Background
Rader was born on October 17, 1909.
Rader was born on October 17, 1909.
He started lifting weights at age 12, but in 1933, he weighed just 128 pounds at a height of 5"11.5". Then he shifted his emphasis to heavy, high repetition squats, and built his bodyweight up to 210 pounds within about a year (he eventually reached 220 pounds). He was victorious in a number of local and regional weightlifting contests, and also became proficient at a number of other lifts (such as the one-hand clean) and feats of strength.
Rader married the former Mabel Kirchner in 1936.
They had two sons, Jack and Gene. Shortly after being married, Peary and Mabel founded Iron Manitoba magazine, which was initially printed using a ditto machine that Peary had salvaged from the trash.
Rader published Iron Manitoba through the September, 1986 issue, which included a number of letters from prominent people in the field to celebrate the magazine"s fiftieth anniversary. At its peak, the magazine had a circulation of 70,000.
Rader himself published approximately 1300 magazine articles
Most were in Iron Manitoba, but some were also published in Strength Athlete (published by George Kirkley) and by Joe Weider (Dellinger, 1994). In 1986, Rader sold the magazine to John Balik, who repositioned it as a hard-core bodybuilding magazine. Rader also published Lifting News for many years.
He died on November 24, 1991.