Let's Say It Together: "It's OK To Be Gay In Oil City, PA"

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from The Derrick:

Brute record-holder addresses bullying to OC sixth-graders

Standing 6 feet, 4 inches tall and tipping the scales at more than 350 pounds, Jon Pritikin towers over most everyone, especially the Oil City Middle School sixth-graders gathered in an assembly Wednesday morning.

Pritikin was the featured speaker at a school program on bullying, something he was very familiar with as a child.

Off the stage, he is a devoted husband and father of a 5-year-old daughter, and he has preached personal integrity and respect to crowds around the world for 18 years.

Particularly impressive to Wednesday’s crowd is Pritikin’s title as one of the world’s strongest men and the record he holds with the Guinness Book of World Records.

“I’m going to start by ripping a phone book in half,” he said to the hyped auditorium.

Drawing a student from the crowd “to make sure it’s a real phone book,” the display of strength is done in a split second.

Second in the lineup is a frying pan, of which he rips the handle off and rolls the rest up like a burrito. This feat is what earned him a place in the 2009 Guinness book.

Officially, it stands as the tightest circumference of two aluminum frying pans rolled together with his bare hands in less than 30 seconds.

For students perhaps not impressed yet, out comes a piece of steel rebar and a couple of volunteers “to show it’s real.”

With two girls holding onto either end of the bar, he proceeds to spin them around a few times, showing the bar will not bow easily. With the girls safely grounded, Pritikin then uses his teeth as the midpoint hinge and bends the bar in half.

The wide-eyed middle-schoolers went wild with cheers.

Having secured their attention, he commences with a few stories.

Picking on brothers and sisters at home, singling out a student to tease at school — these things are commonplace, Pritikin said.

There was some laughter after humorous impersonations of such bullying, but then Pritikin presented a more solemn side of the stories.

Sharing accounts of hecklers who deemed classmates retarded, or teachers and parents who resolved that a kid “would never get anywhere in life,” Pritikin even remarked on bullied students’ suicide notes, later described as “a permanent solution to a short-term problem.”

Pritikin told the students about one third-grader with a speech impediment who was long targeted by a mob of more than 20 boys at school.

“One day running away from these guys, someone stretched out a leg in the hallway and he tripped, falling flat on his face and bleeding all over the place,” Pritikin said to a now hushed crowd.

Left to fend as a loner in the lunch room and classrooms, he said this little boy was also told by teachers that he would not amount to anything.

Learning how to read from a dedicated high school teacher, he went on to surpass predicted failure and graduate from college.

Then Pritikin added a finishing touch with an ironic twist.

“That’s my story,” he said. “That’s what I went through my whole life.”


“Anyone can put someone down, anyone can be sarcastic — that’s easy,” he said. “But what we need today are people to be heroes and help each other out.”

Pritikin then demonstrated one last feat and split a wooden baseball bat in half over his thigh.

With debris on the floorboards and pages of the phone book adorning the stage curtain, Pritikin concluded by saying “starting today let’s be heroes to one another.”

The students then took his “if I can make it — you can make it” message with them as they dispersed for the rest of their day.