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Senior Stories and Fun Stuff |
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Stories for Seniors and those who love them
101 year old woman driving an 81 year old car
California woman begins acting career at age 93
Mae Laborde of Santa Monica, California.
You might call her a late bloomer, but Mae Laborde started acting
at age 93. Now 101 she can boast of getting her Screen Actors
Guild (SAG) card in her mid-90s.
It all started when a former neighbor of Laborde’s, Los Angeles
Times columnist Steve Lopez, wrote an article in 2002 about her
driving around Los Angeles in her 1977 Oldsmobile Delta 88.
According to Lopez, the car was so big and Laborde was so small
that “behind the wheel she looked like a cricket driving a tank.”
The article caught the attention of L.A. talent agent Sherrie Spillane, ex-wife of the late crime novelist
Mickey Spillane. Spillane and Laborde met and the rest, as they say, is history. Spillane explained,
“She’s got this way about her that’s so endearing that everybody falls in love with her. She’s got that cute,
little face and she’s very funny.”
Laborde has landed role after role in her 90s, including the part of Vanna White from Wheel of Fortune,
aged 40 years, for MadTV; the part of a cheerleader on ESPN, Mrs. Mendelson in Pineapple Express,
Gladys in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and roles in commercials for Lexus and
JP Morgan Chase, to name a few. Laborde, along with her husband and daughter, moved to Santa Monica
from Fresno during The Great Depression. She still lives in the same house, more than 70 years later,
having outlived her husband, Nicholas, and their only child, Shirley. When people ask her for the secret to
living a long life, she tells them to never retire. When she was 89, she took a police training course, just for
fun, and she still paints, cooks for herself and raises tomatoes in her garden that she sells to a restaurant.
Old Rockers Songs
You’re never too old to take to the ice
Yvonne Dowlen of Lakewood, Colorado. Yvonne Dowlen has a rich history
in sports and has done everything from ski racing to synchronized swimming
and badminton, but ice skating has always been a major part of her life.
She began figure skating competitively in 1938 in her hometown of Lakewood,
Colorado. A former Ice Capades skater, Dowlen has been skating for about
68 years, and at 86, she has no plans to stop. “What keeps me skating is
the fact that as you grow older, if you don’t move, you won’t move,” she
said. Dowlen, a longtime skating coach and teacher, practices 45 minutes
to an hour a day, five days a week.
In 2007, she finished in fifth place in the Age 56 and Over Ladies Masters
Junior competition at the 13th Annual U.S. Adult Championships in
Bensenville, Illinois. She attributes her health to a mix of exercise and daily
vitamins and supplements. She still practices for about an hour a day and
still coaches a small group of children and adults.
Regardless of their age or experience, her message to all her students is the same - - -
“If you enjoy it, go all out and give it your best,” she said. “But if you’re not having fun or feeling at peace on
the ice, do something else.” The feeling she gets on the ice is what has kept her coming back to the annual
competition for the previous five years.
“It’s a whole different world,” she said. “It’s a camaraderie thing and it’s what I want to do, what I love to do.”
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