Audley "Jack" Hader seems to have been an individual predestined for an athletic career.
Often described as having a wild streak as a child and being of impressive stature, the scrappy young boy grew up in Mid-Missouri but later found his calling in Kansas City as a professional wrestler.
Jack Hader was born on Sept. 16, 1903, the son of George Hader and Mamie Pitchford. He grew up on the Hader family farm in the southwest section of Cole County near the Miller County line. The following year, he had a sister who died at birth and in 1905, another sister, Dean, was born. But after their mother died in 1908, Jack's father moved to Kansas City and became a bus driver for the Kansas City Public Service Company.
"Mother always said that Jack was a handful and something of a wild child," said Linda Amick, whose mother, Marble Enloe, was a first cousin to Hader. "I was told that he lived with his grandparents because his father thought they might be a good influence for him."
William David and Polly Ann Hader, grandparents to Jack, raised him on their farm and brought him up in their Baptist faith. Jack for many years attended the one-room Mt. Herman School in nearby Miller County. Sometime prior to World War I, he traveled to Kansas City to live with his father, who had since remarried. Hader later finished high school in the Kansas City area.
The Emporia, Kansas, Gazette printed on June 22, 1940, that Hader was "a Kansas University graduate and a former K.U. football player."
As a young man, he was employed by the gas company in Kansas City and married in the early 1920s. He and his first wife divorced in the summer of 1926 and several weeks later, on Oct. 6, 1926, he married Winniford Smith. The couple welcomed the first and only child to their family in 1929--a son, Wyeth.
"Jack was working at the gas company while he was doing amateur wrestling until he was told that he was good enough to go professional," said John Hader, a grandson to Jack. "That's how he got one of his wrestling names-- 'Gashouse Hader.'"
The 1930s and 1940s were a transformative period since "the whole landscape in pro wrestling was drastically different," explained Matthew Hester in an article for Bleacher Report. "Gone were the days of wrestling at the carnies and farms. We were now embarking on a new business-like wrestling world."
He added, "While wrestling continued to grow in popularity, promoters were making more money. It was during this era we would see the term 'Raiding Talent.' Promoters were seeing dollar signs as the business was growing."
In the spring of 1927, Hader was being billed as an amateur wrestling attraction in Kansas City. On September 14, 1931, the Kansas City Times noted he "was one of the roughest mat men ever sent into the wrestling ring to do battle with the head spinners. He holds the honor, if it can be called that, of having been tossed out of the ... ring for roughness."
Showmanship was an important factor in the attraction of wrestling and Hader chose to embrace it. Newspaper accounts reveal that Hader earned the distinction of being one of the most despised wrestlers in the Kansas City region because of the choking tactics he employed in the ring.
"He was known as the notorious bad man from Kansas City -- the man people loved to hate," said his grandson, Jack Hader. "He took the role as a ring bad guy and got a bigger share of the gate."
In the aforementioned Emporia Gazette article, a reporter wrote Hader was considered "(a) a real 'bad man' of the ring, who is reputed to have been disqualified and suspended in more states than any other wrestler in the country. ... Hader started his wrestling career in 1934 and specialized in fast clean action for a while."
The newspaper continued, "Within a few months he said he got tired of being punched and pushed around and decided he would be as tough as the rest of them."
Hader traveled both near and far in his wrestling career while performing under aliases such as Black Jack Hader and the Red Demon. By the mid-1940s, several newspapers were reporting that he had turned over a new leaf and gained new fans by implementing cleaner ring tactics.
Returning to Mid-Missouri for a match Nov. 3, 1956, Hader -- then in the sunset of his career -- was being billed at 225 pounds and from Eugene, Missouri. He wrestled Joe Dusek of Omaha, Nebraska, at the Eldon High School Auditorium in an event attended by many of his extended family.
"I went to the match and Jack picked up the other wrestler and slammed him to the mat, breaking 2x4s under the ring," said Charles Jobe, a cousin to Hader.
"I remember mother saying he was just showing off for the family," he added with a laugh.
Retiring in the late 1950s after having wrestled in four different decades, Hader lived briefly in the Jefferson City area and was employed as an assistant recreation supervisor at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Then, on March 23, 1962, he married a third and final time.
Leaving Missouri in the early 1960s, he and his wife moved to Albany, Georgia, where he served the next several years as a health club director for the YMCA. The retired professional wrestler eventually settled in Florida and was 78 years old when he was killed in a car wreck Jan. 12, 1982. He and his wife are interred in Forest Lawn Memory Gardens in Ocala, Florida.
"I vaguely remember him coming to my grandparents' house when I was a kid and we were told 'the wrestler' is coming over," Charles Jobe said. "When he got there, me and one of my young cousins were wrestling in the yard."
Chuckling, he added, "I imagined we looked quite silly to a seasoned professional like Jack Hader."
Jeremy P. Ämick is the author of "Moments on the Moreau."
0 Comments