Doing the heavy lifting to build a great life

From being diagnosed with a “hole in his heart” to bringing brains and a lot of heart to his bodybuilding and business careers, North Woodmere’s Dan Lurie is an illustrated American success story.

His book, “Dan Lurie: Heart of Steel,” (AuthorHouse) documents that life using a lifetime of information provided to New Zealand-based writer David Robson and a wealth of photographs that tells Lurie’s tale in his own voice. It features a foreword by television personality Regis Philbin.

The book was actually written 25 years ago, Lurie said, but his wife Thelma (they are nearing 64 years of marriage) then said it was too personal. A few years ago family and friends turned tack and said “don’t wait so long,” Lurie said as he entertained a reporter in his condominium.

“I wrote it when the magazines were going, I had six different titles, but I started from scratch,” he said, referring to the newer version of the book. Those magazines included the globally read Muscle Training Illustrated.

His hardscrabble upbringing in Brooklyn and being born with a heart murmur is detailed as doctors told his parents not to expect him to live to more than 5 years old. Lurie is now, as he put it, “two and a half years from being 90.”

Discovering weightlifting to build up his skinny physique and learning how to play checkers to improve his mind (he was a New York State checkers champion at 13), Lurie combined both brains and brawn as he entered the lesser known, but competitive world of bodybuilding, then became a businessman.

“Bodybuilding gave me such confidence, I felt good,” said Lurie, who still remembers with pinpoint accuracy his run-ins with bodybuilder promoters such as Bob Hoffman and Lurie’s contemporary Joe Weider.

The slights Lurie endured from being labeled a professional by Hoffman, so Lurie couldn’t compete against Hoffman’s bodybuilders to his falling out with Weider and even once being sued by Arnold Schwarzenegger, motivated the Brooklynite throughout his life.

He started the Dan Lurie Barbell Company and was packing barbell shipments on the morning of his wedding day, when a 10-pound steel plate fell and hit Lurie on the head. “Sure I married you, but I was hit on the head with a barbell plate and I didn’t know what I was doing,” he occasionally tells his wife.

It is that humor, love for life, family and friends that Lurie displays throughout his life as he recounts his years as not only a bodybuilder, promoter and publisher, but the strongman Sealtest Dan the Muscle Man on the 1950s CBS TV show the Sealtest Big Top and family man to five children, 15 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

“The most important thing in my life is my wife and family,” said Lurie, who has enjoyed the company of wide array of celebrities from actress Mae West (another Brooklynite), comedian Buddy Hackett, TV talk show host Joe Franklin and many bodybuilders.

However, the highlight of Lurie’s fame might have come in 1984, when not only did he arm wrestle President Reagan in the White House, but brought the leader of the free world to North Woodmere’s Temple Hillel on Oct. 26 of the same year.

“Many of the celebrities became good friends,” Thelma said.

Lurie continues to make public appearances at local libraries and schools spreading his message and displaying some mind and sleight of hand tricks. “I tell kids use your brain,” said Lurie, who wants people to be inspired and reach their peak. “I did it my way, working like a dog.”