Wrestler, bodybuilder and now a fitness trainer — Richard Derwald is not about to stop
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
When Richard Derwald was a seventh grader, he lacked interested in fitness and wouldn’t have made it on any of his school sports teams because he was so physically unfit.
After seeing a wrestling match at the old Buffalo War Memorial in 1949, he wished he could participate.
“I visualized myself in there,” he said. “And at the age of 19, I was in that same ring. I quadrupled my strength and muscle size. It was a drive I had. Everything starts in the mind. You can’t change your life unless you first change your mind.”
He helped himself picture his goals by putting pictures of the wrestlers on his bedroom wall and decided he would do what they do. In 1949, he ordered “Strength and Health Magazine” at a time when health magazines were not readily available on newsstands.
“What I did gave me confidence,” Derwald said. “When you’re a kid and you can’t make a team, that’s not a confidence builder. The size of my biceps increased as did my confidence. I was much less afraid of everything.”
By 1953, he won the Mr. Buffalo bodybuilding contest and became a professional wrestler. Derwald performed in more than 150 wrestling matches in The National Wrestling Alliance and is a member of the Illio DiPaulo Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Despite this accolade and being inducted into the Buffalo Weightlifting-Bodybuilding Hall of Fame in 2018 and receiving their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, he said he never became obsessed with bodybuilding. And unlike others, he never used steroids, which helps athletes cheat to gain muscle faster.
The last bodybuilding competition was, one for those age 50-plus, and he was 62.
“I saw all these guys who were razor sharp; I said to myself, ‘This isn’t the after 50!’” he said. “It was about what they were taking. It wasn’t exercise and diet. I can’t compete with that.”
But he is 88 years old and still lifting weights and exercising regularly, with good health as his prize. Derwald has a home gym and pays special attention to working his legs.
“As you get older, you have to have strong legs; it’s critical,” he said.
He has led senior exercise classes for the past 26 years, sometimes two per day, because it keeps him active in retirement. He worked in IT (called “data process” for most of his career) and eventually worked as a consultant and operated Head to Toe, a day spa in Buffalo, where he offered massage therapy as a licensed therapist.
He also co-authored with Anthony Chiappone the book “For Men Only: The Secrets of a Successful Image” (Prometheus, 1995), available on Amazon. He has also been involved with music since 1957 as Richard “Dixie Dee” Derwald, playing upright bass, composing, singing and performing and recording.
Derwald currently consults as a fitness trainer for Erie County Senior Services, where he worked in 1998 after retiring from IT.
“I noticed that what all the seniors were doing at the senior centers was watching TV,” he said.
Determined to change that unhealthful narrative, he approached county officials about starting an exercise program to provide an opportunity for more movement.
“It exploded,” he said. “They gave me a lot of latitude. I built what came to be the longest-running senior fitness program in New York state, Club 99.”
The club uses resistance bands to help adults aged 60-plus build and retain strength. Its goal is to help people live long and healthy lives, hence the “99.”
It looks like Derwald is well on his way to achieving that milestone.