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Wednesday, July 14, 1993 Page: 1C QUICK WORDS: WEIGHTLIFTING HELPS
LOWE
Weightlifting helps Lowe live with life behind bars
Beads of sweat plunge continuously from Gregory “Beetle” Lowe’s tired
face,
staining the carpet of a ballroom at the Ramada Hotel in Wilkes-BarreLowe
hurriedly dresses and throws his workout gear in a couple of worn-out Shop
Rite brown paper bags. Meanwhile, two men shove in a drab-colored canvas sack
a weightlifting belt and a couple of large trophies that Lowe won earlier in
the day.
Unshowered and still perspiring, Lowe and four companions rush to the side
exit of the hotel. Even though he has just set a new national record at the
American Drug-Free Powerlifting Association National Championship meet, there
are no autograph-seekers lining Lowe’s path. No cameramen. No fans. No one,
really.
Just a waiting van that will transport one of the strongest men in the
world back in time for bed-check at the State Correctional Institution at
Graterford.
Home for Beetle Lowe.
“It’s a pretty bleak situation, knowing you have to go home to prison,”
says the 36-year-old Lowe, who is serving a life sentence at Graterford for a
1983 robbery that ended in murder.
“Two guys with me robbed a place … someone got killed,” is how he
explains the events that took place outside of a bar in North Philadelphia 10
years ago.
Lowe maintains he had nothing to do with the fatal shooting and is
appealing the sentence. But for now, the future of this once-promising college
football player is as grim as the walls in his cell block.
So, like most prisoners, he turns his life over to God.
And iron.
“I had a lot of time on my hands,” says Lowe, a former running back at
Cheyney State University. “I needed to get into something positive.”
Powerlifting certainly has been a positive experience for Lowe, a 5-foot-6,
260-pounder who has set numerous national lifting marks at prison meets
sanctioned by the ADFPA.
Lowe thoroughly dominated the sport behind bars. He became so good and so
strong, he was forced to send notices to newspapers and lifting clubs across
the mid-Atlantic states, searching for qualified lifters to challenge him.
Not surprisingly, few came.
Even so, Lowe, who got his nickname “Beetle” from hoisting the rear end of
a Volkswagon sedan off the street in his native Philadelphia, was determined
to compete against the best in the world.
Last Sunday, he finally got his chance.
After a lengthy wait, Lowe received special approval from Graterford along
with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to participate in the
powerlifting meet in Wilkes-Barre, according to Alan LeFebvre, public
information officer at Graterford.
“We wouldn’t allow him out of prison were he not a model inmate,” says
LeFebvre, noting that Lowe has been just that during his incarceration. “It’s
unheard of to let a lifer out of prison.”
Accompanied by two guards and two officials from Graterford, Lowe took on
the nation’s strongest (drug-free) men at a makeshift weight room at the
Ramada.
He beat them all.
Beetle set a new national record Sunday by successfully squatting 903.9
pounds in the ADFPA National Championship meet, easily wiping out the previous
best of 870 pounds.
He captured the dead-lift and bench-press competitions and placed first
overall in the 275-pound category.
“Prison is a negative situation, but believe it or not, competitive sports
is a way of life for us,” says Lowe, moments after failing on a record
dead-lift attempt of nearly 800 pounds.
“Being a winner helps boost the morale of men in prison,” he says. “We
continue to be ostracized by fellow lifters (on the outside) so I feel like I
made a statement for men in prison everywhere.”
Beetle went on to thank God for saving him, as well as the prison
administration for allowing him to take part in the meet.
He realizes few people other than those that know him best at Graterford
trust his sincerity.
“I’m used to it,” he says. “But I’m the one that made the mistakes.”
He hopes there will be more meets, more national records and more
opportunities to prove to the world he is trying to make something out of a
life he tried to throw away a decade ago.
“If you have a chance to follow your dreams, you can make it,” he says.
Whether of not that chance will come again, he doesn’t know.
But Beetle Lowe keeps dreaming.
It is all he’s got.
Jerry Kellar is a Times Leader sports writer. His column appears on
Wednesday.