Former Curler of Hair Now Curls Heavy Weights in Her Gym

In nearly four years as the well-muscled owner of the American Eagle Gym in Norwalk, Sherry Houston has attracted a large clientele of earnest weightlifters, as loyal as the customers she once cultivated as a beautician.

When, 20 years ago in Florida, she operated a beauty salon, Houston held forth in a gossipy atmosphere and conducted hair-color and perm contests. Being involved with the public was what she loved.

“It’s about the same here,” she said the other day in the Front Street Plaza gym, where she still happily stages contests--now for curling and bench pressing. “There’s gossip, and people tell me their problems.”

Houston, 45, of La Mirada, has become, like many of her members, a champion weightlifter, and holds the American women’s masters curl record of 65 pounds in her age category.

A myriad of duties fills the gym owner’s days--keeping the books; training members; working out herself; ordering shirts, jackets and vitamin supplements; calling the welder when the dumbbells need tightening; even cleaning up the place. And all the while she encourages her members as they prepare for power-lifting and bodybuilding events, to which she accompanies them and pays their entry fees.

“She takes care of everybody; she’s as sweet as sweet can be, the nicest woman in the world,” said Frank Riggio, 65, a bald, one-eyed butcher who, when not bench-pressing in the gym, makes beef jerky next door at Wong’s Market. He added, “Everybody’s loyal to her and the gym because she’s so good to them.”

Houston sometimes is called “gym mom,” a description that, like a cumbersome barbell, makes her grimace. “That sounds pretty old,” she said. “I threaten them if they call me that.”

She looked with pride around the red, white and blue gym. Divided into two mirrored rectangular rooms, one of which once was part of Wong’s, it is decorated with trophies, an American flag, a caricature of a yellow-beaked, muscle-flexing eagle and photos of the members. The carpet has been ripped by the black, forbidding weights.

Frills are frowned upon at the American Eagle. “I hear what guys say when other girls dress too cute--’Oh, we’re in Nautilus now,’ ” said the 5-foot-8, 138-pound Houston, dressed in black tights and black T-shirt. But the gym owner’s own look is not completely austere--a turquoise palm tree is printed on her shirt, several gold chains are around her neck, a fingernail is sequined.

A motorcycle enthusiast, Houston went over a cliff on one in the desert in 1973, a few years after moving to California from St. Petersburg, Fla. With the nerves in her right leg severely damaged, she was forced to quit her job at a Whittier wig salon.

She joined a spa to rehabilitate the leg, and switched to selling real estate. In 1987, she considered investing her earnings in a beauty salon. She was working out then at the Uptown Gym in Whittier, and friends there persuaded her to start her own gym.

“I was going to be in a gym almost every day anyway, so it was a pretty convenient idea,” she said. “But I was afraid of how people would react to a woman owner.”

Her first customers would ask questions (about vitamin supplements), forcing Houston to do research. “And I had to start reading (bodybuilding) books so I could train people,” she said.

In 1988 she had another dirt-bike accident, breaking her bad leg. She spent a year in a cast and has a permanent limp.

“I’ll never ride again,” she said. “I sold my bike.”

The air of camaraderie in the gym, which has more than 350 members who pay a yearly fee of $225, has been captured in the snapshots Houston keeps in several albums on her desk.

“Here’s C.T., this guy is rock-hard,” she said, pointing to a photo of C.T. Fletcher, a postal worker whose gigantic arms have enabled him to curl an American-record 212 1/2 pounds in the men’s super heavyweight open division and also bench press 537 pounds.

Houston turned to a shot of Riggio wearing a black eye patch and hoisting a weight. The semi-retired butcher, who drives in from Riverside to the gym and market, where he has worked for 41 years, was arthritis-ridden when Houston opened the gym and began training him. Now he holds the masters curl record of 110 pounds in his age group.

The next picture was of barrel-chested George Liana, another record holder who rehabilitated himself at the gym after being trampled by a bull while working at a meatpacking plant in Paramount.

“Here’s Jerry Prince, see how red his face gets,” Houston said. She has a notebook page filled with the titles and records held by Prince, 47, who can curl 185 pounds. He also is her trainer.

“I’m so proud of these guys,” Houston said.

And there were pictures of herself--straining to curl a barbell at a contest, with her friends standing around yelling encouragement.

The gym owner said she loves what she does: “It’s like a big family. I care about the people here. People have met here and got married, and one couple had their wedding reception here.”

Still, Houston sadly misses having a beauty salon. “That’s where my heart is,” she said. “But I cut some of the guys’ hair here. There’s always hair on the floor.”

As the gym began to fill with the familiar sounds of grunting men and clanking metal, a regular named Joe Hernandez made Houston’s day when he asked her, not how to enlarge his pectorals, but if she would trim his sideburns.