I am almost 86 years old and have been in two different assisted living homes for a short time in each. I have seen all kinds of old people suffering and facing terrible difficulties. Many wish to die to end their miseries but their wishes just don’t come upon.

When you are young life is, for many, a panacea. At age 65 more or less, life starts showing declining symptoms. Some symptoms are pains, eye sight lost, hearing lost, weakness. Then you start worrying about your future. By then you are 75, 80 or more years old. It is too late for planning any future.

My advice is: Begin to plan for your old age when you are young. The ideal age is when you reach 30. The time may come when you could not drive, could not cook, could not bathe, could not walk and more. Disabilities may happen with old age. Save money. Old age is very expensive. Buy long-term insurance to pay for a nursing home.

In my area there are organizations that help old people. I am grateful to relate to ‘Neighbor to Neighbor in the Nenes’. This is a group of volunteers who does the best to help old people. But no one person can do it all for a disabled old senior.

April 2020

By Anonymous (Edited slightly for readability) 

I Brought My Game to the Capital City Senior Games

Nick Gandy on Hasosaw



Before the threat of the COVID 19 virus forced the cancellation of gathering of large groups in Tallahassee, the Capital City Senior Games was fortunate to complete competition in nine of the 11th Annual Games 14 sports.

Along with several hundred other athletes, age 50 and over, I had the opportunity to compete in the two sports I was registered, Bowling and Bag Toss.

In my youth I was a lefthanded pitcher and the only thing I’ve got going for me now as an athlete in the 55-59 age group, is an accurate and sometimes powerful left arm.

When I gathered with other Capital City Senior Games athletes at Capital Lanes and the Jake Gaither Community Center, I was one of the young guys. In singles and doubles bowling, there were athletes in the 85-89 age group. I also used my left arm in the bag toss event along with two athletes in their 90s.

The largest number of Senior Games athletes compete in the 60s and 70s age groups. These are individuals who have completed successful careers and their children are grown and living their own lives. Now these athletes have plenty of time to dedicate to their game.

Potential Capital City Senior Games athletes in their 50s don’t consider themselves as seniors. That may be true. But you qualify to compete in the Senior Games.

The 11th Annual Capital City Senior Games included competition in Archery, Bag Toss, Basketball Shooting, Bowling, Cycling, Golf, Horseshoes, Pickleball, Powerlifitng, Racquetball, Swimming, Table Tennis, Tennis, Track and Field and Water Aerobics.

The majority of the events are held at City of Tallahassee Parks and Recreation Department facilities such as the Jack McLean Community Center, Jake Gaither Community Center, Sue McCollum Community Center, Forestmeadows Complex, Hilaman Golf Course and the Wade Wehunt Pool at Myers Park.

Besides the fun of an afternoon at the bowling alley, I had the pleasure of bowling with a fellow youth baseball coach from Capital Park, Marvin Williams, and Bill Schack, a candidate for city commission in the upcoming election.

We congratulated one another when rolled strikes and picked up spares and commiserated together on not so successful rolls.

The gold medal winner in the women’s singles 80-84 age group was Sam Butler, a bowler who has advanced to the Florida Senior Games and National Senior Games and achieved great success. Her son, Pete, and I are old friends and attended the Florida A&M Journalism School together. He is a champion cyclist and now competes in the Games. 

He has always admitted his competitive nature comes from his mother. A few years ago, I bowled on the same lane with her. After rolling a strike, she turned and pointed at me saying, "Now it's your turn."

Talk about pressure. Lucky for me, I did what I was told.

In my Senior Games competitions, I find myself taking my own advice that I’ve told young baseball players at Capital Park. When rolling a strike, or taking aim at a pin to complete a spare, it’s all in the mechanics of your roll. Just like when throwing a strike from the pitcher’s mound.

I also take a deep breath and come to a set position focusing on the pins 60 feet down the lane. Just like focusing on the catcher’s mitt from the mound.

While the bowling alley sounds are balls rolling down the lanes and pins falling, there’s more noise than one would expect at the Bag Toss event at the Jake Gaither Community Center. Besides the sound of the bags thumping onto the boards, there were shouts of joy when players hit the hole and plenty of high fives and encouraging words.

The pace of the Bag Toss event, with players in matches against several different players, throughout the morning or afternoon, leads to a lot of time for socializing and camaraderie.

That’s another draw of the Senior Games, the opportunity to meet fellow Tallahassee residents. After my first round of throws with one of my opponents, it was obvious he had plenty of experience throwing an object to a target.

My skills were no match for Kelly Holton, father of former FSU pitcher Tyler Holton, who is now in the Arizona Diamondbacks organization. He obviously taught his son a few things about throwing an object to a certain spot.

The bronze medal winner in the 55-59 age group, Paul Kelly, who also registered to compete in Bowling, Cycling, Golf and Powerlifting.

While I am now enjoying my time as a Senior Games athlete, I must admit, this is something I was aging toward for a while. For over 20 years, I have chronicled the accomplishments of Florida Senior Games athletes as a communications professional for the Florida Sports Foundation. Throughout my 30s and 40s, while meeting and speaking with athletes, I was regularly asked, “What event are you in?” This due to earning a head of gray hair in my mid-30s. To which, I would reply, “I’m not old enough.”I always felt like the little brother not allowed to play with his older brother and his friends.

The little brother has now joined the game and loves every minute of it.

The Capital City Senior Games is one of over 20 local Senior Games qualifiers for the Florida Senior Games. Find out more about the Capital City Senior Games at talgov.com/seniorgames or the Florida Senior Games at floridaseniorgames.com.

The importance of having a hobby or two

by Joe Hurd on Atchena Nene

I know this year has been trying for many. To keep my household, neighbors, and friends as safe as possible, I've stayed in and not ventured out much. Instead of camping on social media and getting embroiled with newscasts, I've been reaching out to friends internationally in the hobby I share - collecting auto license plates.

For decades, I've been watching license plates on the road. Our family traveled frequently in the 60's and 70's with my parents' careers. When living in Beaumont, Tex, we would make the long trip up to Aurora/Oswego, IL and Ontario, Canada several times a year to see relatives and family friends.

Watching plates on the roads (during pre-interstate highway days!) was a wonderful past time. I still call out wild/exotic plates on the roads. In 1965, while touring hotel parking lots with my Dad once we settled into our room for the evening, my Dad realized I needed glasses. We were in Poplar Bluff, MO and I couldn't see from afar the very-pronounced white-on-maroon Missouri license plates. It explained also the frequent headaches I was getting.

A few years later, we moved to Illinois for good. My parents both ended up with serious medical issues and I was stuck taking care of the many aspects of family life. I wrote to the different motor vehicle departments and asked for a sample license plate, a practice that was common for collectors in the 30's, 40's, up through the 80's. Vermont sent me an expired license plate! I answered an ad in the Yankee magazine swoppers column that stated simply "will trade license plates with other collectors." A wonderful man from upstate NY, Charles Wilkinson, who I never met to this day, answered. He sent me a free Hawaii '69 truck plate. I was ecstatic. To this day, I still own it.

The collectors I met were amazing - they were my second family, and often with their compassion, served as my first family. I grew up with them. The hobby kept me on-track with my high school studies. I was admitted to some slick colleges, and last minute changed to Notre Dame in South Bend. Indiana in the 70's was changing tags yearly, and issuing stunning rock-the-world pictorial designs. I met many fellow students, professors, staff, and ND royalty through the hobby, while trying to acquire plates.

I ran for club office in the early 90's, after my graduation, and served under Jim Fox, who founded the James Gang - his band broke up and several went on to form The Eagles.

We had collectors who were state senators from Louisiana and New Mexico; a National Geographic executive, the works! Collectors came from all over. I've owned hundreds of thousands of license plates, traded many, and changed the collection out several times. I've attended collector weddings, funerals, weddings of their children. Being able to have this organizational hobby has kept me focused.  

I spend a lot of time with the hobby, but I now use the commodity to help others. Donating damaged common plates to thrift shops for fund raising, or helping a new collector.

During this pandemic, I've reached out to the collectors to check in on them. I don't need or want a TV. For months and years, these collectors, in good times and bad, have helped support me in various aspects of my collecting adventure, and in different phases of my professional life, including my move to Florida to take the professor position at TCC (and later to add: Flagler College!).

Hobbies can encompass anything! Sports, horticulture, animals, collectibles...

Get involved - get a hobby. If you need one - explore! Also, it's OK to have more than one hobby.   

Joe

My father was a true renaissance man, but that is a story for another time. He was born in a small town in Illinois 22nd of October 1901; and passed away on the 22nd of October 2003, in Danville, Illinois, about 45 miles away.

There is some disagreement between my younger brother and me, as apparently one nurse called him and told him Dad passed just moments before the 22nd. And the nurse that called me said Dad managed to live almost one minute into his new year!

I had visited Dad up there on the weekend (flew up Friday evening) just prior to his demise. Then I went to see him on Sat. morning. He was in bed and had an oxygen tube but was alert and when his nurse asked him if he knew who was here to visit him, he sort of chided her when he said “of course I know, it’s my son Nick whose has come to wish me a Happy Birthday!

It was that morning that I made the promise to Dad that I would live even longer, meaning to the age of 103! I offered him some strawberry jello he took a couple spoonful then took the spoon himself, saying he could do it better than I was. (-: After breakfast, he wanted to nap so I went back to Catlin (our former home town 7 miles from the extended care facility).

I spent the day taking photos - with a loaner camera -in a nearby park (whose very existence was established by my father’s political acumen and popularity with Illinois Audubon and local nature lovers, and thus he saved a lovely wooded area, with a fresh water stream running through it from becoming a strip mine!! He received a National Award for accomplishing this work and thus creating a State Park.

I checked on him Sunday and it was about the same, we chatted for a little while, I watched him nibble some jello and after a kiss I let him go back to sleep.

I departed Sunday evening, driving back to Indianapolis, returning the camera to the store so that I didn’t have to pay Indiana taxes - and then they sent it to Florida and I sent them the check back, and the car back to the rental.

I was at work at DOE on the morning of Oct. 22nd when the nurse called me with the information that Dad had lived 45 seconds into 2003, thus achieving 102 years old.

Now my challenge is to live to fulfill my promise and I am determined to do so! I have survived prostate cancer for 11 years; but just recently they found a tiny resurgence so I am taking radiation therapy every week day for 6-8 weeks now.

I WILL outlive Dad, my main worry is keeping my lovely Nurse wife alive to take care of me. LOL

Yours truly,

Nikon Nik 

This story is about a woman who had lots of old age. She lived for 100 years.

by Robin Collins

My 3rd-great-grandmother, Susan “Sukey” Fenner, was born in Rhode Island in 1793, just three years after it became the 13th state. In all of my research on my mother's family history, she is the longest-lived ancestor I have found. Here is a short biography of this remarkable woman.

In 1811 Sukey Fenner married Abraham Burlingame and started a family. In 1818 she moved from Rhode Island a few miles west, to Killingly County, Connecticut where her husband had purchased land to farm. In fact that home has remained in the Burlingame family to this day. Here is a photo of the farm house, taken in the early 1900s.

How I wish I could go back in time and interview Sukey about what her life as a wife and mother was like. What stories she could tell! I know it couldn't have been an easy life in the 1800's. Like many women, Sukey had a large family (she bore 8 children over the space of 17 years). She was likely proud that several of her descendants were financially successful and active in politics. Her son Fenner Burlingame served in the 1868 Connecticut State Legislature. But she also had several heartbreaks. Two daughters died young. Ebenezer, another son, suffered financial "embarrassment" and in his despair, per a newspaper article in 1858, he hung himself.

I also wonder what Sukey thought of all the changes in her lifetime! Sukey lived a very long life and really beat the odds of life expectancy in the 1800's. A few of the historical events Sukey lived through included: the War of 1812, the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, the invention of the sewing machine, the rule of Britain’s Queen Victoria, the invention of the telegraph, the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Great Chicago Fire, the invention of the light bulb and the phonograph, the establishment of the American Red Cross, the arrival of the Statue of Liberty, and the development of the Kodak box camera!

Here is the article published when Sukey turned 90 years old.

[“Mrs. Abraham Burlingame, of Killingly, was 90 years old last Sunday. She has 59 descendants living. The aged lady had lived under every presidency, having been born during Washington’s first term.”]

My 2nd cousin Stephen has a photo of Sukey Burlingame astride the horse that she rode to meet the trolley that was bringing friends and relatives to celebrate her 90th birthday. By that time she was a widow and had already outlived five of her eight children.

My cousin also has a photo of Sukey around her 100th birthday, and I would truly love to have a copy of that. In it, Sukey is sitting in an early wheelchair in the front yard of her home along with a number of other relatives.

Per the Windham County Transcript newspaper published in Sept. 1893: "Mrs. Sukey Burlingame who recently died in E. Killingly was 100 yrs old on the 27th of last May. An account of the celebration of that interesting event was given at the time in the Transcript, when all of her children and grandchildren were present. Mrs. B. has been breaking down rapidly since that date, but her spirit quietly and painlessly passed beyond life’s experiences and limitations."

Yes, my remarkable ancestor Sukey Burlingame lived 100 years, definitely meeting today's definition of "old age".

written April 14, 2020