EDNA!! (Our Underwater Cover Girl)

by Jason Swancey

 

It's not normal to shave six to eight seconds off your 200 and 400 freestyle as you get older, yet that's exactly what 72-year-old SWIM Florida Masters veteran Edna Gordon has done.

Then again, Gordon's life defied normal a long time ago. The average American works hard to retire. Not Gordon. She retired to work hard.

Even now she claims she's only semiretired, keeping her license as a pediatric nurse so she can care for newborns between training, teaching swimming, and earning her master's in philanthropy.

"I don't feel as though I even started living until I retired," Gordon explained. "Every minute counts for me. Life is too exciting to just sit around."

Detailing her conquests in the pool only scratches the surface, although that surface also spans quite far. Last August during USMS Long Course Nationals, where thousands of swimmers from across the country competed at the Swimming Hall of Fame Pool in Fort Lauderdale, she finished third in the 200 back and 200 free and fifth in the 100 free.

"She's willing to learn, and she's in great condition," said teammate and Cardinal Mooney High School swim coach Deb Walker. "It's all in goal-setting. A lot of older people don't do that but she does. That's cool, and it makes her different."

Since then she's set two new goals to be reached by the time she turns 75: to learn two new strokes to swim in the 200 IM and to conquer the grueling "mile." On Gordon's SWIM Florida Masters team, made up of 170 members, she holds 13 records for long and short courses in her age bracket and also ranks in the top five in the state.

She has every right to brag, yet still, it makes her feel uneasy. She even stopped the interview at one point to make sure she wasn't coming off as pompous. But it's not bragging when it's true, and even though her story reads like fiction, it feels more like fact.

While she was married in Connecticut, she worked as a sales rep for Pan-Am and United Airlines. Then after stints as a legal secretary, administrative assistant to the Dental Dean at the University of Connecticut, yoga instructor and real estate broker, she earned her practical nurse license at 53 in Sarasota and began to work with newborns.

After all that, she was in need of a vacation. So in her down time she served as a medical missionary in Nova Scotia, Haiti, Africa, Nicaragua, Panama, Dominican Republic, and Calcutta. All that was over 15 years, hitting one country every other year from the age of 53 to 68.

In Calcutta, she worked with Mother Theresa, who had Gordon work with the disabled children everyone else was afraid to care for.

"It still brings tears to my eyes to think of what Mother Theresa did for the street people while others walked around them as if they didn't exist," Gordon said. "She dragged some of these people out of the gutter and gave them a place to live and die with dignity."

Gordon also went to Africa with a medical team, where she and a friend immunized roughly 500 children in two hours. Her team was also held at gunpoint twice for money and cigarettes, yet she has nothing but love for every individual she shot (with a needle).

"We left all of our clothes in Africa and never missed a thing," she said. "The things we saw over there taught me to never take anything for granted."

On a more local level, through her church, she worked with migrant workers in Immokalee, to whom she brought food and clothes for 11 years.

She also served as a Parent-Friend tutoring mothers in how to raise a child and run a household. She also volunteered with COSCEP (Coalition to Stop Children's Exposure to Pesticides).

"Everybody who is retired should volunteer, not just sit around," Gordon remarked.

Then at age 60, when things slowed to a sprint, Gordon joined the Masters swimming program where she has been shaving time off her races and years off her life for more than a decade.

"No wonder I'm tired; I've been swimming for 12 years now," she said. "Everyone should do something to stay healthy, and this is what I love."

She loves it so much she became president, a position she held for six years before handing the reigns to Dren Geer, who is also the Master's noon swim coach at Arlington Park Aquatic Center. She still trains 1-1/2 hours each day, squeezing it in between teaching swimming and caring for newborns eight hours a week.

In September she began teaching children as a part of the Swim America program at the Arlington Park Aquatic Center. She teaches once in the morning and again at night, a total of 11 hours a week.

"I don't only teach them to swim; I teach them to be on time, be considerate, and to learn discipline they'll need in their lives down the line," said the spry instructor.

At the annual Awards dinner, Gordon's teammates appropriately presented her with an Energizer Bunny Award along with a few carrots for the swimmer who keeps going and going.

Although she never had children of her own, she helped raise 30 nieces and nephews. And recently at the Games for Life competition at Arlington Park, her newest family members turned out for moral support.

"All the kids I teach brought a big banner that read 'Go Coach Edna.' I saw it while I was standing on the starting blocks and I started to cry," she said.

Games for Life was an appropriate name for the event. Swimming doesn't just preserve lives, sometimes it saves them. Gordon recalls Ruth Switzer, who swam for the first time ever at 65, after being diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. After a couple months in the pool, the aneurysm disappeared, and Switzer credited swimming with saving her life.

"Swimming releases endorphins in the brain, and puts you in a good mood all day long," Gordon quickly pointed out. "For anyone who is depressed, or unhappy, just get in the water and move around. Learning to swim gives you a goal, and adds joy to your life."

While the movie Cocoon may have been fictional, it also contained a hint of truth. Taking a dip might not turn back the clock, but it will certainly help slow it down.

Just look at Edna Gordon.