In this file photo from 2013, Jim Myers, center, hugs brothers Mark and John Davis during a book signing for his autobiography “Animal” at the Royal Oak Barnes and Noble. Myers was a coach for the Madison Schools who moonlit as pro wrestler George “The Animal” Steele. Exhibits about his life and career are featured at the Heritage Rooms, the historical museum at Madison Heights City Hall.
By: Andy Kozlowski | Madison-Park News | Published November 20, 2024
MADISON HEIGHTS — Stepping into the elevator at Madison Heights City Hall is like traveling back in time. Visitors are instantly taken to a museum with exhibits like a re-creation of the one-room Kendall School, which stood in the early 1900s when Madison Heights was still Royal Oak Township.
But before one enters the museum, called the Heritage Rooms and maintained by the city’s Historical Commission, there is a super-sized photo on the wall of the late Jim Myers (1937-2017) — a hometown hero and namesake of the stadium at Madison High School where he once taught and coached football, wrestling and track.
Myers is an inductee in both the Michigan High School Coaches Hall of Fame and the Michigan Football Coaches Hall of Fame. Growing up, he was quite the athlete himself, with varsity letters in four sports during each of his four years at Madison High School.
But outside of town, Myers was better known as pro wrestling star George “The Animal” Steele — a villain in the fantasy narrative of the WWE, then the WWF.
An eloquent man, Myers ironically fashioned a beast of a character — a ball of muscle and body hair that ripped open turnbuckles with his teeth before chewing up the stuffing and sticking out a tongue stained green from breath mints.
“I had the best breath in all of wrestling,” Myers told The Madison-Park News in 2012.
By the time he retired from wrestling in the late ’80s, Myers had starred in sold-out main events at Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden, Philadelphia Spectrum, the New Jersey Meadowlands and more. He even starred on the silver screen alongside Johnny Depp in the 1994 Tim Burton film “Ed Wood,” where he played Swedish wrestler/actor Tor Johnson.
Several display cases — one in the hall outside the Heritage Rooms, and others deeper inside — feature mementos from his time as a pro wrestler, including an action figure of George Steele.
“I had two positions in life: One as a wrestler, and one as a teacher and coach. And the one most important to me was being a teacher and a coach,” Myers said previously. “It wasn’t the glow and glitter of Madison Square Garden or anywhere else. I loved football fields and wrestling mats and gym class, talking to kids.”
His time in the ring was only several months each year, with Myers returning to Madison High School to teach and coach for the other nine and half months. As an educator, Myers had a knack for connecting with struggling students, because he himself struggled in the classroom growing up. Myers was born with dyslexia, which made reading very difficult. He considered it a blessing, however, one that taught him rigor and discipline, and that gave him a unique perspective on life.
“Because of my learning disabilities and problems I had, a lot of kids would come to my office, not athletes but kids looking for counseling, to talk about their problems,” Myers said previously.
Among his coaching claims to fame were state title-winning athletes such as Berney Gonzales, who wrestled under Myers in the 1970s and placed gold for Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1971 Junior World Olympics in Tokyo, Japan — the first American to do so.
“Jim was such an incredible person, as a human being, a teacher, a mentor, a coach. To have trained under him for four years as a wrestler, you learn the mental aspect of the sport, which is 99.9% believing in yourself,” said Gonzales, who now coaches wrestling at Bishop Foley Catholic High School. “He was tough but had the heart of a gentle giant. He was also one of the most humble people I’ve met in my life. When you become a champion, you should never be cocky or arrogant — you should always be kind and remember your roots. You’d learn those things from Jim and remember them, and I try to teach my kids those same things.”
Of course, the Myers exhibit is just one of many in the Heritage Rooms on the lower level of Madison Heights City Hall. Margene Scott, chair of the Historical Commission, explained during a visit Nov. 13 how much work goes into the museum, which is meticulously arranged in space on loan from the city.
Alongside the authentic re-creation of the one-room Kendall School — complete with chalk slates at each desk and a 48-star American flag in the corner — there is a research library packed with yearbooks, scrapbooks and other memorabilia from the three school districts. A desk with a notepad and magnifying glass invites visitors to comb through the materials and make connections.
Across the hall, a sprawling room features all manner of relics, like a wood-burning stove from the late 1800s, a treadle sewing machine from the early 1900s, kitchen appliances from the ’20s through the ’40s, radios and TVs and typewriters from the ’50s and ’60s, aerial photos of the city from its earlier years, election yard signs spanning decades, and more.
“You could be overwhelmed walking in here,” Scott said. “And really, ‘tactile’ is exactly what we want this museum to be. I used to take my grandkids to another museum and the curator would say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to keep your hands in your pockets — you can’t touch anything.’ And I thought, ‘That’s not what I want for my museum.’ I want kids to be able to pick up things, try them out, and play with them. That was very important to me.
“And some of the older visitors we have here, they’ll come look through our yearbooks and all the memories will come flooding back to them,” she said. “They’ll begin describing the stories behind the photos. That’s something we always love to hear.”
The Historical Commission also continues to seek materials for a digital archive that it plans to make available someday on the city’s website, madison-heights.org. Anyone with video recordings or photos of past events in the city, such as festivals and sports competitions, are invited to share them with the commission, which will make digital copies for future inclusion in a searchable database.
Commission members are also interested in meeting with long-time residents or people who worked in the city for years, and recording their stories about the city’s past in videotaped interviews that will be made available in the database as well.
“We want to modernize these materials, and make them available to more people,” Scott said. “We want to sit down with those who remember the city’s past, hear their memories and capture it all.”
To submit materials for the digital archives, or to arrange an appointment touring the museum, call the Madison Heights Public Library at (248) 588-7763.