Gymnastics Pioneers of the 20th Century
Vincent D’Autorio was born on October 1, 1915, in Newark, New Jersey. He was the oldest of ten children in his family. Vinnie took up gymnastics in high school at Central High School and later at Eastside High School. He won the Newark City High School Gymnastics Championship in his junior year. He was not able to go to college because of his family’s finances. Instead, D’Autorio became an apprentice jeweler and spent twenty-five years in the jewelry business.
D’Autorio was a prime candidate for the 1940 Olympic team. The Olympic Games were canceled because of World War II, and Vinnie joined the Army (1942–1945) and served with the Naval Construction Battalion “Seabees” in the South Pacific islands. During his military service, Vinnie could often be found working out in his spare time on a trampoline made of rubber strands cut from old inner tubes and a set of parallel bars made of metal pipes. The 1944 Olympic Games were also canceled because of the war. D’Autorio did compete in some of the National Amateur Athletic Union (NAAU) meets while he was in the service.
D’Autorio was a member of the Swiss Turnverein in Paterson, New Jersey. The Turnverein was a “Mecca” for many of America’s great gymnasts of the forties and fifties. D’Autorio could often be found working out with his teammate and friend Frank Cumiskey. Cumiskey, of German descent, was also one of America’s great gymnasts and a renowned gymnastics judge. Frank was on the 1932 Los Angeles U.S. Olympic team, placing in the all-around, the 1936 U.S. Olympic team in Berlin, and the 1948 London Olympic team. Frank was six feet one inch tall, and it was often the 5′ 6″ Vinnie’s job to spot his tall teammate on the horizontal bar. Frank’s feet would still brush the gym floor on each of his giant swings, even though all the mats under the bar had been removed.
D’Autorio made the 1948 U.S. Olympic team and was the second-highest American scorer at the London Olympics. Four years later, at age thirty-six, D’Autorio made the 1952 U.S. Olympic team to Helsinki, Finland. Vinnie’s age record still stands at the time of this writing. The National Collegiate Gymnastics Alumni Association honored D’Autorio by naming him to the 1944 Honorary U.S. Olympic team.
Teacher and Coach
D’Autorio was an extraordinary, accomplished teacher and coach. He taught gymnastics classes for Bonnie Prudden in White Plains, New York. Bonnie was one of the early pioneers of physical fitness programs in the United States. When Prudden closed her school, D’Autorio opened his own gymnastics school in Westchester County, New York. He helped establish gymnastics programs in twelve Westchester-area high schools and helped organize a Westchester County gymnastics championship.
D’Autorio also coached gymnastics at Panzer College in New Jersey. The Panzer College of Physical Education and Hygiene operated from 1917 until 1958. It was founded because so many American men had been found physically unfit for military service in World War I. Originally called the Newark Normal College of Physical Education and Hygiene, it was founded by Matthias Machery and Randall D. Warden. The college was renamed for Charles Panzer, a Swiss gymnast who was its program director. It began offering a bachelor’s degree in physical education in 1928 and later moved to East Orange. In 1958, Panzer College merged with Montclair State University.
D’Autorio served as assistant program director at the National Gymnastics Clinic (NGC) in Sarasota, Florida. The NGC was attended by many of the most accomplished U.S. gymnasts and coaches during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. His work with the NGC led him to settle in Sarasota. Vinnie invested in properties on Longboat Key, and later in commercial real estate in South Carolina as well as Florida. He also invested in the Shells restaurant chain, which was established in Florida in 1986.
The Competitive Record
Ironically, D’Autorio never won an NAAU championship. Competing in the Metropolitan Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) in 1942, he placed second in the all-around and on pommel horse and third on parallel bars. At the 1942 National AAU, he placed third on pommel horse. At the 1943 NAAU, D’Autorio was second on pommel horse and third in floor exercise. After his wartime service, Vinnie placed second in the all-around and on pommel horse, and third in floor exercise, parallel bars and horizontal bar, at the 1946 Metropolitan AAU meet. At the 1947 NAAU, D’Autorio was fourth in the all-around, on pommel horse and on horizontal bar. At the 1948 Metropolitan AAU, he won floor exercise and pommel horse and placed second in the all-around, on parallel bars and on horizontal bar.
At the 1950 NAAU, D’Autorio was fourth in the all-around and fifth on pommel horse. At the 1951 NAAU, he was fourth on pommel horse and sixth on horizontal bar. At the 1952 NAAU, he was fifth on pommel horse, sixth on horizontal bar and eighth in the all-around. At the 1954 Metropolitan AAU, he won the all-around and the pommel horse. D’Autorio competed at the national level from 1942 until 1954.
Remembering Vinnie
When I was in college, competing for Southern Connecticut State College, I was often judged by Vincent D’Autorio, Frank Cumiskey, Frank Wells and Dr. Anthony Ricciardi. They were very experienced, and they knew the competition rule book, the FIG Code of Points, backward and forward. It was embarrassing not to perform well when this group of judges was officiating a meet.
Abie Grossfeld and I attended the USA Boys’ Junior Olympic Gymnastics Championships at Disney’s Wide World of Sports in 1997, and I found out that Vinnie was there. Vinnie told me that he was living in Lakewood Ranch, Florida. I was writing a short story on Vinnie for Neighborhood magazine in Tampa, so I drove down to interview him. Vinnie displayed most of his important medals and documents in his well-kept den. There were several cartoon drawings and documents about the Presidential Youth Fitness Awards. Vinnie told me that Bonnie Prudden had been an avid mountain climber and a close friend and fellow climber of Dr. Krauss, President John F. Kennedy’s back physician. It was Dr. Krauss and Bonnie Prudden who influenced JFK to promote the physical fitness of American youth during his short presidency.
Don Holder, a 1952 U.S. Olympian, and his wife Connie were from the Swiss Turnverein in Paterson. Don had coached Eduardo Navarro and Roland Lopez, two of my best gymnasts at Miami Dade Junior College, North, in the late sixties. Vinnie designed and made the Holders’ wedding rings when they married in New Jersey, before they came to Florida State University, where Don competed for Dr. Hartley Price in the early fifties.
Vince and Don were teammates on the 1952 U.S. Olympic team in Helsinki, Finland. Vinnie told me he watched middleweight gold medalist Floyd Patterson shadowbox in a hot tub to prepare for his Olympic bouts.
Comically, Vinnie told me about his appointment with a supposed medical doctor to get treatment for a back injury during the Olympic Games. The doctor gave Vinnie a shot of whiskey from a bottle hidden under the table. He also handed Vinnie a cigar and asked for two dollars in payment for the treatment, along with this advice: “Don’t come back here anymore.”
I asked 88-year-old Vinnie to make a presentation at the South Shore Business Association in Apollo Beach. Vinnie said he would do it and that he had a close friend in my area. About a week later there was a knock on my front door in Apollo Beach, and I was surprised to see Vinnie standing in my doorway. His friend George Karam lived five houses away from me in Symphony Isles. Vinnie wanted to see my gym. I told him I was just about to go to Flip Flops & Fitness; my 4 PM class was seven-year-old girls. D’Autorio was soon down on his knees, hand-spotting the little girls while at the same time lecturing me about how I should teach back handsprings. It was classic Vinnie D’Autorio at work!
I nominated Vinnie to be a Legend in the World Acrobatics Society (WAS) in 2008. He was going to appear on a panel of Legends in Their Nineties with George Nissen and the great Jack LaLanne. Vincent D’Autorio passed away from acute leukemia at age 92 on September 10, 2008, one week before his official induction as a Legend of the WAS. His brother Joseph and his sister Nancy accepted his medallion at the 2008 WAS Congress.
Written by Bruce Davis, Professor Emeritus, Miami Dade College. © 2008, revised 2025.
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