Byko: At 74, he's a steel-bending strongman

WHEN HE was 12, he ran away to join the circus. He didn't really know why. Sixty years later, Michael Margolis realized he wanted to be a Strongman.

Strongman is an archaic term describing a muscular man you would find in almost every circus sideshow. Some lifted enormous weights. Some tore telephone books (remember them?) in half. Some burst through steel chains around their chests. Some bent steel - and that's what Margolis decided he wanted to do, last October.

Today, you can see him doing it on his Facebook page.

The long story of how he got to where he is, he explains to me while standing for 90 minutes in the dining room of his tight Manayunk rowhouse. He's in a brown cashmere sport coat and cream slacks, a showy white handlebar mustache beneath a head of curly white hair. Vigorous, cheerful, and animated, he turned 74 Monday and says he's never been stronger.

While at the circus, "I got 50 cents an hour, shoveling elephants, putting up the tent, carrying stuff, part errand boy, part laborer," he says. "It was 1954," making it sound like 1854. "They didn't care."

The South Carolina cops did. They picked him up and returned him to Philadelphia, where he'd quit Germantown High at 16 to work in his father's coal yard. Since his grades weren't setting the world on fire, why not?

He would carry 50-pound or 85-pound bags, or "two 50-pound bags to show off," Margolis says. "I always liked to work out, build myself up."

Hauling coal quickly lost its luster, so, when he reached the right age, he enlisted in the Marines, serving mostly in Hawaii, just missing Vietnam.

He got his GED while in the corps, and after he mustered out, he started night school at what was then St. Joseph's College and joined the Philadelphia Police Department, rising to the rank of lieutenant.

In 1975, he married Joanne Martorelli, who had been an administrative assistant before retiring. They have no children but one really fat cat named Chloe.

As for her husband's Strongman ambitions, she says, "I'm glad to see he has interest in something he truly believes in."

He retired from the police force in 1993 at 57, then did a stint with the Department of Corrections and an additional decade with the Pennsylvania Capitol Police before retiring for good at 67.

For the next few years, in addition to his lifelong physical fitness routine, he traveled a lot around the United States. And then - suddenly - he heard the call of the Strongman, which was what he thinks propelled him to the circus as a 12-year-old.

"The only difference between me and that kid," he says, "is 60 years."

After choosing the Strongman path, he contacted one of the best, Chris "Wonder" Schoeck, who was free with his advice. It turns out there is a subculture - maybe fraternity is a better word - of Strongmen.

With Schoeck watching, Margolis picked up a nail and bent it.

Schoeck smiled. "You bent it. You did everything wrong, but you bent it," Margolis quoted him as saying.

In an interview, Schoeck tells me it's not really right and wrong, "everybody bends things a little different, there's no standardization among human beings."

A personal trainer, Schoeck, 48, was the subject of a documentary, Bending Steel, that was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Margolis tells me his only "secret" is believing he can do it, and wanting to do it. "If I see a rock, I want to know if I can lift it. If I see a tree trunk, I want to know if I can lift it. If I see a nail, I want to to know if I can bend it."

Through him, I learn more about nails than I ever did at Ace Hardware. I'll spare you the details, but the nails Margolis bends are not the ones you use to hang a picture.

For photographer Ed Hille, Margolis picks up what's called a 60d nail, which is more like a spike. With visible effort - power coming in shivers from his arms, his shoulders, his back - he bends it.

Margolis has developed this unique talent and wants to put on a show of some kind, maybe at retirement homes. He wants to share, he wants to help people, he's not exactly sure how. "I'd like to help seniors. I'd like to see them get strong, beat age and infirmity."

In an age of virtual reality that can put you into a gun fight in the Old West or in a lunar lander, how many people want to see a Strongman bend nails in person?

Margolis is going to find out.

stubyko@phillynews.com

215-854-5977 @StuBykofsky

Blog: ph.ly/Byko

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