"I won the state all-around in my junior and senior years in '58 and '59, and that allowed me to get a scholarship to the University of Minnesota," Larry Gleason said.
Gleason admits he wasn't the best student and ended up dropping out — twice.
"I had real problems doing things because I just had trouble concentrating sometimes. I always seemed to be interested in something else other than the courses I was supposed to be taking."
So he began working full time, doing surgical research for the University of Minnesota. Soon, doctors started asking him to give their kids lessons. That's when he got the idea to open up his own school.
"I started to realize that this was something that I liked doing," Gleason said. "I was good at it. Maybe I could make a living out of it."
Starting with tirty students, but after the first year, Gleason was up to 100 students. After two years, 200. By then, they had outgrown the space.
Back when he first opened the school, Gleason had a handful of adult students who would come in for classes. He organized them into a traveling act that would perform at county fairs throughout the state.
During the hourlong shows, they'd delight fairgoers with hand-balancing acts, tumbling routines and comedy. In between the performances, they would camp out and practice outdoors at area parks.
They didn't get rich as traveling gymnasts — "we'd make a couple hundred bucks. It would pay our expenses," Gleason said — but they had fun showing off the sport, which was a bit of a novelty at the time.
After the husband of one of his performers compared them to the storied travelers, Gleason took to calling the group the "Gypsy Gymnasts."
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