Historical Society hosts the program on Sunday
~by Chuck Offenburger
There are many different kinds of history to consider, and this Sunday the Greene County Historical Society will present a program on some important economic development history for this area. Bill Sorenson, founder of American Athletic Inc., will use his personal collection of historic photographs and his own recollections to salute the company’s 60 years of business here.
The program, free and open to the public, is set for 2:30 pm at the Greene County Historical Museum in Jefferson, with free refreshments to follow.
“I’m 83 years old, and I probably don’t have a lot of left,” said Sorenson, who has lived the past 33 years in Westport, CT. “I’ve been looking for the right opportunity to come back to my hometown, go through this story, and thank all the people of Jefferson and Greene County who helped make American Athletic the number one company in the world today in equipping the sport of competitive gymnastics.”
The company, headquartered along U.S. Highway 30 on the north edge of Jefferson, employs more than 100 people in making gymnastics and other sports equipment. It has been one of the area’s leading employers since Sorenson started it in 1954, to make trampolines. Since 2004, it has been owned by Russell Brands, LLC, which also brought production of much of its Spalding brand of sports equipment to Jefferson.
Ces Brunow, president of the historical society, said this program is the first of what she hopes will be an occasional series that will present the histories of long-tenured businesses here.
“This year’s program committee was brainstorming ideas for presentations both for our regular monthly meetings and for our special events,” Brunow said. “We began listing prominent businesses that have remained active throughout the years and have had a lasting effect on Greene County. When I casually mentioned our interest in AAI to our member Jane Sorenson, she offered to put us in touch with Bill Sorenson,” her former husband.
“Bill enthusiastically agreed to come back to Jefferson to tell us the story,” Brunow continued. “It is one that involves many in our community, and many of those original supporters are still around. We’re confident that the story of AAI will draw a good crowd Sunday at the museum.”
Bill Sorenson graduated from Jefferson High School in 1948, then went to the University of Iowa where he became a Big 10 Conference champion gymnast in trampoline events and tumbling. He joined the gymnastics team “when the coach came up to some of us when we were sitting at the swimming pool and asked if we’d ever been on a trampoline,” Sorenson said. “I said, ‘What the hell is a trampoline?”
After college, he went to work for his new wife Jane’s parents Newton and Gertrude Seela at their Seela Hardware & Appliance store on the square in Jefferson. He and his brother-in-law Ted Seela made their first prototype trampolines in the garage of Sorenson’s home on the west edge of town. Soon, they went into production in the basement of the hardware store. Sorenson said that with early support from the Seelas, Home State Bank and investors Del Van Horn and Meredith Shriver, the company had fantastic growth in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.
When other larger companies bought American Athletic, Sorenson started climbing the corporate ladder. He hired the highly successful Jefferson High School basketball coach Larry Fie to become president of American Athletic. “At that time, I was also president of the school board,” said Sorenson, “and superintendent (Frank) Linduska was not happy about losing his basketball coach to me. But we were a growing company and we needed Larry,” Sorenson said. Larry Fie still lives in Jefferson.
The program on AAI on Sunday will be following a regular monthly Historical Society meeting on Friday at St. Brigid Parish Center in Grand Junction. At the Friday program, Jan Durlam of Jefferson will do excerpts from the popular lectures that she has been giving the last three years about early Greene County history to the fifth graders of all county schools. That program will start at 1 pm and is free and open to the public. There’s an $8 luncheon at 12 noon.
