a naval hospital in Oakland where he, “immediately started training with the weights in physical therapy.”

To increase his strength and fuel his recovery, Chuck poured eggnog, juice, and other liquid calories into a bulb syringe and squirted it down a rubber tube he inserted into his throat. Gradually, he began to slowly gain his weight and strength back.

Now here’s the most surprising part of Chuck’s letter. Near the end, he wrote, “I’m studying ballet dancing.” He also added that he was living with his ballet teacher, a man named Theodore Bekefi, who Chuck bragged, is a former wrestler, famous dancer, and someone who can perform one arm chin-ups. 

Closing out the note, Chuck credited weight-training with conquering his handicaps. Through “weight trained muscle,” he said, “plus lots of determination and sweat,” he learned ballet at a much faster rate than “most,” i.e. those who did not weight train.  

Chuck credits his survival, resilience, and skill as a dancer to his vigorous resistance training. A listing ship, a lack of barbells, a pulverizing battle, or pieces of his face cinched together--none of these could stop this incredible human being from exercising his body and igniting his spirit through vigor.

And while I couldn’t find out much about Chuck online, I did find a little. Digging through public military records, I learned his name was Charles H. Maxcy from Benwood, West Virginia. Records indicate he was a hospital corpsman attached to the Fifth Marine Division, known as the “Fighting Fifth,” and that he had indeed been wounded on Iwo Jima. And something else, something Chuck didn’t mention in his letter: He was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry.

By the time Chuck took that Japanese round in the face--just twenty days into the battle--seventeen thousand other Marines and Corpsman were reported killed, missing, or wounded. Twenty-seven men, more than half posthumously, were awarded the Medal of Honor on that sacred ground. Five of them were Navy Corpsman, just like Chuck Maxcy.

I don’t know what ultimately happened with Chuck Maxcy.  I couldn't find anything about him in Laguna Beach, or any record of his date of birth or death. But maybe, just maybe, he’s still out there… a hundred years old, scars down his face, and his hands shaking while he grips the same iron he credits with saving his life and the lives of many others.

Lift heavy, dance light, and be there for your pals. Vigor-Wonder-Fellowship.

God bless you, Hospital Corpsman Chuck Maxcy wherever you are. You've lived a barbarian’s life and you are not forgotten.

Charles H. Maxcy,: Bodybuilder, Marine, Dancer, and Great American