Elli Edgar, 65, Phoenix, Arizona

Elli Edgar is a colorful character who colors for a living. Starting from a background working in traditional tattoo parlors and a stint in the costume and makeup fields in Hollywood, Elli’s love of aesthetics led her to the permanent makeup profession. She has owned a full service salon for men and women in downtown Phoenix for many years, and in 1991 opened Painted Ladies within that business to serve accident victims and especially breast cancer patients referred by plastic surgeons for needed areola pigmentation on implants after mastectomies. Along the way she has done charitable work for breast cancer prevention.

Coming from a large Italian family, it’s no surprise that people are the most important thing in her life. Elli has a group of 25 high school classmates that have been getting together monthly for 47 years. One of them, Kathy Miller, shared her love of badminton and they have played together as long as they’ve been friends. They became serious about competition and qualified in 2003 for the National Senior Games Presented by Humana.

But the ultimate irony abruptly halted the team’s plans: Elli was diagnosed with breast cancer.

In another ironic coincidence, both Elli and Kathy became caregivers for sisters who passed away within a year of each other. It’s been a long ten years of recovery and regrouping, but the two made a vow to get to their first National Senior Games. This summer they will fulfill that vow. The pleasant irony?  Elli was born in Cleveland and has family there.  A tumultuous decade of challenges has now become a joyful journey to celebrate life for this Personal Best athlete with her best friend and playing partner.

You own a salon.  You must be a people person.

I’ve been in Phoenix since I was a young girl and yes, I’ve made a lot of friends over the years. 47 years after graduating, I still have 25 high school friends that get together once a month for dinners.  We call ourselves The Nice Girls Class of 65. One of those girls, Kathy Miller, is my best friend and partner in badminton.  Both of us were PE majors in college and we always played some kind of sport growing up. Beyond that we are about as opposite as you can be. She’s the sweet one and I’m the weird one that went to work in tattoo parlors. But to have our friendship thrive for all these years and to enjoy a sport together in our senior years is unbelievable.

Have you been to the National Senior Games before?

No, this will be our first time and it’s so exciting. We were qualified to go ten years ago but my breast cancer came up so we had to bow out. Then both Kathy and I had sisters with serious health issues and we became caregivers for several years. Both passed away within a year of each other. I think that was really the motivation to get back into shape and go back with the sport.

I have a badminton net up in my back yard and we had kept playing for fun, so last September I asked her if she wanted to make a serious effort to get back to the Nationals. Kathy was as ready as I was. But we discovered that the Arizona state games were over and we would have to go elsewhere to qualify. Our choices were Nevada, Oklahoma. or Hawaii so we went to Las Vegas and we came in first. It was unbelievable.  I didn’t even know at the time that the National Senior Games were going to be in Cleveland, and I was born there!

How special will it be to go back to Cleveland as a National Senior Games athlete?

I was the youngest in my family. My mother became ill and we moved to Phoenix for her health when I was ten. We left a huge Italian family behind, including my brother and sister who were older and didn’t move with us.

My brother Tony DiNero is 81 and lives in Aurora now.  I go back to visit with him every year. When we qualified I called him up and said “Buddy boy, start making the meatballs because we are coming to Cleveland!”

You know, when you’re born somewhere your hometown is in your heart.  I still absolutely love the Cleveland Indians. Kathy has never been there, so I will have to take her to Little Italy.

The whole family is excited.  We are already getting it together to compete again. Win or lose, we’re going to have the best time ever.  Our team name is the Lean Green Machine and our rap names are K Klass for Kathy, and E Juice for me.  I hope you can tell we have lots of fun with this.

It’s all about the journey and making it a joyful one.

It’s important to have a good attitude about aging. What’s your perspective about that?

When I turned 65 it was like a light bulb went off. It was a realization that this isn’t a dress rehearsal. I had just witnessed my sister pass away from diabetes and I was a little overweight and pre-diabetic. I said no, I don’t want to be that. I’m at the steering wheel and need to do something about it.

I may be 65, but I don’t feel like it, I don’t look it and I’m not gonna be it! How’s that for a quote?  It’s all mental. I tell the ladies The Fountain of Youth is a Ponce de Leon thing that’s out there somewhere. It’s all in our heads. It’s all about how we perceive things, don’t you agree?

I want to be a thriver, not just a survivor.

How did you become such a trusted and respected permanent makeup artist?

I worked in both tattoo parlors and in plastic surgeons’ offices for almost ten years to get started. I also had some Hollywood experience in wardrobe and makeup. I used all that time as an apprenticeship to be a permanent makeup professional.

When I opened Painted Ladies within my salon business it opened to me a world of wonderful women and men. I’ve been doing permanent makeup for 22 years working with many plastic surgeons and their mastectomy patients.  I get the ladies at the last step of their medical journey and I make them feel normal again. Having implants doesn’t do anything until you color them in. People think it’s just about beauty. There’s a whole joy that goes with restoring these women. When I do that I literally color their lives back to normal.

Ten years ago when I was diagnosed with breast cancer I thought “Dear God, can I get any closer?” He must have wanted me to be even more so on top of this than I was already doing.

My clients range from former Chief Justice Sandra Day O’Conner to average housewives to Hell’s Angels, and I love and respect every person who sits in my chair. The Chief Justice is such a hoot, and she ended up presiding over the wedding to my current husband David 13 years ago. She couldn’t actually legally do it as a federal judge so we got Arizona Chief Justice Ruth McGregor there too. She’s married to a plastic surgeon I work with.

Imagine getting married by two Chief Justices!

With that duo tying your knot the marriage is destined to last.

David is husband number four.  I exhausted all my resources here in the United States so I had to go to Canada to find him!

Col. James “Jamie” Houston, 59, Fort Jackson, South Carolina

Col. James Houston, like most who make a career with the Army, maintains a fit profile.  However, Jamie (as he prefers to be called) has been a self-professed fitness and sports fanatic for his entire life. To our knowledge, Jamie may be the only active duty military person who will compete in Cleveland for the 2013 National Senior Games presented by Humana.  But that’s not the main reason he was selected to be a Personal Best athlete.  At one point he was a lonely athlete without playing partners, and what he did about it brought us to attention.

Jamie, who currently commands the dental unit at the massive Ft. Jackson training base near Columbia, South Carolina, found out about the senior games movement while on assignment to Iraq in 2003. Upon his return he was able to qualify and compete in the 2005 National Senior Games, and the experience was everything he hoped it would be. However, service came first and the next opportunity didn’t come again until last year’s South Carolina State Senior Games where he qualified to play tennis in Cleveland. Then came the lonely part: tennis players to practice against were hard to find in a military environment with so much transiency.

For this man of action, the solution was simple…go find some.  Through effort and persistence he started a Ft. Jackson tennis team and then found opportunities to interact with civilian teams from the surrounding area.

The commitment to fitness extends beyond his own competitive focus; it is rooted in a desire to maintain his optimum health and to demonstrate its benefits to others. Jamie is an outspoken advocate who challenges age peers who sometimes relax too much after retiring from the military, and he also inspires younger men by his example of healthy active aging.  That is why we salute Col. Jamie Houston as a Personal Best athlete.

Have you always been active with sports?

Yes, I guess you can say I was an athletic prospect because I lettered in basketball and track at Bishop Hogan High School in Kansas City and got to play twice at Royals Stadium for the Amateur Baseball All-Star game.  I had scholarship offers from over 70 colleges, many as combined offers to be in more than one sport. However, at the time my sister was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease and was not expected to make it. I accepted a basketball offer from a local junior college because I wanted to be close to home for support.  She ultimately made a full recovery and entered medical school, but it was the right decision  and I enjoyed my time at Longview Community College. My basketball team led the country in scoring, averaging 106 points per game my first year.  And that was before the 3 point line existed!

How did you find your military path?

I was born at Travis Air Force Base, the son of an Air Force Navigator. I grew up mostly in Kansas City but moved around as most military families must do. With this background of service, I joined the Army and they paid my way through dental school at Oral Roberts School of Dentistry after attending ST Mary’s University on a baseball scholarship. After college, I traded in my glove for a dental drill and it has been an ‘exdrillerating’ experience ever since. My Army career has been great, and I eventually commanded dental units in Ft. Hood Texas and Fort Polk, Louisiana. I am currently in command of the “DENTAC” unit at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina. Ft Jackson’s motto is “Victory Starts Here.” Our dental motto is, “Preserve the Biting Strength.”

Along the way I have done tours of duty all over the world, including Honduras, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Egypt and during wartime in Kuwait and Iraq. In Kuwait, I worked with their Ministry of Health to build a dental complex.

I’ve had some great experiences. I speak a little Arabic and while in Balad, Iraq I would recruit day laborers to work around our camp. We paid them a dollar a day plus an MRE and bottle of water. The ones we picked were grateful – the conditions for them were bad and even that little bit meant whether their family would eat or not. Eventually I fought for and got their daily pay increased to $3, 2 MREs and 2 bottles of water and occasionally a pair of boots. Because of all of the roadside bombings many of the Americans did not trust any locals and avoided them. But I came to know many of them and they knew that I was the one that helped get them more pay. Because of my trying to teach them English and my minimal Arabic speaking skills, as well as trying to improve their daily existence, a delegation came to me asking if I would run for mayor of their town. They called me “habibi” (beloved friend or trusted one) and that touched me deeply.

What led you to Senior Games?

I learned about Senior Games while serving in Iraq in 2003.  I was playing basketball three to four nights a week to prevent boredom and the young guys constantly challenged me. Playing against a bunch of 18 year olds really helped me get my shot back.  But they all thought the commander was pretty good, so when I returned to Ft. Hood later that year I really wanted to go to the National Senior Games.  I found a basketball team in Dallas that needed a guard and we qualified. Then I joined a softball team from San Antonio and we won the state games and got in. I also qualified in tennis but decided to compete in basketball and softball in Pittsburgh in 2005. Everything about that experience was a blast and I looked forward to continuing with senior gam

Unfortunately, with tours of duty in Italy and other complications I couldn’t make it work to qualify for the next three Nationals but I was determined to go again. Once I was stationed in South Carolina, I was able to qualify in tennis and I’m excited to be going to Cleveland this summer. Look out because here I come!

What really motivates you?

Three things motivate me. My goals are to stay fit and competitive, inspire younger folks to be like me, and most importantly trying to get more people of my age to know about Senior Games and get involved.

I’m always trying to motivate others. I just started a Ft. Jackson tennis team with six members ranging from 29 to 59. Personally, I really needed other players to practice with to prepare for competition. But what really got me is that we have these beautiful courts on base and nobody was using them! I thought that was crazy. So I put on my recruiter hat and spread the word around.  Soon I found we had personnel who had played before and wanted to be on a team.

I can’t believe how competitive we are and how much fun we’re having. We’re playing against the locals so folks from the surrounding community can come and see Ft. Jackson – visit the local museum, fish at our lake, stuff like that. The younger guys challenge me, and I challenge them in return. I hope they keep up their fitness and one day will follow my lead and get involved with Senior Games.

You are obviously a source of inspiration to others. Who inspired you when you were young?

My father, Jim Houston was a 145 lb “scat back” at UC Berkeley and loved sports. We didn’t have paid coaches in my Catholic schools so my dad volunteered and was my coach in four sports for ten years. He was my role model and inspiration for my involvement in sports. He was very competitive so that’s where I got it from. We still played one-on- one basketball until he was 66 when I started to always get the upper hand on him.

The Army has probably made more Americans physically fit than any other organization. Is that a factor that appealed to you when you made the decision to pursue a military career?

Yes. In the military you live in a culture of fitness.  Ft. Jackson represents the apex of that culture. Last year over 44,000 young recruits came here for basic training, and we are also proud that the Army’s Master Fitness Trainers Course program is based here. We train the trainers. My commander, Brigadier General Bryan Roberts, is the only guy I know who is a bigger fitness freak than me. He was a running back in college and has been knocking down walls so to speak ever since. I guess that’s why they put him in charge here.

The Army requires fitness tests twice a year doing push-ups, sit-ups and a two mile run.  I made it a personal goal to keep up the standards for 18 year-olds. I’m still pretty competitive in the running part so I feel good for my age.  In fact for the past 20 years, anyone in my unit who beats my two mile time (14:30 currently) gets rewarded with Olive Garden gift cards.

It’s expected that those of us in medical services should be in better shape and we can actually earn a four-day pass if we score a 300 maximum. I have received 2 passes annually for 26 years, which is over 200 days off just for staying in shape. I tell my troops to ‘get fit and don’t quit.’ It is a no-brainer.

As a unit commander, are you now a full time administrator or are you still seeing patients?

I still do some procedures, fillings and oral surgery. Maybe twice a week, and in one way I wish I could do more. I enjoy doing it and I also need to keep my skill level up.

Just like keeping your fitness level up.

There you go. Exactly. (Laughs)

Jackie Stephens, 76, Fairfax Station, Virginia

When Jackie Stephens was young she lived with her grandfather who was the Baptist minister for the African American community in a small town not far from Philadelphia. She would sit enraptured at the end of the long mahogany dinner table at Sunday dinners in her grandparent’s house, soaking in stories from missionaries and church guests from afar. Those tales spawned a dream to travel and see the world.

After earning her education degree from Cheyney College, Jackie rejected the popular notion that proper single women shouldn’t venture until they were married and landed a teaching job in Hawaii. Two years later she went to Europe on contract with the Department of Defense, where she met her husband. Teaching, traveling and raising a family enriched her adult years.

Jackie considers herself blessed to have had the opportunity to see and do as much as she has, but there was still an aching to pursue an unfulfilled dream. She is now on a personal best journey with new friends that is bringing that dream to life.

You have such a passion for basketball. Why is it that you only started playing as a senior?

I wanted to play but I couldn’t. My mother died from heart disease when I was 4 and my dad went off with the Navy, so I lived with my grandparents in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. My grandfather thought that they would not allow me to participate in sports to keep me healthy. Well, I grew to be 6 feet tall and my PE teacher and basketball coach came to my grandparents and asked if I could play. They said no. We lived in a small town where there were just three streets where African Americans lived and medical services were not good for us. We had one old doctor for everyone. They were just trying to look out for me.

I’ve always looked like a basketball player and I’ve had people say over and over through my life “You must have played basketball.” I think all of us have a place in our lives for fitness and sports but our engagement depends on circumstances. Mine certainly has been that way. So my personal best now is reaching to accomplish my early dream that I wasn’t allowed to follow when I was young.

When did you finally get onto a team?

I got my chance when my husband retired from 34 years in the military and we moved from Virginia to Michigan where he had found a job. I read an article in the newspaper about the local senior games in Detroit so I signed up and played basketball. From there I found out about the Michigan Spirits senior women’s team and I went with them to play at the 1999 National Senior Games in Orlando, Florida.

In 2001, I moved back to Northern Virginia. In 2003, I found four other senior players and formed a mixed ages team (the youngest was 50 and I was the oldest at 66 years) and competed in the 2003 Northern Virginia Senior Olympics. In 2005, we formed the NOVA United Senior Women’s Basketball Association. We now have senior teams in five different age groups. Four of us are still deeply involved and we have a marvelous time growing the association.

So here I had a dream that I thought was long since gone and had told myself, “Forget about it Jackie, move on.” But I did take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. The exciting thing for me is that I get to meet and play and exercise with a group of ladies that I can also have a social relationship with. It goes well beyond basketball. We are taking this journey through our lives together now.

Where does your NOVA United team play?

We play in senior basketball tournaments in Virginia and other states. We also play exhibition games during the half- time of women’s collegiate games (e.g., Georgetown, George Washington University, the Naval Academy, and UVa) and WNBA Washington Mystics games. We’ve even played during the half-time of NCAA women’s basketball tournament games. On one end of the court, our younger players (50s and early 60s) will play and on the other end, our older ladies (60s and 70s) will play.

My team has won a lot of medals in tournaments, but not at Nationals yet. That’s a dream come true hopefully. We all work so hard to win a medal at Nationals.

That must be an added motivation for the team this year.

Absolutely. Being on a 70+ team, we all have our health issues and you start to wonder how much longer you’re going to be able to do this.

I had arthroscopic surgery on my knee last year and I haven’t bounced back like I thought I would. My knee still swells and gets sore when I play. So I’m very guarded about how much I participate right now in exhibitions or tournaments until I go to the Nationals because I want to do my best in Cleveland.

How important has it been to fulfill your dream to participate in sports?

It’s natural to think about what could have been if you had the opportunity. I have been so sad about the fact that I didn’t get to have that team experience when I was young. I think a team experience prepares you for life. I was a teacher and counselor in elementary education for 41 years and nothing excites me more in teaching than being a part of a school team. Wherever I taught was the best school in the world, and I worked for the best principal who was like our coach. And there I was, a part of the team at this wonderful school that kids absolutely loved to come to and that parents admired us for the job we did. The feeling of being a part of a super fantastic team with a real strong mission in educating children is so special.

I love having that same feeling about being part of a basketball team where we all have our jobs to do, we do it to the very best of our ability, and where each one has played a role in that wonderful opportunity of standing together and being awarded a medal or a ribbon. I so long for that day to come at Nationals. Maybe Cleveland will be it.

I look at sports as a gift. God has given us all our gifts, and some gifts are greater than others. Some people are more developed in sports. So to not use your gifts is a little bit sad. Now that I am having this opportunity with sports and to be rewarded for just doing something that I love…it just means more than I can tell you.

Something tells us that you will always find something to keep yourself going.

I am just an active person. I think back about my grandparents and their process of aging, and like many in that time they didn’t do anything.  Aging was reading the newspaper and going to the grocery store.  I can’t just sit.

That’s not who I am. I don’t want to be in that realm. I look forward and see myself as aging actively. I want to experience, I want to do, I want to see, I want to be a part of as many active things as I possibly can. I have a curiosity about me, always have.

I want to be a part of the “now generation” of aging persons who don’t sit and rock. We’re out there trying to accomplish goals that were never thought of before. People are living longer, and I think my personal take on it is because they are active and being role models for their children to carry on.

What does your family think about your sports involvement?

We are a sports family. Definitely. My husband, Bill Stephens, was All American in basketball and track at Eastern Michigan University as well as being a distinguished military graduate. He even coached my team for a time. We just celebrated our 50th anniversary. Our two daughters are both very active with exercise and sports. They are very excited about what I’m doing. We believe in fitness, we believe in eating properly and taking care of ourselves and we work hard at it.

Now that you’ve discovered you can participate in senior basketball, do you share the opportunity with others?

I do it all the time. I’ve been the greatest marketer for our basketball program. It’s nothing for me to approach someone in line at the market who looks like an active person or might have been athletic and ask, “Excuse me, do you play basketball?”  I usually get the strangest look…here’s this older stranger asking something like that. But I often get a reply that they used to do it in college or high school and I then ask “Do you know you can still play?” and I get that startled look again. “Well, we have a senior team and you can play.” And sometimes they ask me to tell them more. There are so many people who don’t even know they can play senior basketball. So I’m the person in our association who encourages senior women to check out our program and get back in the game.