Live Beyond 80
Then
the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is
mortal ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."
Genesis
6-3
Article published Feb 16, 2007 A 97-year-old woman took a wild detour on her way to Sunday
School after ending up alone on a runaway golf cart. The cart, with Louise Eldridge of Tallahassee aboard, raced down
a hill at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, flew off a 4-foot embankment and
zoomed across Meridian Road before crashing into a wooden sign and finally
stopping. She managed to walk away from the crash with only minor cuts and
bumps. And she was given a clean bill of health after seeing a doctor on
Monday. She spent the past few days recuperating at home with the help of her
family and a heating blanket for her sore side. "I'm tough," she said. "I'm an old farm girl. But you lose your
toughness on something like this. I'm thankful that the Lord spared me a
little while longer. He's not through with me, I guess." Even those closest to Eldridge can laugh about it now, since she
wasn't badly hurt. But it wasn't funny at the time. Several men ran after the
speeding golf cart but couldn't catch up with it. "They were horrified," said Danatta Merryday, one of Eldridge's
two daughters. Eldridge moved to Tallahassee in 2004 after Hurricane Charley
damaged her home in Arcadia. She has a number of grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. The golf cart is used to shuttle churchgoers from the sanctuary
to other buildings down the hill. When Eldridge got in, she apparently slipped
on plastic sheeting and hit the accelerator, which released the brakes. Merryday said it was miraculous that her mother wasn't seriously
hurt. Eldridge joked that she could have ended up in a place she didn't want
to be - six feet under. She was on the floor of the golf cart the whole time
and kept thinking to herself that it would have to stop eventually. "She had the wildest ride that anybody's ever had, especially
for somebody that's 97 years old," Merryday said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published 2007-01-12 20:11 (KST) Spanish Woman Is World's Oldest Blogger 95-year-old Senora Maria Amelia dethrones Sweden's
Allan Loof Eric Shackle
(Shack) Veteran journalist Eric
Shackle (87) of Sydney in Australia, is OhmyNews International's oldest
citizen reporter. More of his work can be found at his Web site. Senora Maria Amelia, a
95-year-old Spanish grandmother, has dethroned Sweden's Allan
Loof (94) as the world's oldest blogger. A TV crew from Madrid traveled to
Galicia to interview her, and Spanish newspapers have hailed her victory with
extensive stories and photos ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruth Fox will not stop for anything. The 80-year-old had cancer
twice, and her thyroid removed recently. Ruth settled in Brevard County after escaping from East
Germany 60 years ago. For the past 15 years, she has volunteered for the
Brevard County Health Department. Kathy Thompson from the Brevard County Health Department said,
"I'm sure she's going to be volunteering for years to come if her health
permits it. She's been through so many medical procedures and usually within a
week or two, she's back volunteering." Ruth has some advice for anyone else who is retiring. "Go out
and do volunteer work. That keeps you young." With Generation to Generation, David Waters, Central Florida News 13. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- May 25th 2005 Eighty-Year-Old Woman Trains to Win Title of '' Oldest Video
Game Champion'' FAIRFIELD, Iowa -- She used to play poker and bridge with her
80-year-old girlfriends almost every night. Sometimes until four o'clock in
the morning. And, her passion was shooting "craps" while on casino
junkets. That is, until Billy Mitchell delivered a Q*bert arcade video
game to her house. Now, Doris Self, of Fort Lauderdale, eats, drinks and sleeps
Q*Bert, the classic video game from the early 1980s, practicing day and night.
And, if she breaks the Q*bert record, she'll be history's oldest video game
world champion. "I was the Q*bert champion in 1984 with a score of 1,112,300
points," remembers Doris. "At that time, I was the oldest video game champ in
the world at 58 years old, a fact verified by Twin Galaxies' scorekeeper
Walter Day (www.twingalaxies.com). It's still listed in Twin Galaxies'
Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, the gaming industry's
official book of records." Though Doris' score was bested in 1985, she still retained the
status of "oldest" champion until 2003 when John Lawton, 72, of New Hampshire,
captured the Depthcharge title. "I was sad when I lost the title I had held for twenty years,"
laments Doris. "Then I got a call from gaming legend Billy Mitchell, who
offered to loan me a Q*bert machine to practice on and win back my title.
Billy made me promise that I would give up poker and practice Q*bert
everyday." Billy Mitchell, founder of an internationally distributed hot
sauce brand (Rickey's World Famous Sauce), says: "I can recognize a champion a
mile away and believe Doris can win back her title. I like helping people like
Doris to excel, reaching their highest potential." In the video world, Mitchell, based in Hollywood, Florida, knows
all about excellence. In fact, there are many who consider Mitchell the worlds
most famous video game player. In the early 1980s he was the most successful
video gamer listed in the U.S. edition of the Guinness Book of World Records
and was proclaimed the "Player-of-the-Century" at the 1999 Tokyo Game Show. He
was among a select group of champion players to appear in LIFE Magazine in
January, 1983 and was a founding member of the U.S. National Video Game Team,
history's first team of professional video game players. Most notably, he has
enjoyed undying notoriety for achieving history's first "perfect" game on
Pac-Man in 1999. Thanks to Mitchell's support, Doris is ready for her big day of
truth, which comes the weekend of June 2-5, when she joins an annual gathering
of classic gamers at Funspot in Weirs Beach, NH, to go for world records. "My
scores will be verified in person by Twin Galaxies' Walter Day and I must not
fail," she vows. Doris has already played an important role in history,
graduating in 1945 as a member of Eastern Airlines' first class of airline
stewardesses. Later, in 1954, while working with legendary air ace Eddie
Rickenbacker, she co-organized 'The Silver Liners,' history's first
association for ex-stewardesses. In light of all this, Doris says: "My bridge-playing girlfriends
have no idea of all the adventures I have been through. They think my Q*bert
quest is strange, but this is my life and, thanks to Billy Mitchell, I feel
like I've packed four lifetimes into my years and don't plan to stop now." To contact Doris Self or Billy Mitchell, call Twin Galaxies at
(641) 472-1949, or via email: walter@twingalaxies.com. To contact Rickey's
World Famous Sauce, go to http://www.800hotsauce.com COPYRIGHT 2005 Business Wire
Wild ride leaves woman, 97, with minor
injuries
Maria Amelia clearly enjoys her sudden
fame, but takes even greater delight in revealing in her latest post that she
is about to become a great-grandmother.
It's all written in Spanish but
this is an approximate translation:
"Dear friends and family of the
Internet, today I had the best news that I could give you. Today I went to eat
with my other grandson and his wife. To my surprise they informed me that I am
going to be a great-grandmother!
"I do not know if I will see these
months through because I am already very old, but I am
"encantandisima.
"I am very happy that God has given me the health to
hear this news. This is huge.
"Congratulations to the Mother and the
Papa."
We at OhmyNews are "encantandisima" too, Maria. Congratulations
to you ... and condolences to Allan
Loof, who now becomes the second-oldest of the world's 63.2 million bloggers. Eighty-Year-Old Volunteer
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale
Group