April 22, 2007

Martin's Commitment to Wrestling an Enduring Legacy

By: Rom Robinson

NORFOLK - People know his dad, Steve Martin said - to a point.

Probably, most know Billy Martin Sr. as the patriarch of Virginia scholastic wrestling. The head of an internationally known wrestling family. The Granby High coach who won 21 state championships - whose sons won 17 more as coaches - and who tutored more than 100 state individual champs.

But do they know, Martin wondered, about that garage on the Knotts Island farm, teeming with video tapes of nearly every significant international and NCAA competition from the past 30 years?

The scads of notebooks from the "laboratory" - Billy Martin Sr.'s practices - dissecting in longhand decades of his famous three-hour mat-room workouts?

The otherworldly commitment that Billy Martin Sr., who died March 28 at age 89, gave to wrestling for some 75 years?

Steve Martin thinks not.

"People don't know what commitment is," Martin said. "They have no clue.

The Martin family offered a hint Saturday afternoon in Granby High's auditorium, producing a joyous tribute to complement Martin Sr.'s funeral of three weeks ago. About 500 family, friends, fans and former Granby wrestlers gathered for a memorial service that shined a warm light upon the kind of life they don't make many of anymore.

It did so in many ways; with a "memorabilia gallery" featuring 70-year-old newspaper clips, tables of trophies and walls full of enlarged team photos. Snapshots and great, old Martin home movies burned into a commemorative DVD.

And testimonies from some of Billy Martin's finest protégés, including the acknowledged best of them, Gray Simons, a two-time Olympian and a long time college coach.

"If you were in his wrestling room, and you were paying attention at all, you were going to be a good coach," said Simons, who credits his mentor with inspiring him to attend college, when college was his furthest thought, so he could continue wrestling.

"You were learning something new all the time, and he was learning something new all the time.... He never stopped learning."

Actually, that's a thing I learned about this genuine legend; that such a true innovator and expert remained pliable enough to constantly tweak his teaching methods whenever a wrestler performed a move differently, but better, than he had taught it.

That proof is in the videos - $50,000 worth if he marketed them, Steve Martin said - his father filmed, collected and pored over at Knotts Island long past his retirement in 1972.

Sherman Van Devender, who won three state championships for Granby in the early '50s, called it all part of Martin's mysterious but very real "master's touch," borrowing the title of a poem he recited eloquently from the stage

The poem ends like this: "the master comes, and the foolish crowd never can quite understand the worth of a soul and the change that's wrought by the touch of the master's hand."

Van Devender was poetic in his own right, as well, when he marveled at the life-altering influence of his former coach. He, too, like the Martins, tried his best - successfully - on this special day to explain Billy Martin Sr.'s touch to those who never felt it. And to poignantly remind those who did.

"He had a way of talking to you, and empowering you and motivating you," Van Devender said. "He motivated you beyond your reasonable powers, to do unbelievable things."

Reach Tom at (757) 446-2518 or tom.robinson@pilotonline.com