Coleman is mostly confined to a wheelchair now and lives at the Meadow Park Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Flushing. Although he doesn’t hear well due to years of being pummeled, there were few people at the party who enjoyed themselves more.
   “Everybody knows Abe Coleman,” he said to a reporter. “That’s good, you should put it in.”
   Thriving from the attention of five generations of family members, he told stories, posed with raised fists for the cameras, intermittently broke into song and was quick with wisecracks.
   A nephew asked if he wanted to wrestle. “Get my tights and jockstrap,” Coleman replied. When a Meadow Park nutritionist wished him happy birthday, he told her to buy him a drink. Answering another staff member, who asked him how old he was, he said, “I’m a year older than you.”
   When Coleman was younger, he was known for his love of life as well, although his was not always an easy one. He was born Abe Kelmer on September 20, 1905 in Poland and emigrated to Canada in 1923, avoiding the fate of many family members who died during the Holocaust. Eventually he moved to New York City.
   During the Depression, when there were few Jewish wrestlers, he became known as the “Hebrew Hercules” and “Jewish Tarzan,” which were meant as terms of endearment. But at times, he suffered deliberate anti-Semitism.
   His first wrestling match was in 1929. As he explains it, he fell into the sport, rather than chose it. He was working out in a Brooklyn gym when the promoter, Rudy Miller, approached him. “He said, ‘Hey kid, you want to make $25?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ It was good.”
   After winning that night, he went on to defeat opponents at Madison Square Garden, Sunnyside Arena in Queens and St. Nicholas Arena in Manhattan. At some matches, Mickey Rooney carried his bag.
   At 5 feet 3 inches, he was smaller than most of his opponents—there were nearly 2,000 throughout his career—but rarely lost because of his powerful build and moves. Weighing 200 pounds, with 18-inch biceps and an 18-1/2 inch neck, Coleman was able to lift opponents twice his size over his head and throw them to the ground. “He was the best,” said Phil Kuwent, a nephew, who saw Coleman wrestle in Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway Arena as a child. “For a man his size he was as strong as they come.”
   Fitness is still, evidently, important to him. “I want you to lose weight, a little bit,” he said to a relative on Saturday. “Do some push-ups.”
   A year after his first match, he wrestled in Australia and returned home with a move known as the drop kick, which consists of lifting both feet at once to charge at an opponent. It came to him, he once said, after watching kangaroos. He was also widely known for the flying tackle and aeroplane spin.
   “I beat ‘em all,” he said. “Jim Londos was tough, but I was tougher.”
   Londos, the Greek champion, was Coleman’s longtime foe, whom he wrestled twice to a draw, once in front of 60,000 fans in a Mexico City bullring. Some of his other better-known opponents were Bruno Sammartino, George Zaharias, Angelo Savoldi and George Temple, Shirley Temple’s brother.
   While wrestling Man Mountain Dean, who weighed 465 pounds, Coleman picked him up and slammed him to the mat. Both fell through the ring to the auditorium floor.
   He made such an impression on Jackie Gleason that the comedy king asked Coleman to appear on his show and teach him some moves.
   Family members say he used his earnings, between $10,000 and $12,000 per match or about 10 percent of the profits, to support out-of-work relatives during the Depression. “He made big money and gave it away fast,” Bly said.
   Coleman also enjoyed the good life, living in a hotel on 42nd Street in Manhattan, playing poker with his friends and ordering tailor-made suits.
   After marrying June Miller in 1939—Coleman said he landed in her lap in Madison Square Garden after he was thrown from the ring—he moved to Forest Hills. She died 18 years ago.
   He wrestled until he was 50 and then inspected license plates for the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles and worked as a wrestling judge.
   Until three years ago, when he moved to Meadow Park, he still lived in Forest Hills. He liked to place bets at the OTB on Queens Boulevard, play handball, smoke cigars with friends and pass time at MacDonald Park, where everyone knew him.
   One day, when he was in his 80s, teenagers tried to mug him on Austin Street. Family members say that he pinned them until police arrived. According to another version of the story, he gave one a right hook and the other a left hook, leaving them both unconscious.
   Family members also describe how Coleman, in his later years, had gotten his car blocked in. He picked it up and moved it by hand.
   At Meadow Park, he enjoys watching wrestling on television. He smokes cigars, which his niece, Miriam Bly, who visits every day, brings. He is one of the employees’ favorites, never complaining or asking for anything.
   “He’s involved, he comes to all the activities,” said nutritionist Mindy Daum. “He smiles a lot, he rolls himself down the hallway.”
   Rather than bemoan where he is today, he appreciates what he had. A few months ago he said to a nephew, “Who else had a better life than me? All the Hollywood stars knew me. I travelled around the world.”
   The recent past has become more difficult for Coleman to remember than stories from the 1930s and there are days when he doesn’t feel so well. But the party lifted his spirits. “I feel good today, talking to people,” he said.
   And he thanked each guest as they left. “I love you,” he said to one young woman on her way out. “I’ll see you tomorrow on the handball courts.”

Bruno Sammartino informed me that Abe Coleman was the very first wrestler to use the drop kick.  Fred Hornby said Abe called it the Kangaroo kick.... And Bruno had a wonderful time in California.  He even received a very nice letter from Arnold Schwarzengger with congratulations, since Arnold was out of town.