91-year-old weightlifter gave ‘all of us younger ones hope’

Three years ago, at age 91, with a heart that had threatened more than once to quit, she strode into the Fabela Chavez Boxing Center in Carson--all four feet, six inches of her.

Lizzie Atwood was ready to pump iron.

“She just put us all to shame,” recalled 69-year-old Hyman London, who met Atwood in the city-sponsored seniors’ exercise class.

“She would come down and work her little heart out on everything. Exercise bikes, the bench presses, leg presses, weightlifting. She was jumping rope. Whatever.”

Atwood died Saturday night after an apparent heart attack at her Carson home where she had lived since 1946. A memorial service will be held today at Green Hills Mortuary in San Pedro.

“She gave all of us younger ones hope,” said Elsie Hansmann, 70, who also met Atwood at the boxing center. “We said, ‘Hey, if she can keep herself in such good shape, why can’t we do the same thing?’ ”

Atwood had stopped going to the gym in the past year or so, family and friends said. Her daughter, Ella May Whittenburg, said Atwood simply lost interest in the class, which meets three times a week.

And she had grown a little tired of the attention she attracted. At least three newspapers and three local television stations had done stories about her. A national tabloid and “The Tonight Show”--she had lived in the same small Nebraska town as Johnny Carson--also had indicated an interest in interviewing her.

“She said to me after they had her on TV that she wished they would leave her alone,” Whittenburg said.

But she continued to work out and stay fit. She used her home exercise bike and when visiting another daughter last summer in Nebraska, she went to the local YMCA. “Everything we wanted to do, she wanted to do, and she could usually do it better,” Whittenburg, 67, said. “She was always quite active.”

And she remained an inspiration to those seniors, some considerably younger, who mustered the courage to visit the gym and try their luck on the Universal weight machines, punching bags and treadmill. If Lizzie could do it, they could do it too.

Atwood reared 11 children and 3 grandchildren, and attributed her ability to keep up with them to her constant activity. Even a bad heart--Whittenburg said her mother suffered “three major heart attacks and a lot of little ones”--did not slow her down.

“When I was six years old, she had a real bad one,” Whittenburg said. “Her doctor told her she was going to have to take (it) easy, but she went ahead and had five more children.”

That attitude was evident when Atwood enrolled in the class and began learning how to use the newfangled exercise machinery. She told people that she felt fit enough to ride a bear and live to the age of 100, and during the class she managed to increase the amount of weight she could lift from 20 to 50 pounds.

And she pitched in, helping and encouraging others, many of whom suffered from such ailments as arthritis and were timid around the machinery. “She would talk to many of the seniors and tell them it was never too late or they were never too old to exercise,” recalled Norma Hernandez, who put together the exercise program.

“She had a lot of determination, and I was very inspired by her,” said Maria Mason, who instructed Atwood on the exercise machines. “I believe Lizzie was a role model not only for other seniors, but to younger people.”

Hernandez said that even though Atwood had not attended the class recently, she kept in touch by telephone. Atwood, who once said she had never seen “anything yet that scared me,” continued to get her exercise, she said.

“She was just a spunky, spunky lady.”