Marathon Men

VIDEO

The Senior Golden Olympics

Senior athletes from William H. Rumsey Aquatic Center in D.C. compete in the 25th Annual Golden Olympics. A look into the competition as narrated by Mrs. Dottie Nielson.

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Commercials, movies and television shows often feature the elderly as incontinent, grumpy, content to sit in armchairs clutching remotes, tuned into television for hours; mentally slack with all the meaning in their lives already behind them. "If we have images of what we should be at 89, then we start to act and function like what society tells us we should be doing," Doll says.

She says she fights that image in her work and her life. She has worked out every day for the past 25 years. "I make myself do a cartwheel and split at least once a year. I warm up a lot more; but I'm 54 and can still do it."

It's a way to be more deliberate about aging well that's often missing from the aging process, she says. "Think about all the older people who one day make that last trip down to the floor with their grandchildren and never sit on the floor again, or climb the stairs and then decide they can never climb the stairs again."

This isn't to say that people suffering from degenerative conditions can simply will themselves better with exercise, she points out. But with appropriate exercise, most people can show some improvement.

Gabrielle Redford writes a fitness column for AARP magazine and has followed the Senior Olympics movement. She points out that exercise doesn't have to be vigorous and that improvements can be made with light strength training. "That's not to say that at 89, you'll be the same athlete you were at 30, 40 or 50," Redford says. But you can reverse some of the decline. There is an enhanced quality of life, that comes with being active and engaged, and, she says, "you're never too old to begin that process."

IT'S EARLY SPRING and Coach Rodger McCoy paces the tiles poolside at the Takoma Community Center as he watches his Water Wizards do drills. He limps slightly from arthritis in his hips. He's not in the water with his team, so he has to be precise about what he expects from them. A 100-yard swim done at around 2 minutes, 40 seconds; a 200-yard swim at 3 minutes, 10 seconds; 300 yards at 7 _ minutes. Two hundred yards fast, another hundred yards easy.

McCoy, 68, has coached the Takoma chapter of the Water Wizards, a team of 48 swimmers ranging in ages from 50 to 89, since it began in the mid-1990s. He's coached swimming in Washington nearly 30 years. He wants his entire team to compete next month in the D.C. Golden Olympics and expects them all to at least post qualifying times for the National Senior Games. One of the 70-year-olds on the team had hip replacement surgery two months earlier. McCoy wants him to compete in the 200-yard freestyle. That sounds prohibitively difficult for a still-recovering man his age, but McCoy disagrees.

"It's a mind-set," he says. "But a matter of your focus as well. A matter of what you want to do with your time." The drills are written on a white board on the side of the pool. McCoy leaves them on the board after practice is over. Another coach has the 19-years-and-older team at Takoma. He'll often uses the same workout.

"I try to make sure they are swimming all the strokes, so that their muscle groups are balanced out," McCoy says.

Standing on the deck, a 56-year-old man complains about his endurance. McCoy corrects him. "You lack the confidence. You have more endurance than you think."

A lot of his swimmers want to stay on the wall and rest. "I make them do easier swims more continuously," McCoy says. "That builds endurance." He has the seniors swim twice their competition distance without stopping, to build up their wind. People lose confidence when they tell themselves they can't, they shouldn't, they are much too old, he says. "By keeping the pressure on yourself, you start to realize you can do more. After all, you're still alive; your body is still functioning."

John Tatum is swimming his 50-yard freestyle at around 48 seconds. McCoy thinks John has more left in him, if he wants it badly enough. If he gets his head down to break the water better. Trains harder. Doesn't let his own creeping doubts cloud his vision.

At a late April practice, John Tatum has finished his warm-up.

"Are you leaving now?" McCoy yells out.

"Not yet," John yells back.

"I want you to do a 25 for time. I want you to push it, all out. Start fast and get faster. If you don't start fast enough, you have to do another one."

"Okay," says John. Then grumbles. "He wants me to dive. I'm tired, but he doesn't want me to push off."

John gets a cramp in his foot, and decides against diving in.

"I'm timing you from the moment your feet hit the wall until the moment your hand hits the wall on the other end," says McCoy.

"Yes, sir," says John.

"Don't forget: Start fast!" McCoy yells.

John pushes off. He swims flat out. He chops through the water the length of the lane.

McCoy stops his watch. Twenty-six seconds. Not good. Olympic athletes can swim 25 yards in about 10 seconds. A good time for John would be around 23 or 24 seconds.

John did a couple things that slowed him down, McCoy says. "He breathed right there," he says, pointing to a spot early in the lane. "That's two seconds after he left the wall."

John pushes off again. This time, he waits a few seconds before taking his first breath. He shaves a second off his time. McCoy still isn't satisfied. "That's faster," McCoy says. "But if you do those first few strokes before you take a breath, you'll be past the flag. And think how much faster you'll be on the dive."

It can seem disconcerting to have a coach admonish an 89-year-old man for breathing. But not if that swimmer wants to get better, says McCoy. Besides, he says, he's not pushing John that hard. "He has done the whole length with no breath before."

WHEN HE WAS DRAFTED INTO THE NAVY, John Tatum helped others learn survival skills. "They had me demonstrating how to swim when shipwrecked, with oil on the water, and fire. How to get a breath by beating the water back."

Then his commanding officers wanted to know if anybody could swim 50 yards underwater without coming up, John says. "I said I could do it. It was a 25-yard pool. I was able to go down one end of the pool underwater and come back the other end. Still underwater."

When he finally came up for air, the recruits were yelling out his name. "It was like I was a celebrity," John says.

It was the mid-1940s, and John was serving with an all-black regiment stationed in Bainbridge, Md. There were postings in their bulletins asking for recruits to become Navy frogmen. These were the guys who did underwater operations during combat: surveillance, intelligence, planting explosives. Something he wanted to do. Something he thought he'd be good at.

John went to his commanding officer to ask for an application. His CO said no. Blacks in his regiment were steward's mates. Their job was to serve officers in their quarters. Steward's mates could not be frogmen.

Eventually, John became a civilian systems analyst with the Navy, programming the big mainframes in the early days of computers. In 1944, John married the sister of one of his best childhood friends, and he and his wife, Pearl, had six children. She was a homemaker, and for 25 years he worked second jobs: He was a night switchboard operator, he bartended, he cleaned offices downtown. And he fed his lifelong urge for competition with sports.

Nearly every year, he played on the Navy Yard softball team. If there was a basketball game at the rec center, he'd join in, and he played sandlot football. These were neighborhood teams -- he played with the Georgetown Athletic Club, but there were the U Street Lions, and the Willowtrees out of Southwest -- who would compete in informal pickup games. When they got old enough, his three sons joined him.

"All during my adults years, I played something, somewhere," says John. "It was the thirst for competition really." It wasn't "like it is now, where people do things for fitness. I didn't know the help it would do to my body, and all like that. I just played ball."

He played with the Navy Yard softball team until he retired. "I was 55 on a Thursday, and Friday I was out of there. After that I was like, How did I have time to work eight hours a day?" He'd always been good with his hands. He did fix-it jobs around his Michigan Park home in Northeast D.C. He knocked out a wall and put up drywall. He put a new roof on his sister's house in Millpoint, Md. He bought a motor home, and he and Pearl traveled all around the country.

When he was 70, he took up skiing. Brad had started skiing a few years before, and together he and John traveled with the Black Ski Club. At 80, John quit; he had knee replacement surgery and decided the slopes might be a little too hard on him. At 80, Brad quit, too. He had broken his arm and fractured his knee, and decided he wanted to stop while all his parts still worked.

In 1978, Pearl died of pancreatic cancer. John had made plant shelves before she got sick, and as she was dying, she liked to lie in the bed and look at her flowers. He was her sole caregiver but says, "I never had any kind of breakdown. When you did everything you could while they're living, you don't have much to cry about."

In the mid-1980s, his son Rodney went to a wake and decided it was wrong that the only time the family got together was when someone died. The Tatums began a tradition: a softball game at the old Taft Field, then back to the house for a big cookout every Father's Day. People came by for sports and for fellowship, and his son's friends, who had become surrogate sons to John, came to celebrate as well.

In 1990, he was taking his 42-year-old daughter, Marilynn, who had battled cancer for several years, to hospice. He was sitting with her in the ambulance, looking into her eyes when she died. Six months later, Rodney, only 37, fainted and went into the hospital, complaining of shortness of breath. A few weeks later, he had surgery to remove part of a cancerous lung and doctors put him into an induced coma. He died of pulmonary failure a few days after that.

But the annual Father's Day tradition begun by Rodney continues. John's son Kevin, a sports reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, drives down to help organize it; his daughter Joyce, who retired as a public health analyst for the Department of Health and Human Services and lives with John, helps, too. It has grown to include hundreds of men and their families -- some professional and some just regular guys from around the way. John played softball with them until he was 75. One year they voted him MVP, but he thinks they were just putting him on.

They all stopped playing nearly 10 years ago. The surrogate sons said they were getting too old.

Twice a month, John attends fellowship meetings for the seniors at Liberty Baptist Church, where he and 22 others were baptized in 1929. Only four of them are still alive. He's the only man. Every few months, he cooks for big church functions. He gardens every spring, cuts his own grass, and still does projects around the house. He had a good voice and used to sing in a quartet. But the other three members died

Four years ago, he was on a ladder putting in insulation at his sister's house. He leaned over to do some stapling and fell off, hitting his head. The pain in his neck lingered six months. He was afraid it would never go away. For a long time, it was hard for him to accept that he might be too old to climb a ladder to do roof repairs, or put up siding, or do any of those jobs he had taken so much pride in doing himself. Two years ago, it got too hard to pull out the starter cord, and he had to give up his push lawn mower. A couple of his surrogate sons bought him a riding mower.

Again, the doubts crept up on him.

When does your body slow down for good?

There's a display case at the top of the stairs of his Northeast home. Inside are dozens of swimming medals and ribbons. There's a rifle from a gun collection he had when he thought he might want to take up hunting. On the wall, there is a mock USA Today sports section front with a picture of John in his 70s. He's waterskiing in Lake Anna in central Virginia. At least once a week, one of his surrogate sons or somebody from the neighborhood comes around to talk or check in on him. "Man, I want to be just like you when I grow up," they always tell him.

John Tatum badly wants to hold on to that. "My turn is going to come," he says. "But that's the thing: You just don't want to be sick and have to depend on somebody to take care of you." That would be bad, he says. That would be worse than dying.

IT'S THE THIRD FRAME AT THE STRIKE HOUSE BOWLING CENTER IN HYATTSVILLE, and Brad Tatum gives the 14-pound ball a small toss to send it slowly down the lane. Pins are breaking all around him. As he watches the lane, he does a little hitch with his leg to maybe give the ball more momentum. It works, sort of. He knocks down eight.

He's been bowling about seven years. He started with a senior men's team, "but they are dropping off," he says. One of his teammates died of a heart attack, and another one died of cancer. "We were getting so few, we had to merge with the ladies," he says. Two years ago, his men's league merged with the Strikes and Misses women's league; he joined the Sunshine team, becoming the only male bowler among three women.

Brad's not a great bowler -- on this day, his best game is a 162 -- but he likes coming out and seeing people.

Brad points to a woman standing nearby. "She was a little girl, in 5th or 6th grade, at one of the first places I taught," Brad says. That's often how it's been since he's gotten older. He and John have typically had to go down a generation to find people to do things with.

Swimming was something he could do solo. When he won his five medals in the 2007 games, "He brought them home and hung them over the hearth," says his wife, Anna Louise, 84. The Tatums, who have three children, are sitting in the living room of their Northeast home, less than 15 minutes from where John lives, and from the Takoma Park pool.

"My brother and I played football, basketball, tennis and whatnot," Brad says. "Because you've been athletic all your life, you never stop." He knows lots of people who are equally long-lived, "But they're heavier, and creaky. You know, their bones crack. They're slow and they may be sharp of mind, but they're just not physically active."

He's taught his grandsons to swim. Every Sunday, he sings in the choir at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Foggy Bottom, which he joined after getting married. Church members call him whenever they need something done. He likes being a man everyone can depend on. In addition to the swimming and bowling, he still golfs some. And plays poker once a week. The guys he plays with are all just 75 or 80.

Part of his church responsibilities include visiting the sick and shut-in. Often, they are also younger. Anna Louise's brother is 85, but has a degenerative muscle condition and can't get around. She is not active herself; she has arthritis, two artificial hips and an artificial knee, but she's accustomed to all her husband's activity. People are living longer, their minds are active, they want to do more things, she says. "Just look at us. When we were growing up, if you were 80, wow, you were dead, or close to it. We were talking about you in the past tense."

At the Golden Games, Brad is swimming the 50, 100, 200 and 500 freestyle. "Once I found out I could do the 200 good, I found out I could do the 500." He's also going to compete in the 50- and 100-yard breaststroke. He pulls out the program from the 2007 Senior Olympics. There are asterisks by his name, in the events where he broke records.

"John will be 90 years old at the next games." Brad says. Some [of the competitors] have to be lifted into the water to swim because they have disabilities. We don't. We dive in, and we're going."

JOHN TATUM USED TO WALK TO LIBERTY BAPTIST CHURCH when it was in Foggy Bottom, before George Washington University bought the land. When it moved to Kentucky Avenue SE, he moved with it. He left the church when he went to college, attending his wife's church for a while, but came back for good 20 years ago. Walking through the empty sanctuary, with the light just breaking through the stained glass windows, he jiggles the lectern next to the organ. One of the deacons had found it about eight months ago, dark and scuffed up. John sanded it down, stained it blond to match the piano, gave it more useful life.

It is the second Monday of the month, and the senior citizens' ministry is about to begin. When John joined 10 years ago (at the behest of two of his sisters), there were more than 40 people, but they are down to about 17 now, including just one sister. "We've been trying to get some 60s or 50s to come, but they aren't ready yet," John says.

Another woman used to come regularly, but she can't drive anymore and doesn't have any way of getting there. "I've seen her two times in the last couple of years," says John. "That will probably happen to all of us."

He is sitting at a table in the basement as the other seniors trickle in. One of the assistant ministers plays a hymn on the piano as John takes stock of what it means to grow old.

"It hurts," he says softly. "Like it not being a safe thing for me to get up on that ladder anymore, or like when your strength leaves your body, like my buddy." Over time he watched a friend lose the ability to open a jar, or even pull himself up from a chair. "I don't know what's wrong with me," the friend would despair.

It is said, God saves his hardest blows for the later rounds.

"Sometimes he'd start to cry," says John. He grows quiet for a moment.

"I just say, 'But for the grace of God, there go I.' This is what I think when I see people like that. That I'm lucky to be like I am and not like they are. But I guess the time will come. I just hope mine is quick." He sighs. He's been procrastinating but soon, he thinks, he's got to get around to writing out his will.

John used to have a lady friend, but she moved to North Carolina earlier this year. She visited Washington in June, and John drove her home, then drove back to Washington by himself. He had another lady friend for nearly 20 years, but she died of cancer in 2002. Now he says, he doesn't really have any companion. "Nobody to invite over to dinner, you know."

Last August, his brother-in-law and oldest friend, "Toots," died. He and John had known each other since they were 10. "This was the guy I used to compete against more than anybody else," says John. "He was on one Navy Yard [softball] team and I was on the other. My 70-year-long buddy."

"He did me dirty, dyin' on me like that," says John. "He left me."

John remembers the bicentennial celebration of George Washington's birthday in 1932; Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic; playing on the newly built Lincoln Memorial; that time he fell on the ball and helped win the game for his sandlot team. All those "interchanging memories" are gone, he says, because he doesn't have the friends to remember them with. No amen chorus to his oldest songs.

"Most of those who passed on were not active," says John. "They stayed behind the steering wheel, even to go to the store. There were times I didn't have a car and had to walk everywhere."

It's meeting time in the church basement, and by 11, John and eight other seniors are singing Psalm 46. His voice is strong and off-key. "Holy, holy, holy."

They go through the old business. "I took Ms. Josephine shopping Thursday," one woman says. "She's suffering with arthritis, but she did good. She walked. She took her time."

The seniors nod. Amen.

THE TATUM BROTHERS are standing in the doorway of 88-year-old Mabel B. Carter's home, waiting for her to answer the bell. Brad's come to invite her to St. Mary's Episcopal Church's 141st anniversary celebration in a few weeks. John used to work with her late husband, so he tags along.

Ms. Carter, wearing jeans and flowered house slippers, comes slowly to the door and invites them in.

They sit in the front room, where her old paintings hang on the wall. She hasn't taken a brush to canvas in many, many years. A clock ticks faintly on the mantle. Clear plastic covers the sofa a few feet away. Uncirculated air and the stillness of old things, or perhaps it is the very oldness of still things, are heavy in the room.

They talk about her husband Henry, who was 99 when he died last year. "Every Sunday at 8 o'clock, he was right" in church, Brad says. He tells her about the anniversary program. She doesn't usually leave the house. "I have a problem with my balance," Ms. Carter says, "I don't walk too well, so the doctor doesn't want me to go out by myself."

"Well, we're gonna get somebody to come by here if you want to go," Brad says. He'd come pick her up himself, but he's got practice. "The choir director wants us there right on time."

They talk some more about her late husband. She promises Brad she'll let him know if she can make it to the church anniversary celebration. They admire the paintings on the walls for a few moments. Then the brothers drive back to Brad's house.

Brad never thinks about being confined to the house himself. "That doesn't worry me. That's like 10 years from now or 15 years from now," the 87-year-old record holder says. "When you're active, you don't think about these things."

But his older brother thinks about it. A lot, sometimes. "I think about what do you do when you don't have the ability to drive anymore?" John says. "I guess you don't go nowhere."

But that's a ways off, he thinks. He still has so much he wants to accomplish.

AT THE OPENING CEREMONY for the 25th Annual D.C. Golden Olympics, the bleachers are full, and latecomers search for seats. Shortly after 11, the seniors parade into the Emery Recreation Center gymnasium, in Northwest D.C. The athletes -- archers, tennis players, sprinters and senior swimmers from all over the city -- are led by Brad, who holds his foil torch high. John is just behind him, waving to the crowd. "The race is not just about the swiftest or the fastest," the announcer says, "it's also about those who endure."

After the ceremony, the Tatums each drive to the Takoma pool. "It's my time to shine," John says. It's the first day, and the sparsely filled bleachers feature Brad's wife, Anna Louise, and the Tatums' sister Sarah.

John has stripped down to his dark Under Armour trunks, with goggles strapped around his neck. His towel drapes his shoulders, and his flip-flops squish across the pool tiles. He is all set. The problem is, he doesn't have any events. It's Tuesday, and his events, the 50 and 100 freestyle, are two days away.

"Maybe I'll get in the pool if they need some swimmers to fill out the lane," he says. Brad is about to swim his 500 freestyle. There are other Takoma Water Wizards -- including 59-year-old Karyn Baiorunos and 70-year-old Jim Sale, one of the strongest swimmers on the team -- in the event. John is sitting on a bulkhead at the end of the lane so he can flip the placards in the water, to keep his brother's lap count. Brad has to swim 20 of them. There are six swimmers in the field. The swimmers take their mark. A dozen or so fans lean over the railings to watch. But the start gun misfires. "False start!" McCoy calls out, but Brad doesn't hear him. All his focus is his lane. People are yelling for him to stop but he finishes a lap and starts back before he realizes it was a false start.

When he gets back in place, the gun fires, and the race starts again. The swimmers are close for five laps, but Brad's goggles start to fall off his eyes by the sixth. After a while, he just takes them off. By lap 15, Brad has switched from freestyle to breaststroke. Sale touches the wall at 8:14.43. Baiorunos is behind him at 9:02.04. Brad, who is nearly 30 years older, comes in at 10:40.87.

"That false start probably did him in," says John.

Nevertheless, Brad was the only competitor in his age bracket. He was racing for time. Rodger McCoy walks up to him, smiling. "You were way under the national qualifying time!" McCoy says. "You might get a gold at nationals!" Anna Louise and Sarah wave from the bleachers above the pool.

"I feel pretty good, pretty good," Brad says.

At the next day's competition, John is standing near the scorers table. McCoy has entered him in the 200 freestyle, and his teammates, including Lauretta Jenkins, are trying to get him to agree.

"No, that's too much distance," insists John. "I'm going to do the 50."

On deck is the 100-yard breaststroke. They all watch as Brad dives off the block. Jenkins and Baiorunos are down the lane quickly. Brad is behind them by several seconds. An 81-year-old-woman trails them all. At the finish, Baiorunos has swum 1:52.33 and Jenkins touches the wall at 1:55.02. Brad has swum 2:30.42, again in plenty of time to qualify for nationals (4:56.60).

The 200 freestyle is next. John is still refusing. "I don't swim long distance. I have a -- what do you call it -- a zone."

Finally, Wednesday, the big day of competition, arrives. John stretches on deck along the side of the pool, spreading his arms wide. Brad is eager to get started.

It's the 100-yard freestyle.

"I'll give him this one, and I'll take the 50," says John, "but I'm going to try him, though."

"We'll both be behind them," Brad says, gesturing toward the younger seniors, "but we'll be together."

They get to their platforms. The gun fires. John and Brad dive into lanes 4 and 5. They touch the wall at the same time, but Brad turns quicker. At the 50-yard mark, Brad is one body length ahead. By the turn at 75 yards, he's widened the lead. Brad touches the wall half a pool ahead of his brother to win for their category.

"I pooped out on that last one, but I made it," says John. "I'll do better in the 50."

The next event is the 50-yard breaststroke. John is sitting on a fold-up chair behind the lifeguard stand. He hadn't planned on swimming in this race. He ponders it for a few seconds. Ah, what the heck? He goes to tell McCoy he's in. He takes the platform next to his brother. The Tatum boys, from Foggy Bottom, who grew up swimming together in the 1920s and '30s, dive into the pool. From up top, they look like submarines, their dark trunks extending their lines for long seconds under water. Then both come up and head into their stroke.

The sons are on the rail. The surrogate sons are on the rail. Brad's wife is cheering. So is the 92-year-old sister. The noise echoes off the pool and surrounds them.

They are even after the first turn. Then John gains a few inches. His head is straight. He's not looking at the competition. He's got no drag in the water. He's just swimming for time.

Brad touches the wall at 1:07.05, a good enough score to qualify for nationals. But John touches the wall at 1:02.52, time enough to qualify, and time enough to win, beating his brother for the first time in years.

He emerges smiling from the water to the wild cheers of his teammates, who surround him and clap him on the back. "Well, I'll be damned," he says.

Lonnae O'Neal Parker is a Washington Post staff writer. She can be reached at oneall@washpost.com. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon.