Rough Cuts, A man, a plan, a gym. Inspirational stories from the 'hood.

You never would have figured Marshall Cohen to be the guy who would inspire thousands of city children to escape the shackles of poverty and build better lives for themselves and their families.

Marshall’s suburban schoolboy chums once called him the “D-minus boy.” He battled attention deficit order before there was a name for it, then, as he got older, drinking and depression that had him contemplating suicide.

In the midst of all that, Marshall had been able to make a decent living while working at his family’s store, Globe Drugs, in downtown St. Louis. There the unfortunate and those with small and large fortunes gathered to look for bargains galore. As Marshall writes, they found “quarts of Mogen David that hadn’t made the kosher cut, ladies bowling shoes going two pairs for a buck, and a plentiful supply of men’s size 55w maroon polyester pants.” Marshall said his father and uncles ran their store like a clandestine 501c3, hiring and helping ex-convicts, on-and-off the-wagon alcoholics and an array of immigrants, some literally just off the boat.

Marshall, given his life as a different kind of outcast, identified strongly with both the help and the clientele. Even so, he had no purpose in life until he tried out an idea he had on a pint-sized customer named Raymond. Raymond’s mama had sent him from their home in the nearby projects to pick up some detergent.

“I’m opening a gym for kids…” Marshall said tentatively, “…You know, like your age… to lift weights and body build like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You think you’d be interested?’”

Raymond’s eyes lit up. “When are you going’ to open it? Man, I always wanted muscles.”

Over the past two decades, Cohen’s Lift For Life Gym has given city kids a place to gather, to work out, to find people who care about them and, most important, to find a purpose. In his memoir – Rough Cuts: A Man, A Plan and A Gym, Uplifting Stories from the St. Louis’ Hood – Marshall takes readers on a rollicking ride, much of it in his beat-up ’85 Camaro. He starts with his own troubled childhood, then careens into the lives of children whose teachers and even some of their parents had counted them out.

Readers will meet:

• Tommy fresh out of a maximum-security prison, who helped Marshall turn an abandoned warehouse, into the Mecca that it became for neighborhood kids. It was Tommy, a homeless alcoholic but with a big heart who gave Marshall the name for his gym. “Why don’t you call it ‘Lift for Life?’” Tommy suggested to Marshall during a work break. “You’re given kids a lift – they are lfit’n for life.”


• Solomon, who had a boundless work ethic and became a prize winning power lifter at national meets. Here Marshall describes an edge-of-your-seat climax at one event:

The entire afternoon Solomon was going against another kid who had a better trainer, more competition experience, and the latest in power lifting apparel. As each of them made a lift, one would take the lead from the other Then came the moment of truth: To win, Sol would have to lift a weight he had never reached before – more than 450 pounds. Sol took several deep breaths and began to drag the weight slowly up to his shins. He started to struggle at the halfway point; his head flushed dark as a Bloody Mary. Closer, closer he came. His body was shaking so much I was ready to tell him to let it down or he was going to be best friends with a chiropractor for life. But the only thing out of my mouth, out of our team member’s mouths, and, more importantly, out of his family member’s mouths were cheers. There Solomon stood fully extended with the weight, shaking like a leafless tree in a Kansas tornado.”

Sol would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in marketing and worked for Lift for Life for several years.

•• And then there was Terry Moore, one of the smaller kids at Lift for Life and not among the most accomplished when it came to winning medals. But Terry had a larger goal then hoisting 400 pounds. He craved a college degree. With