Ripples #103

Swimming: Keeping Oldsters Going Despite Their Infirmities

Now that Ripples is getting up there in years (66 at last count), he is inspired and moved by the vital role swimming plays in the lives of many seniors. Here are some examples:

Feeling a Little Younger

Three days a week, four friends in Florida gather at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station and swim laps in its pool. Nothing surprising about that, except the average age of the four gentlemen is 90.5 years.

They also compete in swim meets. Notes jacksonville.com: “In October, they swam as a team in the Rowdy Gaines Masters Classic in Orlando; they won 14 events while setting two world and two national records.” Of course, theirs wasn’t exactly a crowded field: “We’ve outlasted a lot of the competition,” admits 90-year-old John Corse.

In their youth, all four engaged in competitive swimming; now, many decades later, they have their share of physical problems. But being in the water helps: “You feel a little younger,” says 91-year-old Ed Graves. And Rogers “Tiger” Holmes — at 93, the oldest — adds, “My doc at [the Mayo Clinic] said I’d have been dead 12 years ago if I hadn’t gotten into this swimming.”

To learn more about the four Jacksonville gents and see a photo of them, click here.

It Keeps Him Going

Also a Floridian, 84-year-old Fred Egre has a plethora of physical ailments as well, according to wtsp.com. “I have end-stage kidney disease plus a lot of other morbidities,” he says. “I lost [use of] my right shoulder [and] pretty much my left shoulder. I lost [use of] my right foot, my right knee is gone. I have CAD, [coronary] artery disease.”

His doctors told him that despite his infirmities, he had to remain active to survive. They recommended swimming because it was pretty much the only form of exercise someone in his condition would be able to do. That was fine with Egre, since swimming was a hobby of his in his younger years.

Under the watchful eye of his wife, Egre swims laps, albeit slowly, seven days a week. “Swimming is my life; it keeps me going. When they take away my swimming,” he says, “I’m going to a wheelchair and that will be the end. I won’t be around much longer.” And “In the pool…I feel liberated.”

To watch a TV news interview with Fred Egre, click here.

Not Wobbly in the Water

Then there’s 99-year-old Virginian Marie Kelleher, who was profiled by npr.org back in 2012. The article reported the following:

Counted as being 100 because United States Masters Swimming rules “use the swimmer’s age as of December 31 for competitions held in 25-meter courses”… she just became “the oldest known American woman to have competed at a USMS-recognized meet.”

At the time, Kelleher swam about 10 laps, four days a week at the Tuckahoe Family YMCA in Henrico County, Va. (She drove herself to and from the Y.) She was quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch as saying, “I need the swimming. I’m not much at walking anymore. I told somebody recently that I staggered when I walk. He said that didn’t sound too good. So let’s just say I wobble.”

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Ripples hopes all these great old-timers are still alive and kicking (in the pool). It’s wonderful to see that swimming has contributed greatly to their health, mobility and longevity — and given them a lot of pleasure in the process.

And with that, Ripples once again says…
Until next time, happy watershaping to you!