FILE - Richard Simmons speaks to the audience before the start of a summer salad fashion show at Grand Central Terminal in New York on June 2, 2006. Simmons, a fitness guru who urged the overweight to exercise and eat better, died Saturday, July 13, 2024, at the age of 76. (AP Photo/Tina Fineberg, File)
Local social media users posted bittersweet thoughts the past two days over the death on Saturday of fitness fanatic Richard Simmons at age 76.
But 33 years ago, on May 4, 1991, many in a crowd estimated at 5,000 people — security personnel said it might have even been more — at then-FairOaks Mall on 25th Street in Columbus shed tears of joy when he led an oversized aerobics class of sorts clad in his trademark Globetrotters-style shorts.
Heather McAlister, then 15 from nearby Osgood, was among those who cried when Simmons hugged and congratulated her for losing 80 pounds in about a year on his low-impact program.
“He was such a kind and genuine person,” McAlister said. “He certainly didn’t have to take time for a 15-year-old girl from nowhere Indiana, but he sure did. He made me feel really important. He took time to see what I had done.”
Before McAlister left, she bought a bright orange T-shirt at the merchandise table. She said the shirt’s true-to-life message read, “I met Richard Simmons. He’s such a nice man.”
She also met his brother, Lenny, about 12 years ago at a nonprofit convention.
The Sweatin’-to-the-Oldies guru, then age 43 when he came to Columbus, energetically encouraged those who were overweight initially to take something of a no-sweat approach to self-acceptance, and others to show kindness to those struggling to find a healthy weight.
“If you leave here with one message today, it is never make fun of an overweight person,” he told the crowd.“God has a lot of shapes of cookie cutters … . There’s no scales in heaven.”
As part of what was called Health Check ‘91 sponsored by the mall, then-Bartholomew County Hospital and radio station WINN-FM, he passed out $100 bills, special free coupons for his Deal-A-Meal plan, playfully stuck his head inside the door of the women’s restroom, and also joked with attendees.
“If you can’t share it,” he said of his financial gifts, “then you don’t belong on this earth.”
Columbus resident Michael Robinette, then part of the mall security team, was among the first people the TV star met before the proceedings began. Simmons pulled on Robinette’s uniform shirt collar and cracked “Hey — you’re gonna be awfully hot working out in that.”
He also spotted a pack of cigarettes in Robinette’s shirt pocket and suggested he quit.
The two-pack-per-day smoker already had been planning such and promised Simmons he would do so indeed. And Robinette actually did quit a few months later.
“You know, I usually can tell when people are putting on an act,” Robinette said, expecting that Simmons’ TV persona was strictly a crazy character, but quickly found that the celebrity truly was that uber enthusiastic. “I remember that he also was very polite — and incredibly funny.”
Dana Corbit Nussio, then The Republic features editor and a romance author in Michigan today, recalls Simmons’ charisma when she was at the gathering for the paper’s coverage.
The exuberance he was known for through the years was front and center.
“I remember that he was just as warm in person as he appeared to be on TV,” Corbit Nussio said. “The moment I showed up to interview him, he ran over and hugged me.
“I came dressed for a workout and was excited when he chose me to come up for his class on stage. It was a lot of fun.
“I was so sad to see that he had passed.”
His humor was as spirited as his exercise.
“My God, look at all the children,” he said at one point after being introduced. “Is this a Catholic neighborhood?”
In information on his website, he said he had helped people lose a collective 3 million pounds since opening his first exercise studio the 1970s.
Robinette recalls that when Simmons left from a mall back hallway to his waiting limo, fans had stuck Post-It Notes all over the vehicle with thank yous, names and phone numbers and amounts of weight they had lost with his help.
“They were literally plastered all over,” he said.
