John Winterholler Gymnasium
Johnny Winterholler Gymnasium in Lovell

John Winterholler was born February 3, 1916 in Billings, Montana of Russian immigrants. He came to Lovell, Wyoming in 1932. John graduated from Lovell High School in 1935. While attending LHS he excelled in sports and was named All-State in basketball and football.

John started his meteoric rise to athletic fame at the University of Wyoming in the fall of 1935. “The Cowboy campus has produced no athlete who has attained the Lovell youth’s heights,” wrote Larry Birleffi of him in 1939. Birleffi noted “He is the athlete’s idea of an athlete and a coach’s answer… He earned a first berth in every all-conference selection among Big Seven’s offerings for All-American honors… His achievements were in baseball, football and basketball.”

During World War II he was captured at Corregidor and was a Japanese prisoner of war for 34 months, subsequently becoming paralyzed. John was a recipient of the Silver Star and promoted to a full colonel, all by the age of 30.

John captained a wheelchair basketball team after the war and was once again a leading figure in sporting news, termed “Spider”, “Demon on Wheels” and “The Accurate Shooting Colonel Winterholler.”

His Alma Mater, UW, called him home to Laramie for “Johnnie Winterholler Day” October 31, 1964. John’s brief but poignant words of award acceptance were followed by thunderous applause, as John seemed to all to represent that flag of liberation, “The Stars and Stripes”, “Old Glory.”