Frank Spellman


Frank Isaac Spellman was an American middleweight weightlifter. He won a gold medal at the 1948 Olympics, and a bronze and a silver medal at the world championships in 1946–47. Domestically Spellman won the 1946 and 1948 AAU titles, and then retired to work as a photographer. He resumed competing in 1961 and won another AAU title that year.
Spellman has been elected to the United States Weightlifting Hall of Fame, the Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame and the Porterville Quarterback Hall of Fame. In 1990 he was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. In addition to being inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in its class of 2003/2004, Spellman was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1983. Spellman died on January 12, 2017 at the age of 94. He had two brothers, Charlie and Harold, two sisters, Ethyl and Frances, and six children: Danny, Kevin, Katie, Yvonne, Larry and Steve.