You can lay reasonable odds that Jack LaLanne, at the age of 96, charged through the pearly gates a few days ago doing 25 push-ups and prodding St. Peter to spend more quality time on the treadmill.

In Jack LaLanne’s unsinkable commitment to rehabilitate America, there was no such thing as a hopeless slob beyond his powers to salvage. To demonstrate, he would clench a nylon rope in his teeth and tow a school bus up the hill, with or without passengers. He would then modestly acknowledge the applause of onlookers and complain that he had done it faster when he was 60 years old.

Not many years ago I telephoned Jack LaLanne to thank him. “For what?” he said. He was amiable. He was also in a hurry, probably to run ten miles around the golf course. But he listened and didn’t seem to be all that startled by my testimony.

I don’t have much doubt that old fitness warhorse was almost singly responsible for the last 30 or 40 years of my life.

In the late 1960s a promotional newsletter from Jack LaLanne arrived at my desk in the morning mail at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, for which I wrote a daily column. Beneath the letterhead was a photo of a beaming Jack LaLanne doing one-handed pull ups and inviting the reader to join him on an exciting plunge into a new realm of physical fitness. Add self-esteem, he said. Add new attitudes of self-confidence, and rediscovery of the essential you.

I weighed 205 pounds at the time. This was 50 pounds more than my high school playing weight, most of it compiled in the previous five years when I traveled with a professional football team, ate and drank excessively and badly and confined my physical exertion to walking
to the popcorn stand in movie theaters.

After reading LaLanne’s publicity release, I tossed it into the waste basket. I can’t say I thought it was rubbish. The guy made a reasonable case, but this just wasn’t the time in my life for a revival of the silken me. I turned back to my typewriter, caught sight of my reflected jowls in the window—and went back to the waste basket.

I re-read LaLanne’s offer to rearrange my body and my life. Start, he said, with a simple call to your doctor.

I picked up the phone. “What do you want to do?” the doctor asked. I said I wanted to take off 55 pounds.”How much time do you want?” Four months, I said. “What are you going to do?” I said I was going to give up all fattening foods, between meal snacks and start running. I said I was also disgusted to be smoking and I was giving that up forever. The doctor whistled. “That’s a lot sacrifice. It might, well, shock your body.” I said when I indulged I did it full time and if I was going to rehabilitate it had to be the same. I apologized for not having discovered the joys of moderation. Which, praise the saints, came a little later.

So I joined the YMCA, ran four miles every other day. I ate salads for lunch and dinner. For breakfast I had unbuttered toast. In addition I joined a fitness class at the Y. We did exercises and ran around while a little old lady at the piano played popular tunes like “I’ll be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You.” I felt so good about the declining weight that I would burn up calories jumping up and down the scale. When we went to a play at the Guthrie I would carry a little plastic bag containing carrots and raddish bits and munch them between acts. After three months the doctor, a little overweight himself, was calling me for advice. I lost so much weight so quickly some of the office wags were referring to me in the past tense.

It cost me $3,000 to buy new clothes but it was glorious. I started climbing mountains, bicycling a hundred miles, rediscovered wild nature and, every now and then, check up on Jack La Lanne to see what bus he was towing this year.

I kept that press release for years, kept the pledge of 40 years ago, and still do. And when I’d hear of some new motivational whiz on the circuit who tops them all, I’d tell myself:

“Except one.”

About Jim Klobuchar:

In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota’s senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.