THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 21, 1995 TAG: 9506210061
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
ESTHER CAWTHORNE may be 94, but she refuses to go gently into old age.
About every decade or so, the retired Norfolk schoolteacher drops by the newspaper under a full head of steam to complain about something.
As doughty as a tugboat, she stalked toward the newsroom receptionist swinging a brown paper shopping bag by its handles.
``My name is Cawthorne,'' she said. ``I'm from Ocean View. Most people here seem to think that's a foreign country! But it's not!!''
She marched to my desk in her tennis shoes and complained that we had given absolutely no coverage to the annual Golden Olympics in Williamsburg early this month.
The Golden Olympics brings athletic seniors from across the state together once a year for competition ranging from track to bridge playing.
Bridge may not seem like an athletic event to you, but it is the way Esther Cawthorne plays it.
``I don't hear well. I have to move around a lot to hear the bidding,'' she said. She wears a sound amplifier around her waist and ear phones. But she often forgets to put on the ear phones. And the ear phones get tangled up in her glasses.
So she shouts a lot, hoping others will do the same.
``I won three medals at the Olympics,'' she said, thumping a forefinger into my chest. ``I want to know what you are going to do about it!''
When Esther Cawthorne was a youngster in her 80s, she picked up 15 medals for her swimming. She specialized in the freestyle, backstroke and breast stroke.
But in 1989 she suffered a hand injury in an accident. The injury ruined her swimming, so she found other ways to keep active: the softball hit and run, bridge and basketball free-throw shooting. She won a medal in each sport at the Golden Olympics.
Basketball was new to Miz Cawthorne. She learned to shoot by popping hoops on the courts at the Ocean View center.
``She comes by every weekday and shoots for about a half hour,'' said Shelby Whitte, the center's recreation specialist.
She is pretty good at it, too. During the competition in Williamsburg, she hit eight of 15 free throws. That's awfully good.
``I almost couldn't enter the basketball competition,'' Cawthorne said. ``I have to take about five pills a day and took the wrong ones when some of my pills rolled onto the floor. I was drunk when I got to the gymnasium.''
That pretty much covers Miz Cawthorne sporting activities at the Golden Olympics, held at the College of William and Mary, where she received her teaching certificate in 1923.
I should add that she also won an award for the best socks at the Bop Until You Drop Sock Hop held in conjunction with the Golden Olympics. Her socks were decorated with colored plastic animals. She received an AM-FM stereo headset as a prize.
Heywood Hale Broun once wrote that sport, contrary to popular opinion, does not build character. ``Sport reveals character. . . . '' he said. Esther Cawthorne has revealed herself as a woman of great spirit and tenacity. And I admire her far more than professional jocks making both headlines and millions. ``Be sure and get it right!'' she warned, when I left her at the Ocean View Seniors Center.
I did my best, Esther. Hang in there. ILLUSTRATION: Colof photo by Lawrence Jackson, Staff
Esther Cawthorne...
by CNB