Gustav Sonnenberg, the oldest son of Fred
and Caroline Sonnenberg, was raised on a farm in Green Garden, Michigan,
went to a little country school, and later went to live with an older
sister to attend Marquette High School.
Gus's football career began at Marquette High in 1912. That
year he played right guard on the gridiron and the following season, he
held down the same position. Then came
1914, when E.D. Cushman came here to become Marquette High's first full-time
physical education instructor. "Cush" promptly switched Gus to tackle,
a change that paid dividends immediately.
In 1915, with Sonnenberg's work at tackle a big
factor, Marquette High won its first U.P. Championship, undefeated for
the first time in history. They won six games, scoring 211 points to
their opponents' 7.
Aside from his accomplishments on the football
field, Gus also starred in basketball and was a member of Marquette's
first U.P. Championship team during the 1915-1916 season.
After his graduation in 1916, Gus was offered scholarships
at the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota, but he
decided on Dartmouth.
He arrived in September. It was said that he came
clumping into Dartmouth college with a battered violin case under one
arm, a book of Browning's poems under the other, a cap perched on his
scalp, and wearing a pair of pants that looked like the back legs of
an elephant. Just a few weeks later, the news came that for the first
time in five years, the freshman class was victorious in the traditional
football rush, which takes place between the freshman and sophomore
classes at Dartmouth. At the crack of the gun, Captain Gerrish, of the
varsity, tossed a football into the two awaiting classes, and the fight
for possession of the ball was on. After forty-five minutes of mad scrambling,
Sonnenberg, a candidate for a tackle position on the freshman football
team, succeeded in ascending the Webster Hall steps and presenting the
ball to Captain Gerrish.
That was only the beginning of Sonnenberg's rise
to fame at Dartmouth. He won not only a regular tackle position on the
freshman team, but also a place on the Eastern All-Frosh team.
As the football season started in 1917, Gus was
back in Marquette, holding down the fullback spot for the Northern State
Teachers College squad. That year, under coach L.B. Gant, Northern had
a successful season, losing just one game.
Gus also played on the Teacher's 1917-1918 basketball
team, and in his spare time, coached the Normal high school team.
On January 1, 1919, Sonnenberg accepted a position
as coach of Escanaba High School.
The 1919-1920 season found Gus back at Dartmouth
holding down a regular tackle position.
In 1920 the sports writers association of the East
picked Sonnenberg and George Gipp of Calumet for that group's All-America
Team. It was the first time a Marquette athlete was chosen on any All-America
team and also the first time two U.P. players were chosen on the same
squad.
Gus transferred from Dartmouth to the University
of Detroit where he starred during the 1921-1922 seasons. He graduated
with a law degree.
During his college days, he had some rather remarkable
experiences. One year he blocked nine punts and all of them, except
one, would have been good for touchdowns. Once in a game at Franklin
Field, Philadelphia, he booted the ball eighty yards in the air for
the longest kick ever made at the University of Pennsylvania's field.
Sonnenberg played in the infamous Coaldale, Pennsylvania
game. Sonnen-berg explained, "There was great spirit in Coaldale. The
local gamblers were backing the team to the last penny, betting even
their homes and shirts. Why, I saw $60,000 in cash on a blanket on the
sidelines. Well, we beat them 10 to 7. It was a terrible game. After
it was over, the crowd mobbed us. They threw stones at us as we ran
for our special train. We got on the train and dropped to the floor
to escape the rocks that smashed nearly every window. As the train of
thirteen cars pulled out of the town, they commenced to shoot at the
cars. Of course, we were all on the floor, but one fellow was wounded
in the eye by a shot.
"Another game, in Shenendoah, found the gamblers
losing and they came on to the field in a rush and refused to get off
the field so the game was postponed and all bets were off."
Following his graduation, he was sought by many
pro teams, including the Green Bay Packers. He signed with the Columbus,
Ohio Tigers. Later he played with the Detroit Panthers and Providence,
Rhode Island Steam Rollers.
Gus was picked as "all-professional" tackle by
the managers and owners of the league. One night he went with a newspaper
man to see a wrestling match. The newspaper man said, "Why don't you
get into this game? It's as easy as pro football anyway, and there is
more money." Gus, just recovering from two broken ribs, thought nothing
could happen to him on the mat like the riot that followed the clash
in Coaldale.
Before long, "Dynamite" was the nickname given
to him as a new wrestler. He was described as five foot seven inches
tall, weighing 200 pounds, possessing extra large feet, the chest, arms
and shoulders of a bull gorilla, not very much neck, and a round face.
Other descriptions said he looked just as good
in his green trunks as he did in a tuxedo. He used excellent English,
speaking in a deep baritone, danced well and played a great game of
bridge.
In his wrestling matches, Gus let his head hit
his wrestling opponent with great force, and as the man went down, he
would nail him in the stomach with another head-on smash. As for Sonnenberg's
"flying tackle" and the rule book, inasmuch as he used his hands as
well as his head, it couldn't be barred under "butting." Sonnenberg's
constant habit of playing football without a helmet had been great training
for his wrestling game.
It was not long before Paul Bowser, the Boston
wrestling trainer, got in touch with Sonnenberg. A match with Mayne
Munn was scheduled, and if Gus won that match, he would give up professional
football for a career in wrestling.
Sonnenberg was seventy pounds lighter than Munn,
and nearly one foot shorter. Gus threw his huge opponent twice, once
in a minute and nineteen seconds, and again in twenty-five seconds.
This was the twenty-eighth consecutive match Sonnenberg had won, having
not been defeated since he started his new career on the mat.
Gus Sonnenberg had the heavyweight wrestling championship
of the world in the palm of his hand when an unexpected and disastrous
accident sent him to the hospital. On June 29, 1928, he had tossed the
champion, Ed "Strangler" Lewis for the first fall with his famous flying
tackle. His head butted Lewis in the stomach, and the champion was lifted
from his feet with the flying tackle and slammed to the mat. The time
of the fall was thirty-seven minutes, thirty seconds. Lewis was out
for five minutes.
The crowd of 10,000 fans went wild at the Boston
Arena. Gus was sure to win. Never had such a wrestling match been staged.
Sonnenberg had sailed into Strangler's stomach with his bullet-like
head so many times that many thought Lewis would not be able to re-enter
for the second fall.
When Lewis, still all but helpless from the battering
he had received, returned to the ring for a second round, Sonnenberg,
amid cheers that rocked the arena, started out for a second fall. With
blood in his eyes, he butted Lewis around and it looked like sure victory
for Gus. Suddenly Gus went sailing into a whistling flying tackle, missed
his target, and shot like a bullet at least fifteen feet through the
ropes, beyond the row of reporters, landing on his head on the concrete
floor of the arena. He was picked up unconscious. The crowd was thunderstruck!
He was given fifteen minutes to return to the ring and continue the
match, but at the end of that time he was still unconscious and Lewis
was given the fall and the match.
Sonnenberg was examined by physicians and found
to be suffering from a concussion. He was taken to Trumbull Hospital.
Sonnenberg had been a great drawing card, attracting
immense crowds every time he had battled. Sonnenberg received $7,500
for his work and Lewis $15,000, the highest sum every paid a champion
matman.
The story of Gus Sonnenberg, however, is more than
one of human strength, and speed. He brought to wrestling the color
and dash of American football. He promoted his first show in Boston
at the old Grand Opera House. The gate was $85. On January 7, 1929,
20,000 people jammed the Boston Garden and paid $75,000 to see the "Strangler"
Lewis vs. "Dynamite" Gus Sonnenberg show.
Another article states.... "Two of the most surprising
things about Sonnenberg were his strength and speed. He launched his
tackle at the most unexpected moments and from almost any angle and
position." The tackle which really cost Lewis his crown came as a bolt
from the blue. The Strangler had brought his locked arms up under Gus's
chin, not only snapping the challenger's head back but lifting him off
his feet and dumping him heavily on all fours near the ropes. Strangler
leaped forward to clamp on the finishing headlock.
But from this seemingly defenseless posture, Sonnenberg
instantly uncoiled and shot from the floor, hitting the champion squarely
a little above the knee. A quick jerk of his powerful arms, the final
flying lunge, and the famous Strangler was flat and out.
The second fall and the championship was awarded
to Sonnenberg by the referee when Lewis would not, or could not, re-enter
the ring after having been repeatedly knocked through the ropes by the
butts and tackles and Dynamite Gus.
After Sonnenberg's arm was raised as a gesture
of victory, Paul Bowser, promoter of the title bout, came into the ring
and presented him with the coveted $10,000 diamond championship belt,
and announced, "Gus Sonnenberg... The World Champion Wrestler!"
The Championship Match was filmed by the Educational
Film Exchanges, Inc. It contained 1,000 feet of film and most of the
views were closeupsÖmore thrilling action squeezed into those ten or
twelve minutes than in any movie ever seen. The manner in which Sonnenberg
finished off Lewis tells the story of his name "Dynamite." This thrilling
one reel movie was shown at the Delft Theatre in 1929.
Just one year before, Sonnenberg was a professional
football player drawing a few thousand dollars per season from the Providence
Steam Rollers. He didn't know anything about wrestling and now he was
the heavyweight wrestling champion of the world with $90,000 in the
bank.
His mother had pictures of him all around her living
room. On a sideboard a picture of him in a football uniform, another
in the uniform of a member of the Student Army Training Corps, another
of him showing him wearing the $10,000 diamond studded belt, symbolic
of the heavy-weight wrestling championship, and in a corner one of his
violins, waiting for his return home. She said, "Every time he writes,
he sends money home."
His mother, at age sixty-seven, drove to Milwaukee
with her other son Carl, to see her first wrestling match, and last.
She was in agony and couldn't bear to watch. When finally opening her
eyes, she said, "Mein Gott, He'll kill him!" She buried her face again
and was shaking all over. "My heart,"she said, a hand at her throat,
"It's right here." Finally, when it was over, she picked up her hat,
a shapeless pulp from her worried hands, and said, "My boy Gus, I knew
he'd get him. But for all the money in the world, I wish Gus wouldn't
wrestle."
In August 1929, the U.P. hosted a match between
Sonnenberg and Stanley Stasiak, the Wrestling Champion of Poland, at
the Palestra in Marquette. The bout between Sonnenberg and Stasiak was
listed as a "two falls out of three" finish match for the championship
of the world. The match was probably the biggest professional sporting
event the U.P. had ever seen, due largely to the fact that Marquette
was Sonnenberg's hometown and he wanted to give his hometown backers
a real show.
The bout between Sonnenberg and his giant challenger
took place before a crowd of nearly 3,000 people. The spectators got
an hour and nine minutes of thrilling entertainment as Stasiak fought
hard before Sonnenberg finished him with a flying tackle.
Sonnenberg bought the wrestling mat from Ed Butler
of Ishpeming after using it for the bout with Stasiak. He said it was
one of the best wrestling mats he had ever seen. The mat had been the
property of the Ishpeming Theatre for twenty years and now would be
used in all of Sonnenberg's matches. Gus had sustained many infections
from wrestling on the dirty, blood-stained mats that were usually provided.
Gus had trouble on the matrimonial scene. He married
a movie star, known as Judith Allen in 1931, and that marriage only
lasted a few months. He later married Mildred Micelli, who left him,
Gus says, because she was embarrassed by the "shiners" he got as a wrestler.
Gus said, after waiting all evening to introduce her husband to the
girls as a hero, he would come limping and lurching in after a wrestling
bout, sometimes with one eye painfully swollen and closed, or perhaps
both would be that way, or so black and blue as to be ghastly. One arm
might be bandaged and in a sling, and he didn't look much like a hero.
And so a second divorce came.
Gus died September 9, 1944 at Bethesda Naval Hospital
in Maryland, of leukemia. He is buried in Park Cemetery in Marquette.
He was selected for induction into the U.P. Sports Hall of Fame in 1972.
A champion in a game played by giants, a lover
of poetry, an outstanding performer in professional football yet a student
of the violin, a squatty winner of wrestling rounds yet a graceful dancer.
He wore $150 suits and turned up Panamas, and a big rock on his finger.
That was Gus Sonnenberg, Heavyweight Wrestling Champion of the World.
óJoan Oberthaler
Marquette Monthly(TM),
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