No Rocking Chairs : Seniors Strive for Gold in 16 Olympic Events

Fanita White, 83, dove with a belly-flop into the gleaming, indoor Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool on Sunday morning, shattering its calm. She then swam the 50-yard freestyle in the Long Beach Senior Olympics.

Earlier, standing on the pool deck in her green and purple suit, her hands shaking with excitement, she said, “When I get too old to swim or dance, I’m sure going to be old.”

And then she did the Charleston.

White, who swims three times a week, won the gold medal in the Long Beach Senior Olympics last year.

“But there wasn’t any competition in my age category, so you don’t brag about it too much,” she said. “But the thing is, I did it.”

White did it again this year. She swam her two laps and, although she finished fourth in her race behind three younger women, it didn’t matter. With no one else in her 80-to-84 age group again, she won the gold medal.

Catching her breath, she said, “I almost didn’t make it, but I try and that’s the most important thing.”

That philosophy has pervaded the third annual 16-event Senior Olympics, which is attracting 711 participants 55 and older. Conducted by the Long Beach Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine, the events continue this morning at 8 with golf at the Skylinks course and table tennis at noon at Silverado Park. Horseshoes will be played at 9 a.m. Friday at Houghton Park, and track and field events will be held at 8 a.m. Saturday at Veterans Stadium.

The top three winners in each event will be eligible to compete in the National Senior Olympics Sports Classic next June in Baton Rouge, La.

One of the oldest male swimmers was John Glenn, 82, of Laguna Hills, a member of the Belmont Shore Master’s Swim Club for people over 55. He entered two breaststroke events and a backstroke race.

“I swam against Johnny Weissmuller in Chicago on Lake Michigan when I was 16,” he said.

Looking to get back in shape, Glenn took up swimming seriously a year ago, after going 60 years without competing. In the last year he has swum in about 20 events in various parts of the country.

“My wife is busy putting medals on the wall,” he said.

Unlike White, Glenn had competition--but Moses Park, 83, was not optimistic. “He beats me all the time,” Park said.

Lean and tan with tufts of white hair, Glenn headed for the water in his royal blue Speedo trunks. “Honey, be sure you don’t go in with those hearing aids,” his wife, Sally, said.

He swam the 50-yard breaststroke in 54.99 seconds, breaking the Long Beach event’s record in his age category, which he had set last year.

“I had no idea I was going that fast,” Glenn said, emerging from the pool. “But I’ve been practicing just about every day, and that makes a difference.”

He stood proudly on a platform to receive, to a smattering of applause, his gold medal.

He had three of them around his neck before the morning ended.

The first things that go are the legs, said Tom Terada, though his looked firm and muscular.

At 78, Terada, a lifelong farmer who was born in Norwalk and lives in Westminster, was the oldest player in tennis last Thursday at El Dorado Park.

A younger player came up to him and said, “Didn’t you used to play (tennis) in the Orange County League? I remember you; you were tougher ‘n hell.”

Terada, who is 5 feet 3 and “shrinking every year,” shrugged. “I’m no athlete,” he said. “My backhand is no better than my forehand, and I have a dink serve. But what the heck. I’m out here enjoying myself even if I get beat, 6-0, 6-0.”

There were only three other entries in the 75-to-80 category: Bob Dumas, 77, of Aliso Viejo; Luke Guernsey, 76, of Encino, and Tatsuo Tanoura, 75, of Long Beach.

Terada’s calf muscles bulged and his still-black hair shone as he took the court. He played Tanoura first. His forehand and backhand bespoke years of polishing, and his soft serve had a deceiving spin.

“Sorry, sorry,” Terada said when one of his shots hit the top of the net and dropped for a point.

At set point, he charged in to put the ball away with a forehand and won, 8-5. (In the round-robin format, matches consisted of one set, with the winner the first to win eight games.)

“You made me run around,” Tanoura said.

“I can’t see the damn ball,” Terada said. “I need glasses.”

After a brief rest, Terada played Dumas, who had lost, 8-1, to Guernsey.

Dumas said, “Next year on my birthday I’m going to play 78 games, 40 against my 40-year-old son and 38 against my 38-year-old son. Without stopping. If you’re gonna go, you might as well go with a heart attack.”

Terada lost to Dumas, 8-4. “I’m a young man,” Dumas kidded. “You’re a full year older than me.”

It was then time for Terada to play Guernsey, who had breezed by Tanoura, 8-0.

“I hear you’re a terrific player,” Terada said.

“That’s not true,” Guernsey protested.

But it was. Guernsey walked stiffly but covered the court with surprising speed and solid strokes. Terada hit too many balls out of bounds, and Guernsey won, 8-0, for the gold medal.

Afterward, Terada said, “You get up to 78 and 79, a year makes a big difference.”

“Damn right,” Guernsey said. “But you know, we’re lucky to be out here.”

“All my buddies are all gone now,” Terada said. “In fact, I’ve got to go to a funeral tonight.”

“You move like a kid,” Guernsey told the older man. “You’re in great shape. You haven’t got an inch of fat on you. You’ll live to be 100.”

Happily holding that thought, Terada went over to receive, in a little ceremony in the shade next to the courts, his bronze medal.

“If you play one and you lose--that’s it,” gruffly remarked Leona Johnson, 76, last Friday morning at the shuffleboard courts in Houghton Park.

It was quite a contingent that the Paramount Shuffleboard Club had sent to the Senior Olympics--Leona; her husband, Arnold Johnson, 77; Harley Priddy, 77, and Herschel Sparks, 79, a big, quiet man who stood out in a red, white and blue cap.

These folks and about 30 others were milling around, leaning on their cue sticks as if they were canes, as event officials tried to get the games organized.

“A lot depends on how flat the court is,” Arnold Johnson said. “Earthquakes affect them a great deal.”

His wife was up first. She wore turquoise pants and a sweater-vest, and her gray hair stuck out from a hat that was scrunched down to shade her well-worn face.

“Slow,” Leona Johnson said, commenting on the condition of the waxed concrete court.

She stood with one hand on her hip and the other on her stick as she squinted down to see how her yellow disks fared against her opponent’s black ones. They landed on a triangle marked with boxes worth 10, eight and seven points--and, at the base of the triangle, the minus-10 area called the “kitchen.”

One of Leona Johnson’s opponents was Matilda Marian of Redondo Beach, who wore a skirt, a fancy blouse and pearls and looked as if she had just come from the beauty parlor.

“She’s dressed to kill,” Leona Johnson observed.

She and Bonnie Veening were on the sunny side of the court. They sat, between turns in the 16-frame match, beneath umbrellas.

Leona Johnson, in the kitchen too much, got off to a start she termed “pretty lousy” and finished with 30 points, well behind the 91 scored by Veening, who went on to win the gold medal.

“Not bad. Not good. Mediocre,” said the Paramount woman, who came back later to win a silver medal. “But it’s been fun anyhow.”

The oldest Senior Olympics bowler, Claude Mashburn, did not waste energy. He took only a two-step approach before releasing the ball.

“I started bowling 45 years ago, then quit for 40 years,” he said.

Mashburn, of Lakewood, did not mention the adversity he has overcome in the last five years, but his wife, Dorothy, who had come to the Cal Bowl to root for him, did.

“Five years ago he had a brain tumor removed--you can still see that hole in the top of his head,” she said. “And four years ago, he had a heart bypass operation.

“But look at him. He doesn’t look 88, does he? I’m proud of him.”

Mashburn won the gold medal in the 85-to-89 category with a 365 series.

A few lanes over, where bowlers in the 60-to-64 age group were battling, Autrilla Scott, 62, shrieked after leaving a split.

“I decided to do this for the fun of it,” she said. Rubbing her shoulder, she added, “These people play two, three times a week. I haven’t bowled much lately because I’ve got a pulled muscle. I used to bowl at Boulevard Bowl on Long Beach Boulevard in the ‘50s. One time there--I still have the picture--I got high game and high series.”

Scott watched as Bob Herber took his turn. His wrist guard and personalized shirt gave him away as a serious bowler. He took a towel and carefully wiped his hands and then his ball. His approach was graceful, his release smooth, his aim deadly. All 10 pins seemed to explode.

“It’s an honor to bowl with him.” said Scott, who had yet to roll a strike herself. “Bob, have you been on TV?”

“No . . . well, once on a bowling-for-money show back East,” he answered.

Herber, 60, of Huntington Beach, has been an amateur bowler for 50 years. A 191 average distinguishes him, but no more than a handlebar mustache he keeps stiff with a special wax made in France.

Between frames, he smoked a pipe and recalled his days as a pinsetter in Sheboygan, Wis., long ago before alleys went automatic. “That’s why I’ve got these big knuckles,” he said. “From picking up six pins at a time.”

Herber once bowled 100 games a day, but now, too busy with other games, he bowls only once a week. He is also a Senior Olympics participant in table tennis, horseshoes, the high jump, the long jump and the softball throw.

“Till the day I die--and I’ll probably die out here on the lanes--I’m going to be doing something,” said Herber, who went on to win the gold medal with a 568 series. “I’m not going to sit in a rocking chair.”