Bellflower Man, 93, Takes Life in Stride--He’s a Walking Champ

BELLFLOWER —  On the verge of 94, Peter Laurino took from an envelope the evidence that in his younger days he was a champion race walker. Out slid clippings that, unlike him, were brittle with age.

“Laurino Sets New Record in Three-Mile Walk at N.E. A.A.U. Title Meet,” said a Boston Globe headline from 1926. The story, next to a photo of a black-haired Laurino, called him a “veteran stepper.”

He still is.

This spring Laurino won the two-mile Charter Hospitals Senior Strut. Since 1980, he has won the gold medal in the over-85 division of the Senior Olympics’ 5,000-meter walk four times. He has also placed first in the 100-yard dash and the long jump.

“I’ve been fortunate,” Laurino said. “I’m not a world-beater, but considering my age, I’ve done fairly well.”

A short man, Laurino still looks athletic in a zippered jacket decorated with Senior Olympics patches. His skin, tighter than it has any right to be, covers a 143-pound body that time hasn’t robbed of muscle tone.

Trophies and Medals

He still has his own teeth, exhibiting them as proudly as the trophies, medals and certificates in his fourth-floor Friendship Manor apartment.

He has hair. It is white now and feather-fine, but still abundant. In the light of his balcony window, his face is ruddy and free of furrows, his eyes gray but not dull.

Laurino’s only concessions to age are a hearing aid and, temporarily, a slight limp caused by a fall a couple of weeks ago. Already he has discarded his cane, waiting for his bruised hip to heal enough for him to resume striding around Bellflower on his daily walks of 2 to 5 miles.

“Now I sit here and count the four walls. . . . Boy, am I suffering . . . just counting the days until I can get out and walk again,” he said in a New England accent that has survived despite a 45-year absence.

Laurino’s neighbors at Friendship Manor are amazed by him.

Evelyn Price, 81, said: “He’s one of the most admired men. You never see anyone walk like him. And he’s always cheerful. He comes down to dinner all dressed up in a suit and tie.”

Laurino likes to call himself an “old fogy” but knows better.

“They can’t get over how I move around,” he said. “They don’t believe I’ll be 94 (on Monday). They say, ‘You’re kidding. You don’t look over 65.’ ”

Laurino, who came to California in 1942, almost did not reach 65.

He was hit by a car while walking along a Lakewood street 30 years ago. He suffered a broken pelvis and a punctured liver. “The doctors didn’t expect me to live, and then they said I’d never walk again,” he said. “I fooled ‘em.”

Laurino has some theories on his apparent indestructibility.

“I was blessed with a good body,” he said. “I tried to keep it that way, and it paid off. I never smoke or drank, never hung around the poolroom or barroom.”

He said he was also toughened by the wood-floor business. In the days before electric sanders, he scraped floors by hand eight hours a day.

His athletic career started when he joined a Massachusetts athletic club when he was 16 and ran 10-mile road races. His determination, he said, always gave him an edge.

Even Ran in the Rain

“Instead of the poolroom, I’d go down to the field and practice, even when it rained,” Laurino said. “I figured the other runners would be lazy and I’d get a day’s jump on them. That’s how serious I took it.”

He found his greatest success when he took up heel-to-toe walking, a popular sport in the ‘20s and ‘30s. He said he still holds the East Coast record for the mile walk (6 minutes, 57 seconds) and the 7-mile walk (56 minutes).

Laurino, who has outlived two of his four sons, was married 72 years.

“My wife died two years ago. . . . There she is over there,” he said, pointing to a photo in a glass display case. Mary Laurino, in a corsage, and Peter, in a bow tie, look out at the camera on their 50th anniversary.

“She was a wonderful singer,” Laurino said. “She sang in some of the biggest cathedrals in Boston for years. She could hit those high notes.”

Mary had objected to Laurino’s race walking. “She thought it was too much for me; you know how the women are,” he said. “Do I miss her? Oh, do I. You bet your life.”

And so Laurino walks on alone.

Having savored the old clippings once again, he put them back in the envelope. He looked at the gold medals lined up in the glass case. And he called himself a damn fool for falling and hurting his hip.

“Damn right I still want to win,” he said. “I thought I’d quit a few years back, but it’s in the blood. As long as I can do it, I might just as well.”