Here’s a magazine cover photo that gives Brave some bragging rights: “Mr. America 1952 Jim Park” is a native son. Park was born in Brave in 1927, a country boy who loved walking miles hunting with his dad and no doubt threw his share of hay bales to get in shape for the sports he would play in high school. His family moved to Waynesburg when he was 13 and his good humor and determination to be the best on the playing field would later make his grueling regime of having a perfect physique look easy.
Park came of age when bodybuilding was the craze that would make him a star and a role model for a generation of boys.
The Amateur Athletic Union created the brand Mr. America for the competitions that began in 1939 and the winner was christened America’s Best Built Man. The next year the title became Mr. America. As young men enlisted for war, working out became a way of life as the military built its fighting force. Park joined the Navy and would have plenty of time between duties to compete with his shipmates. Park and his Navy buddy Irvine Johnson took their passion for bodybuilding to Chicago after discharge and Park threw himself into the challenge of being the best in the world.
At five foot seven, he would win his titles in the tall division, weighing at 190 pounds, with a perfectly muscled torso, shoulders and arms pivoting on an almost impossibly narrow waist. Park followed a careful regime of a high protein diet, protein supplements and a science-based muscle building regime developed by Johnson. Together they created a new model of manly perfection and the products it took to do it.
Park’s accomplishments made him the gold standard of what a champion body should be – every muscle sculpted with not an ounce of fat to be seen. In the pre-steroid days of the 1940s and 1950s, Johnson’s secret was in matching the amino acids in his supplements to what was in mother’s milk. It was a formula that seemed to give Park his edge. Park won Mr. Illinois and Mr. Chicago competitions in 1949 and by 1950 was hailed as Mr. Midwest.
Newly married and determined to be number one, Park tested the national waters and placed fifth in the 1951 Jr. Mr. America competition. Another year of fitness training brought the title of Mr. America in 1952. Now in top form, Park and his wife went to London a few months later and Park placed first overall and first in the tall division of the Mr. World competition. Park became a star in eyes of millions when he placed best overall and first in the tall division of the 1954 Pro Mr. Universe competition. His now famous face and muscled torso became part of the logo of Johnson’s line of supplements that fueled the protein supplement industry for the next thirty years before the Atkins Diet took the concept to a new fitness conscious generation.
Jim Park died August 28, 2007 and is still a legend among those who saw “The Photo” of his imposing torso and narrow waist as kids and grew up to be body builders themselves.
