DALLAS -- A healthy lifestyle will help you fight the hands of time. But ultimately, time always wins.
The time is now for Doug’s Gym.
The Downtown Dallas fixture on Commerce Street has stood nearly unchanged since 1962 while the street and city around it transformed. On Saturday, the gym will close its doors and end a remarkable 56-year run.
“I am going to miss it. Everyone is going to miss it,” said Tami Thomsen, a member for the past decade. “It is devastating.”
Doug’s Gym opened up shop at a time when commercial gyms were still few and far between in the entire country. A Korean War veteran saw an opportunity in Downtown Dallas.
“When I came here in 1962, everything was booming downtown,” said Doug Eidd, the gym’s owner and namesake. “All the movies were here, the restaurants were downtown. The streets would be packed.”
Including that weekend in 1963 when Doug’s Gym had a front row seat to the biggest story in the country unfolding in the old Dallas Municipal Building across the street.
“That is where (Lee Harvey) Oswald was shot,” said Doug pointing out of the window in his office. “Reporters from all over the world were out there.”
The figure in the middle of it all, Jack Ruby, was well-known downtown and passed through the gym on a few occasions although Doug remembers he would never workout.
Today, that old municipal building is under re-development like much of the area. The new plans and rising rents they bring along with them are some of the reasons why Doug is ready to officially make his gym a part of the history book. But fittingly, the biggest reason is the same thing that kept the gym viable for decades.
The pursuit of health.
“You want to quit while you are ahead and right now I am ahead because I am healthy.”
Even at age 87, Doug still makes sure to lift a few weights or hit the punching bag each day. In 56 years of business, he said the only days he ever was absent from his gym were for funerals and weddings.
“I have never had a sick day,” he said. “There were some days I did not feel good, but as far as being home in bed? Never.”
Even though there are now any number of gyms with unique, fad workout styles, the gym with wood floors, rusted weights, and no smoothie bar in sight is still every bit as effective as it was in 1962. Doug believes free weights are all you will ever need and the members find a certain charm and motivation in the lack of amenities.
“It is not manufactured, it is not plastic, it is not replicated anywhere,” said Thomsen.
Doug said he will spend a few weeks moving the workout equipment, much of it original equipment from 1962, to his home in Hurst. As a healthy 87-year-old, he plans on his five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren keeping him busy but did acknowledge it will be an adjustment.
"When you sit around the house and you get bored to death, then you probably say ask why you did not stay," he joked.
But for longtime members like Thomsen, the hole will be hard to fill.
“We are already talking about who is bring Kleenex. It is going to be cry fest on Saturday.”