Retired PE teacher takes home a piece of a beloved gym floor

Principal Kelly Beard presented Madsen, the long-time Physical Education teacher at May Street, with a two-by-five-foot section of the fir gym floor, salvaged from the July 2019 demolition of the building, thanks to Mike Carter, supervisor on the demolition and construction project for Kirby Nagelhout Construction.

Carter and Beard were fulfilling a request by Madsen that they save him a piece of the gym.

“I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” Madsen said. “This building holds so many wonderful memories for me, and that gym was something special.”

“I did a lot of running around on that gym floor,” said Madsen, who spent most of his 27 years at May Street before retiring in 2005.

Carter put a frame around the floor section, made from other recovered wood from the gym, and Beard added another piece of the gym, from the bleachers. The school district has retained sections of the old seats and used refinished foot-long pieces as honorary plaques.

“You dedicated a good portion of your life to the children of this community and that building held a place in your heart and I know it coming down was a difficult thing to see,” Beard told Madsen at the unveiling with Carter and long-time school secretary Kim Maddy.

“The entire building, you were so devoted to and we wanted to make sure you had a piece of that,” Beard said.

Madsen added that most of the running he did was up and down the old stairway.

“I probably made 20 trips a day,” said Madsen, who taught at both May Street and Hood River Middle School in his tenure, and also served for awhile as assistant baseball coach at Hood River Valley High School.

His wife, Cheryl, taught for many years at May Street and retired a few years after Larry.

Maddy added that the gym was not the only treasured structure demolished to make way for the new school; the Larry Madsen play-shed was also torn down. Madsen has the sign in his garage. The section of flooring will remain in his woodshop, for now, unless he can convince Cheryl to let him display it in the house.

“It wasn’t easy,” to salvage the flooring, Carter admitted. “It kind of came out in kindling.” He had to cut through a lower layer of flooring and in doing so the “new” layer splintered. Beard said it had been buffed and refinished many times over the years, but in its later years was too fragile for more of that treatment and the boards had dried and separated.

Madsen reminisced about the distinctive “crackling” sound the board made when walked upon, and before some sound-proofing was done the teachers in classrooms below asked Madsen not to let kids bounce balls.

The school now has a new gym, but two things remain constant: Some of the bleacher seats are there, repurposed as sound buffers. That and the name: Teddy Webber Gymnasium. In the entryway are the name and photo of the gym’s namesake, a student-turned-teacher at May Street who died in 1996. Madsen helped found the Teddy Webber Scholarship that continues to this day.

While it is true that Madsen did a lot of running in the gym, he is also remembered for a lot of running on the school exterior: He started the annual Run For Fitness, an enduring springtime tradition at the school. T-shirts and other prizes, along with the satisfaction of racking up laps walked or run, are the rewards for the students, teachers and parents who get involved in the event.

In a 1997 Hood River News interview, Madsen said, “My feeling is this: I want to encourage a child to come to my PE classes and have fun. There is a definite correlation between having fun at an early age and understanding how important physical fitness is through life. The goal at elementary school is to plant a seed that will eventually grow into enjoyment for physical exertion ...

“Two words fit the way I teach: Fun and fitness. The things we teach are skills for life. The things we teach are skills if you want to be an athlete. The things we teach are skills for fun.”