Diving Devotee Stays in the Spring of Things at 67

When she was young, Patty Robinson Fulton was a dazzling diver with dazzling looks who was dazzlingly fit.

Today, at 67, nothing has changed much for Fulton. That includes her attitude--which prompted her in the 1930s to refuse the lead in an aquatic show that later featured her friend, Esther Williams, who went on to become an actress. “I was a diver, not a pin-up,” Fulton said, “and it’s no different today.”

Still a competitive diver from the 3-meter board in local and AAU Masters meets, she said: “I’m looking more for fun than the fine points of diving. I don’t dive to be good anymore, just to have fun and do my best.”

Maybe so, but Fulton keeps winning, as she did at one recent meet where she competed in the 20-to-30 age group and finished first.

She is preparing for the August National Masters in Orlando. She would have competed in the April nationals in Buffalo, but she was on a monthlong trip to China with husband David Fulton.

What she calls her “sewing room” is lined with hundreds of trophies, medals, pins and scrapbooks that recount her record of successes as an AAU and professional diver up to about age 40, when she stopped competing.

She resumed diving in her late 50s.

Fulton agreed to an interview “only if it does good for others.” She pointed to a mound of scrapbooks recounting her life as a diver and said, “I’ve had publicity all my life so I really don’t need it any more.”

But she said other senior citizens have to get involved in some activity. “Everyone has talents of some kind,” she said, urging seniors to “forget about yourself and get out there with young people.”

Fulton, who has two children and 10 grandchildren and lives in the Costa del Sol retirement section of Mission Viejo, said she doesn’t advise other seniors to start diving unless they have done it before, “but there’re a million things seniors can do to keep themselves active instead of curling up in their rocking chair.”

Diving taught her the value of exercise and training, and even though she spent much of her time training and shunning a social life, “I don’t regret anything,” she said. “I gained so much more because I traveled all over the world.”

After active competition, Fulton became supervisor at a number of swim facilities and more recently was the aquatic supervisor for Leisure World.

It’s early, but Anne Taylor-Loughran, 33, of Laguna Hills already has her Christmas present.

Her name was picked from 50,000 entries as grand-prize winner of the BankAmerica Travelers Cheques Getaway Sweepstakes. She gets a trip for two anywhere in the world.

“I’m absolutely thrilled,” said Taylor-Loughran, a registered nurse and nursing computer analyst who will share her prize with husband Steve Loughran, 31, when they visit Spain during the Christmas holidays. Both work at UCI Medical Center.

Ted Siems, 84, truly enjoyed his days at Anaheim High School, and so did most of his classmates. So much, in fact, that he and other students from the Class of 1922 have been getting together off and on for the last 40 years, with Siems serving as reunion chairman.

But in recent years, some of the remaining 20 survivors from the 80 who graduated have been holding regular yearly reunions, and although most of the classmates live in Anaheim, a few have come from out of state.

Siems, student body president in his graduating year, said just getting together is a lot of fun, and his wife, Sadie Siems, 79, said: “We all have a lot to talk about even though we didn’t have as much to do back then after school as kids do today.”

The reunion idea has caught on with others and the classes of 1923 through 1925 joined Siems’ class to hold a joint reunion in an Anaheim restaurant.

Hedwig Lange Bloodgood, 83, of the Class of 1923, who still lives in Anaheim and keeps track of the graduates from those classes, asked those attending the reunion to write their life stories, “and some of them were really good,” she said.

She added that students were “a lot closer in our time and now we just want to keep together.”

Pete Penseyres and Lon Haldeman left Huntington Beach on a bicycle built for two and ended up 7 days, 14 hours and 55 minutes later on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, setting a new transcontinental record by two days and five hours.

The two riders averaged 381 miles a day while peddling about 17.5 m.p.h. They were on the bicycle 22 hours a day and consumed a diet that was 95% liquid to meet their needs of 8,000 to 12,000 calories a day.

The Ultra Marathon Cycling Assn. of Whittier attested to the record.