chapter 207 AH1

Alan Heugh Story

every man has a story

12/18/2013

I got an email from a guy I didn't know, but who saw my college video on Youtube. He put me in contact with Alan who lived in my house during my last year at Syracuse University. Alan on left looks on as Pablo (Paul Amidon) acts out to hammer Robert Vitello. Seems like we had dinner (Chianti and spaghetti) at Pablo's apartment on Euclid Ave? Google Streetview seems to confirm some of the recall.

I remember Alan as being on the SU gymnastics team (parallel bars & rings) and an Industrial Design major but he switched programs and finished with a bachelor's degree of fine arts a B.F.A. in Design. He had an assignment to design, write fabrication instructions for, and actually make a strong yet light weight item of about one inch cube. He asked me to calculate how many pounds a magnesium cube with drilled holes would support since I was taking a mechanical engineering course in Strength of Deformable Bodies. I calculated the compressive yield strength psi using the modulus of elasticity, strain/stress ratio, and area of the object. When I told him the pair would hold his weight easily, my memory was that he put a book over them and he did a hand stand on them. His memory could not confirm that actual event but we did at least talk about it. I was glad to hear that one was later tested to 100 pounds strength. A pair could then support 200 pounds to readily support his weight of less than 150 pounds.

He turned a pair of them into ear rings and gave them to his mother. They are still in the family somewhere, and he recently sent me this picture of them. Gymnastics takes a lot of brute strength but combined with balletic skill as well. I always thought it was interesting that he had such an artistic side. There were many stereotypical jocks at SU who had far less of an artistic side being more into brute force. A guy on the football team threw a bowling ball from the 7th floor of Sadler Dorm narrowly missing someone. He was suspended, for a while at least. Although I couldn't find a picture representing Alan's actual gymnastic performance at SU I tried to create here in black and white the symbolic representation between beauty and beast. Brute force and artistic balance, the yin and yang, how seemingly opposite and contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent.

It's interesting; the different pathways a person can take in life...In my Chapter One I mention trying to read Hitler's boring book "Meine Kampf" (my struggle). He was misguided but he had the title right; everyone has some sort of struggle in life. Alan has an interesting life's journey to tell and plans to put it on the web one day. I'll put a link to it here sometime in the future... 

.