A Frame of Mind : In Their 90s, With Time to Spare, Bowling is Right Down Their Alley

Albert Bender bends slightly at the knees, hoists his customized 10-pound bowling ball just above his waist, takes a shuffle step and releases. He cheers as the ball rumbles towards the pins.

Bender, who bowls four or five times a week in three different leagues, is known as “Mr. Wonderful,” “Amazing Al” and “Radarman” around the circuit. It’s not just his bowling prowess, a respectable 125 average, nor his uncanny ability to pick off spares that earns him the flattering monikers. At 92, he is the most senior of all bowlers in a daytime league for the 55-plus crowd called the Coffee Club League.

Tom Mason, who manages the Fountain Bowl in Fountain Valley, says senior leagues such as the Coffee Club are becoming very popular at lanes in Orange County. Seniors are lured by steep discounts from lane operators seeking to increase business, especially during midday hours.

At the Garden Square Bowling Center in Garden Grove, Claude Sibbitt is considered a charter member of the senior league that is named Young Sprouts.

Sibbitt, who has been tipping pins at the Garden Grove lanes since they were built 30 years ago, is 91. With his 14-pound ball and classic three-step delivery, he has earned a season average of 127.

“Claude is a good bowler. He’s had the season’s best handicap series so far with a 698,” said Joe Russin, manager and professional bowler at Garden Square. “I just wish he’d give the other bowlers a break.”

Teammate William Margolis, 77, who calls himself “one of the younger ones around here,” notes that Sibbitt often beats him. Doug Viers, 64, Sibbitt’s neighbor, said, “Claude gets mad at himself and always wants to do better. It’s amazing how he wants to get better every time he bowls.”

Bender and Sibbitt, who both bowl four or five times a week, are two seniors who have decided bowling is better than a rocking chair. They both live in mobile-home parks, drive their own cars, do their own shopping and household chores.

Sibbitt, who was born in Des Moines, is married to Dorothy, 71, a former Navy nurse. “I worked as an assistant cashier in a bank in Osceola, Iowa, for many years,” said Sibbitt, who moved to Long Beach in the early 1930s, then worked for the Automobile Club of Southern California until his retirement.

Bender, a native of Bowling Green, Ky., is a former office equipment salesman who moved to Orange County in 1974 and started bowling at the now-closed Huntington Beach lanes.

Widowed, Bender lives in a mobile home park in Huntington Beach. But four or five times a week, he climbs into his 1977 red Chrysler, and heads for Fountain Bowl or Kona Lanes in Costa Mesa. He says bowling gives him “something to do” and allows his friends to chat with him and see how he’s doing.

On this day at Fountain Bowl, Bender is bowling alongside teammates young enough to be his children: Dorothy Griffee, 61; her husband, James, 65, and Blaine Hunter, 70.

As Bender rolls towards another spare, Dorothy notes: “He’s got a mean hook.”

Or maybe it’s just his lucky ball. Bender bought the 10-pound Bonanza about five years ago from an even older bowling partner--he was 94.