At some point in the 1970’s, the Memphis wrestling promotion introduced a character named Dr. Frank. Dr. Frank was a wrestler in Frankenstein monster makeup. When they introduced his character on the television program, Jerry Lawler brought him out in an upright wooden box with padlocks on it. They referred to this box as a coffin. The door to the box was in two parts and Lawler would just open the top part to show the audience Dr. Frank. It seems like it was about a month before they let Dr. Frank out of the box to wrestle. When they did let him out of the box, he just chased the other wrestlers around the studio. He would also make his way into the studio audience. While Dr. Frank didn’t do much wrestling, he did put on a good show.
The Memphis wrestling promotion would occasionally do shows at schools in the area as fundraisers for school and civic groups. They came to our city school during the height of Dr. Frank mania and brought him with them. I went to this show. When I arrived, Dr. Frank’s coffin was positioned below one of the basketball goals in the gymnasium. The ring was in the middle of the gym with a couple of rows of ringside seats around the ring. This also meant that there were seats set up between Dr. Frank’s coffin and the ring. The gym had older wooden bleachers. At this event, the section of bleachers in the corner of the gym next to the entrance of the concession area were folded up. This also happened to be the end of the gym where they had located Dr. Frank’s coffin.
I sat in the bleachers on the opposite end of the gym from where Dr. Frank’s coffin was located. When the time came for Dr. Frank’s match, they opened the coffin. There were a lot of kids standing in the area around the coffin when he came out. He walked slowly around the gym reaching his arm out toward the frighten kids. The kids would run away but Dr. Frank would turn and chase another group that was close by. Most of the people he was chasing were elementary school kids. There was one high school kid named Rick in this crowd. While Rick was older, he was probably on the same maturity level at the elementary kids he was joining in the chase. Dr. Frank focused his attention on Rick, chasing him in the general direction of the concession area. Rick took a slight turn away from the concession area and ended up running up the section of closed bleachers. There were no steps for him to run up, just a folded section of bleacher seats with only the slightest amount of incline. Rick didn’t make it that far up the wall before falling to the ground. Dr. Frank soon turned his attention to the younger members of the crowd and soon, the wrestling ring. I don’t remember anything about the match, just Rick running up the closed section of bleachers.