By Mark Palmer
Senior Writer
Intermat
With the passing of Muhammad Ali, the world lost a legendary boxing champion, a fighter for social justice, and a man who lived the last 30 years of his life battling Parkinson's disease.

Many in amateur wrestling may not realize that our sport lost a giant to the same debilitating disease 75 years ago: Ed Gallagher, legendary head wrestling coach at Oklahoma State, who lost a long battle with Parkinson's at age 53. Gallagher was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as a Distinguished Member in the Charter Class of 1976.

Edward Clark Gallagher coached the Cowboys from roughly World War I (1916) to just before America entered World War II (1940). In that timespan of 24 years, Gallagher guided the wrestling program at Oklahoma A&M (as the school in Stillwater was called until the late 1950s) to 19 undefeated seasons, winning eleven NCAA team titles. The Cowboys lassoed a 138-5-4 overall record for an amazing .952 winning percentage (a greater win ratio than most all-time great college mat coaches can claim). Gallagher coached 22 wrestlers to earn 37 individual national championships; 17 of his Cowboys wrestled in Olympic competition, with three winning gold medals. Because of these accomplishments, Ed Gallagher's name adorns the arena at Oklahoma State ... and he was named one of three "Best Wrestling Coaches" in an online poll of wrestling fans for the NCAA 75th Anniversary Team honors in 2005. (The other two coaches so honored are also Distinguished Members: Iowa State's Harold Nichols, and University of Iowa's Dan Gable.)

Gallagher and his wrestlers achieved these impressive honors despite the fact that the coach had never wrestled (though he was a track star and played football in college) ... and, that, throughout the last ten years of his life, dealt with Parkinson's, a disorder of the central nervous system that affects movement, often including tremors, that affected Ali, actor Michael J. Fox, and approximately one million others.

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