If the Deseret Gym could talk, what would it say?
Sitting on death row, would it talk about all the changes it has seen before it bids farewell to the world? Would it talk about the regulars who kept coming back all those years?Would it talk about the barrels of sweat that have fallen on its floors, the billions of laps that have been swum in its pool, the miles and miles of toil that have been run on its tiny track, the tons of weights that have been lifted, the acres of fat that have been burned, the zillions of balls that have been spiked, slapped, shot and rebounded within its walls?
Would it give you one of those old lectures about regular exercise? Would it be gasping to catch its breath?
For 87 years, the Deseret Gym has endured. Like some of its clients, it had a face lift and transplant at 50 years of age, moving to the bigger and better current building. Think of all it has seen come and go in that time. The running boom, aerobics, triathlons, circuit training, lycra, crop tops, walleyball, weight "machines," waffle trainers, stair climbers, wellness seminars, masters competition, cross training, air soles, bikinis, Speedos, short shorts, baggy shorts.
The gym has been around so long that it knew exercise before it was called "aerobic."
It knew exercise before women knew exercise, back in a time when ladies didn't sweat, they glistened. Back when the only thing women did for exercise, if anything, was float in the pool. For years, there were so few women in the place that the men swam naked. Suits were forbidden. Later, when the women began to show up and the rules were changed, sometimes men would forget and stroll out of the locker room in the buff.
"Only the old ones, though - no thrill," says longtime employee Mary Ellen Smith.
Now there are women pumping iron, women running laps, women playing hoops - women doing some serious glistening.
Since 1910, the Deseret Gym has seen and fostered all of this. It has been Salt Lake's House of Sweat, a downtown playground for fun and fitness. And now it must say good-bye. The gym is going the way of the Salt Palace, the Hotel Utah and its own predecessor. The LDS Church, the gym's owner, will demolish it to make way for a new meeting hall.
A sense of doom hangs over the old gym these days while a few of its diehard patrons ride their last miles on the stationary bike and heft a few more weights in the place before it closes its doors on April 30.
"It's like an old friend for many of them," says one of the gym's employees. And the friend has only a few days to live.
"Everyone is next to tears," says Smith, sitting by the pool where she has exercised and taught swimming since 1955.
"I'm in denial," says Greg Hall, who's been coming here for more than 20 years. "It's not going to really happen."
"There is something special about this place," says Debra Jones, the office manager.
For nearly as long as anyone can remember, the Deseret Gym has been an oasis in downtown Salt Lake City, a place where business men and women could refresh themselves and escape the grind to play hoops and racquetball, swim laps or lift weights. The busy hours were before and after work and during the lunch hour.
"They used to line up at the doors, sometimes 30 or 40 people, waiting for us to open the doors at 6:30," says Wayne Player, who managed the old and new gym for a total of 14 years. "It's been good for a lot of people."
Aside from the business crowd, the gym also attracted a big crowd of the elderly. They had come here since their youth and aged with the place. Fearing that eventually most of its customers would die, the gym launched a campaign seeking younger clientele, but it doesn't matter anymore.
"Seventy-two!" says a woman with a German accent as she steps out of the pool, slapping a hand against her flat stomach. She points to the muscles in her arms. "Seventy-two!"
"I've seen them come here as old people and shed the years," says Smith, a bright-eyed, white-haired woman of 79 who has taught swimming here to children of children of children she taught.
The elderly are being encouraged to patronize other gyms, but many wonder if they will feel comfortable enough to do so. This is home, this is where old friends gather. "Watch the obituaries, we're going to lose some of our people," noted one longtime observer. "This has been what keeps them alive."
For that matter, watch the waistlines of the local business types. Faced with the inconvenience of driving to a gym, will they simply give up daily exercise?
It will take some getting used to for the displaced regulars. The glittering, new gyms that have risen in suburbia - they don't even call them gyms; they're, ahem, "spas" - are as much a fashion and dating scene as a place to exercise. Deseret Gym is frill-free. It's a T-shirts-and-shorts crowd mostly. It looks like a junior high P.E. class. There are no thongs and hot-pink lycra outfits here.
"If anyone wears that stuff, they really stand out," says another longtime employee, Sally Hall.
Perhaps it's the tradition of the place. The Deseret Gym almost spanned the century. The original gym was home for old LDS High School and University of Utah basketball games. Treading water in the pool, Jack Fairclough, a retired lawyer and Deseret News sports writer, recalls sitting on the track of the old gym, three stories above the court, watching Ute games through wire struts in the ceiling during the '30s and '40s.
"I saw (eventual Supreme Court Justice) Whizzer White play here once," he says.
In these walls, state championship games and all-church tournaments were played and boxing and wrestling matches were fought. There were national championship swim meets and synchronized swimming competitions. There were racquetball, handball and squash tournaments. If there was a sport, it was played here.
Eventually, the competitions outgrew the place or their popularity waned and they died. The gym rolled with the times. Wrestling and boxing rooms gave way to aerobic rooms. Weight and exercise rooms expanded. An indoor driving range was added for golfers. A gymnastics room disappeared. The old gym was once a haven for synchronized swimming and diving classes, but those sports have been largely abandoned here.
"When I first came here 14 years ago, we had lots of swimmers," says Barbara Petersen, director of the pool. "Now they're circuit training. Women used to come for aerobics. Now it's for weights and circuit training. And the men are doing aerobics."
At the outset of the '80s, the gym had two exercise bikes. Now it has a fleet of them with computerized do-hickeys on them, and you have to wait to get a ride during the busy times. The treadmills used to be self-powered; now they set the pace for you with the push of a button and count calories and miles for you.
The gym has come a long ways to the end of its road. In the early days, before doctors started talking about saturated fat and cholesterol, people didn't come to exercise. "We just came to have fun, and we brought our families," says Fairclough.
If they got exercise in the process, fine. It all amounted to the same thing.
Now the old gym waits for the end. It seems a shame. The building is in perfectly good shape, just like so many of its patrons.