Staying active at Senior Games

Published: Thursday, January 28, 2010

Courtesy photo Loretta Fleming, left, and Loretta Jackson practice their swimming.

MERRIMACK – When Ed and Loretta Kathryn Fleming, of Merrimack, first met, it was at a roller skating rink where they had regularly skated together to organ music during the 1940s, just after the close of World War II. The roller skating rink had just been converted from an equestrian show arena. The girls were called “floor dusters,” and the boys the “pecan rollers.”

Ed Fleming was then a young Irish distance runner who was studying to become an auto mechanic. Loretta Fleming, by 1945, had become an Amateur Athletic Union junior national swimming champion in breast stroke, backstroke, butterfly and free-style swimming.

Edward Fleming went on to become a great runner and sprinter, as well as a long-distance marathon runner.

The Flemings and their children have continued their athletic success into their later years through the Granite State Senior Games, a charitable organization that offers health pursuits for New Hampshire seniors.

Loretta Fleming began swimming at age 5 as an after-school pastime with a girlfriend of hers at the Clark Recreational Center. Loretta Fleming tells the story that she and her girlfriend had been challenged by the pool director to swim the length of the pool. When they were able to do so without a problem, they were promptly labeled as “pollywogs.” The pollywogs went on into their adult careers to become great swimmers and continued to maintain their interest in an aquatic sport that has carried them as a health pursuit into their senior years.

Edward Fleming worked his way up the ladder from his original auto mechanic’s position into a sales manager’s position at General Motors, and then at the Ford Motor Co., where he worked for 31 years.

Members of the athletic Fleming family boast that their dad had a “two-job automobile industry career,” with which he was able to provide for the seven Fleming children. Ed Fleming, now 81, and Loretta, 80, celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary Jan. 8 with their children and 16 grandchildren at The Common Man restaurant in Merrimack.

The senior Flemings have passed on their love of swimming and running with all the ensuing benefits for a healthy lifestyle to their eldest daughter, Loretta Jackson, also of Merrimack. She is now a freelance writer and photographer, and became a recent gold medal winner in the 200-meter women’s swimming medley event held at the 2009 New Hampshire Senior Games.

The Flemings and Jackson are accomplished gold and silver medalists in swimming and in track and field events. The entire family competed in the Granite State Senior Games, also known as The New Hampshire Senior Olympics, held each year around August in southern New Hampshire and Greater Manchester.

Edward Fleming won gold and silver medals in the 50- and 100-yard dash, while Loretta Fleming won gold in the 50-yard breast stroke.

Jackson added to her gold medal the running of the Philadelphia Marathon and swam the 11⁄2 mile East Coast Ocean Swim in Atlantic City, N.J.

At 61, Jackson is an active member of the Granite State Senior Games, which offers competition in more than 16 sports events.

Athletes who are 50 and older can compete. Anyone interested in getting involved in the New Hampshire Senior Olympic Games can visit the organization’s Web site at www.nhseniorgames.org or call 232-3900.