TRIBUNE COLUMN
Mid-Missouri wrestler a legend of yesteryear

Have you ever heard of Marshall Carter? No? How about the Masked Marvel? No? Young Gotch? No?

Ok, let’s try Marshall Esteppe. That name should ring a bell if you’re older then 50. For the younger folks, read on. You’re about to meet a legend.

Marshall Esteppe, or Estep or Estepp, depending on where you were, was many things to many people.

A native of Centralia, Marshall spent most of his adult life in Sturgeon, where he built the Esteppe legend.

Old-time wrestling fans will remember Marshall as one of a very few grapplers to win world titles in three weight classes in an era when a wrestler was more than an oversized showman with a nasty attitude and an overwhelming lack of mat savvy.

Central Missourians remember Marshall for a whole lot more. They remember him as the first president of the Sturgeon Chamber of Commerce in 1941; as Sturgeon’s postmaster and rural carrier; as the leader of the Sturgeon Lions Club and a driving force in the club’s eye donor program; as Sturgeon’s outstanding citizen in 1977; as the president of the Centralia Country Club, the club champ in 1956 as an able golfer still shooting his age in his 70s.

They remember him as the president of the Missouri Sand Greens Golf Association and as Sunday school superintendent at the sturgeon Methodist Church.

He and his wife, Ruth, the daughter of W.A. Robinson, who practiced medicine in Sturgeon for 50 years, farmed 350 acres, including a dairy herd of Holsteins and Guernseys called Mile-A-Way Farm, located as you might suspect, a mile south of Sturgeon. In later years, the Esteppes swapped the time-consuming dairy herd for fine Angus beef herd.

For all his local involvement, Marshall Esteppe will be forever known as a wrestling champion and the breath of life for the University of Missouri-Columbia wrestling program.

He was born March 1, 1909, the second of five children of Bourbon and Mary Esteppe. His dad was a coal and ice dealer and Centralia chief of police. Marshall was lugging 200-pound blocks of ice in his early teens, developing the strength of a champion.

Marshall played basketball at Centralia High School and was a member of the 1926-27 club that finished 26-1. In 1929, he was a leader on the Centralia town team and a semi-pro baseball player.

When Marshall was a youngster, O.B. Myers had promised him a scholarship at MU if he had a perfect attendance record for his 12 years in the Centralia school system. The future world champ didn’t miss a day for 12 years. But it was 32 years later before Marshall made it to MU - and he paid his own way.

In the late 1920s, George Tragos was one of the best wrestlers in the country. He helped coach the MU wrestler and hooked up with Lloyd Carter, another leading wrestler in the ’20s, who owned the old Globe Hotel in Centralia. They were joined by Chris Jordan, the world middleweight champ, for workouts in a renovated room at the hotel.

A tightly-wound 155-pounder joined the workouts, first as an onlooker, then on the mat. The pros liked what they saw in a young Marshall Esteppe.

When the time was right, Carter sent Marshall into action at a carnival in Mexico, Mo., that guaranteed $5 for each minute a challenger could stay with the carny and $300 if the challenger won. Marshall won, a riot followed - and a career of 3,000 bouts was under way.

Marshall’s first pro match was in 1933 in Chillicothe. His ring name was Marshall Carter. He married Ruth a year later, and the pair began a wrestling odyssey that took them first to Birmingham, Ala., then to Los Angeles and back to Sturgeon in a career that lasted 21 years.

Marshall won his first title, beating Gus Kallios for the middleweight crown in 1935. He outgrew the 155-pound limit, and three years later, moving up to the 175-pound class, he won title No. 2 by beating Jesse James.

In 1945, weight again became a problem, and Marshall won his third belt as a 205-pounder at the expense of Ken Fenallon in Des Moines, Iowa.

Marshall called it quits in 1953. His odyssey had taken him to every state in the country, winning 98 percent of his 3,000 bouts. Along the way, he handed longtime heavyweight champ Lou Thesz his first defeat and beat many marquee grapplers, including Orville Brown, but never in three heavyweight title fights. Occasionally, he donned a mask and became the Masked Marvel. He normally won, despite the name.

Others who were Marshall’s victims were a who’s who of the time: Dangerous Danny McShane, Ray Steele, Everett Marshall, Jack Pesek, Sonny Myers, Hugh Nichols, the Girabaldi Brothers, Baron Leone, Al Szasz and Leroy McGuirk, whom Marshall considered the best of them all with the exception of Ed "Strangler" Lewis.

Once his competitive career was done, Marshall and Ruth settled into farm and civic life, adding Landrace hogs to their farm.

Ruth had attended Northeast Missouri State College and began teaching in 1932. Teaching became a part-time job when she married Marshall, but she returned to the classroom full time in 1949, teaching history, English, social studies and coaching the girls’ basketball team at Sturgeon High School. She retired for good in 1969, and in 1979 she joined Marshall as one of Sturgeon’s outstanding citizens.

Marshall returned to the mat in 1959 when he accepted the position of wrestling coach at MU, reviving a sport that was discontinued in the mid-1930s. He coached four years without pay, starting MU on its way to a position of leadership in collegiate wrestling. It took a while.

His first team went 0-7, but the die was cast. He turned the program over to Vernon "Hap" Whitney in 1964 and ran the farm, played golf, attended MU, Sturgeon and Centralia athletic events until his death in 1989. Ruth died in 1992.

MU was not Marshall’s first stop in coaching. In 1933, he pulled to together a team of farm kids at Centralia High School, went to the state wrestling tournament without a single warmup and won second place.

The Esteppes had no children, but two nieces have kept the Esteppe legend alive. Barbara Goosey and Doris Barnhart are daughters of Marshall’s younger brother, Bourbon Jr.

Our thanks to them for a chance to relive the days of Marshall and Ruth Esteppe and to introduce them to those who never had the honor of sharing time with Ruth and the cauliflower-eared old champ.

We need a book titled "The Esteppe Story."

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Bill Clark’s columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 474-4510.

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