But the greatest share of Kowalski's mammoth energy has been reserved for veterans' issues. In the past year, he's driven a dozen times to Camp Ripley and seven times to the Air Force Reserve's 934th Airlift Wing -- often at 1 or 2 a.m. -- to see off troops headed to Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq.

As the VFW's District 7 commander, Kowalski has recruited more than 1,000 members, seven of them generals. He's arranged for VFW posts to host dinners for the families of deployed Marines. He's on the VFW's national POW/MIA council. And when the remains of Pfc. Robert Cahow, a World War II soldier missing for 57 years, were returned from Germany to Clear Lake, Wis., Kowalski gave the eulogy.

Now Kowalski is running for state judge advocate of the VFW, a post that would put him in line to be state commander in four years. He'd be 82 then.

"He's carrying the gun, banging the drum and waving the flag at the same time," said his son, Scott Smith. "He never turns around to see if anyone's following him. He doesn't care because he's going this way."

Barter system

At Kowalski's home in Fridley, the phone rings from early morning to late at night with pleas for help, often from strangers. "Let me see what I can do," is his stock response.

He grew up in Northeast Minneapolis, an incorrigible kid in an area "where if you couldn't fight it wasn't too healthy." But it was also a place where neighbors watched out for one another, swapping favors in an informal barter system that has become Kowalski's way of life.

"Over the years of wrestling, I met an awful lot of people, and I cultivate people. And I make sure they remember who I am," he said. "If there's anything I could do to help you, I wouldn't hesitate. But by the same token, I wouldn't hesitate to call you if I needed help."

A month ago, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Doyle Larson told Kowalski about the wife of a serviceman in Iraq who was financially strapped. She wanted to rent out a room in her home but couldn't afford to fix the adjoining shower. Kowalski called friends at the Minneapolis Plumbers Union. They dispatched a crew that fixed the shower, checked all the other plumbing in the house and installed a new water heater -- all free of charge.

"You know plumbers charge $40 an hour and I had six of them there," Kowalski boasts, his voice a rumbling growl. Shut your eyes and you'd swear Jesse Ventura was talking.

"I'm sure there are people who think he's self-serving or self-promoting," Smith said. "But to be in the profession that he was in for over 25 years you had to be a self-promoter. Your next check depended on it. You didn't have an agent. You didn't get airline tickets. You drove. When you got there, you did your performance. And when you got done, you drove to wherever your next payday was."

Wrestling bad guy

In the ring, Kowalski was a bad guy-provocateur. He dressed in black and chased opponents out of the ring, slamming them with folding chairs or bashing them while his "Murder Incorporated" tag-team partner, Tiny Mills, held them against the ropes. He'd mount the turnbuckle and leap onto an opponent's neck. Crowds loved to hate him.

"I remember Stan looking at a lady who had been taunting him through the night and saying, 'The last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a fishhook in it,' " said Jim Raschke, who wrestled as the Baron Von Raschke.

Kowalski's real name was Bert Smith. But after a promoter said he was going nowhere with such a dull moniker, he used the name of his grandfather, a Polish immigrant. From 1950 to 1976 he wrestled 6,600 matches, winning 19 titles as "Killer Kowalski," "Krusher Kowalski" and finally "The Big K."

Between matches, Kowalski was a master of trash talk, psychology and self-promotion. The TV camera came on and Kowalski started bragging about how he was going to pound his opponent to dust, said former pro wrestler Verne Gagne, who started the American Wrestling Association.

"The interview was as important as the match itself as far as developing fan interest," Gagne said. "If a guy could talk, it was all the better. If he could wrestle and talk, that was fantastic. The Big K did a great job with the talking."

After matches, Kowalski would sign autographs and do magic tricks for the kids until the last fan went home.

Most years, he drove 70,000 miles or more and was away from his family for nine months a year. As a boy, Smith knew his dad mostly through the public's eyes. But he remembers the summer he was 11 and tried out for Little League baseball. When he and 35 other boys didn't make the team, Kowalski formed a new league and solicited local businesses to sponsor it.

"We got full uniforms -- pants, stirrups, shirts, hats, everything," Smith said. "The kids that had made the team only got shirts. Here's this group of castoffs outfitted head-to-toe. We had baseball fields and trophy ceremonies. To this day, when I'm with my buddies, one of them inevitably will bring it up."

Hurt you pretty bad

The wear-and-tear of wrestling shows. His nose, broken 17 times, swells unevenly to the right. His face, mashed so many times into the mat, looks like someone hurriedly sculpted it from layers of clay, taking little time to smooth it out. He has titanium shoulders and a titanium knee. To stave off the effects of diabetes, he shed 120 of his 350 pounds by eating chicken, fish and sunflower seeds and still wears a thick leather belt from his heavier days, notched many times and looped under as a reminder.

But he puffs his chest and pumps his biceps to show that he's still strong. "I can't run too fast, but if I can get my hands on you, I can hurt you pretty bad," he says.

The previous weekend, he had driven 900 miles to attend testimonials for other VFW commanders statewide, thanking them for a year's service. Naturally, while he was there he reminded them that he's running for state office.

Kowalski rarely talks about his own military service aboard submarines. Thinking about men who didn't come home from duty, he starts to cry, rubbing a meaty fist over his aging eyes.

He walks with a rolling limp to his Chevy Monte Carlo, white socks peeking out under black slacks. His thinning jet-black hair is combed into a ducktail. A cell phone and a half-inch of notes protrude from his black shirt pocket, which is ripped from the weight of them. Kowalski extracts a thick wad of notes, phone numbers and business cards from each pants pocket. This is his filing system.

His car trunk is packed with POW caps, a briefcase, Navy pens, phone cards, VFW sign-up forms, a United Way notebook, his VFW ritual kit for funerals. There's also a box full of publicity photos from his wrestling days.

"People always ask me for them, so I carry them with me," he said.

Early mornings

It was 4 a.m. one day last year and Air Force Reservists from the 934th Airlift Wing were heading to Iraq from their base at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport when Master Sgt. Robert Keldsen recognized the grizzled old guy with a VFW cap and POW/MIA medallion.

"He's almost bigger than life because I used to watch him on TV," Keldsen said of Kowalski. "In a sense, I was a little kid againand starstruck."

In the base's dining area where families were gathered, Kowalski's voice boomed across the room. "Come on over," he said. "I'll give you a phone card.

"I've seen 18-year-old kids who are just snow white and shaking," Kowalski said. "You hand them that phone card and say, 'Here, you call home as soon as you get there.' The smile comes on. The color comes back. That's what it's all about."

Spotting Kowalski later triggered warm memories for wing historian Master Sgt. Russ Funaro, now 45. He was 13 and unhappy at home, doing poorly in school and wrestling because he couldn't make the basketball team. Then Kowalski arrived one day at his school in his black singlet to be a volunteer wrestling coach.

"The first day he says, 'A lot of you guys think you're really studs. Let me tell you something: You are student athletes. Any of you that isn't carrying a B average I don't want on this team.' My mother had passed away. My father more or less abdicated his responsibility. I was the youngest of six. And the only role model I had was this athlete who focused on academics."

Several years later, Funaro dropped out of school and enlisted in the Air Force to get away from home. Before he shipped out, he ran into Kowalski, who urged him to finish school. "I expect better things from you," Kowalski said.

"I went back and got my associate's degree. Then I got my bachelor's and two master's degrees," Funaro said. "And a lot of that was centered around Stan's words."

Recorded in the heart

Everywhere Kowalski goes these days, someone asks, "Gee whiz, when are you going to slow down?" Kowalski's never varies: "Not today."

Over the years, Smith has seen his dad use his celebrity to help thousands of people. But Smith knows that the deeds best remembered are those recorded in the hearts of now-grown men who played summer ball because of him, of scared young soldiers who found reassurance in an old vet's eyes, of a young wrestler who believes in himself because Kowalski first believed in him.

"Everything is urgent now," Smith said. "Time is against him. He can see the finish line and he hasn't gotten everything done that he wants to accomplish."