South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 109

cz 7 His memories and spirit keep him young I Former athlete turns 100 on Nov. 18, but he does not believe in feeling old -i 8un-Sntinl, Thursday, Novtmtor 8, 1984 1 -s i i I i Wr 'y 1 -fi majmjUBmmtufm 1 By Malinda Reinke Suf Writer BOYNTON BEACH There's something shiny in John Dellert's gray eyes. Call it pride, call it contentment. Call it pure and simple satisfaction. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the gold after all.

Whatever it is, it glows like a flame and warms the parlor in his Second Avenue home where he tells all his stories about his wife Hilda and St. Louis and turning 100 before he even got a chance to grow old. Funny thing. "I don't feel old," hesaid. "I feel just fine.

Of course, my legs are getting a little old." He was standing. He insisted on standing to say hello and, perhaps, just to show off. Because 100 or 19, the years don't make much difference when inside you don't age. Dellert, in spirit, is still making the 100-yard-dash in 10 seconds and making eyes at Hilda at the dance. "On Nov.

18, I'll be 100. 1 feel like I could still stand on my hands on the bars," he said the other day. "Of course, I know I can't." And then he sort of laughed, like he wasn't so sure he couldn't, and he nodded toward the glass frame on the table. That's where his Olympic medals are kept. No, he didn't win the gold.

He didn't win the silver or the bronze in St. Louis at the International Games in 1904. "I was 26th in all-around work. Twenty-sixth out of the whole gang," he boasted, puffed up and radiant as if he still felt the cheering crowds. "They pinned a medal on me and they put a wreath on my head.

"But I never thought I'd go," he said. "It never crossed my mind at all that I would go to the Olympics." Dellert, the centenarian athlete, was born in 1884 in a horse and buggy town called St. Louis, Mo. He spent much of his adult life in Detroit and he moved to Boynton Beach 30 years ago. In his 100 years, he said, he worked as hard as he could every day and he's proud of the way he spent his time.

"I was in track and field," Dellert said about the games. "But my specialty was gymnastics the horizontal bars, the parallel bars, the rings, the long horse and the side horse. "In track work, I did the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds. I was in the high jump, the broad jump, the hop-skip-and-jump and the pole vault." Oh. Is that all, sir? Back then they did everything, he said.

And they'd fit practice in on weekends or after work when they could. "I got started when I got out of high school," Dellert said. "My oldest brother (Charles) belonged to a gym nastic society, and he took me down and introduced me around. I was 15 then." Fifteen and full of energy. During the dajC he worked with his dad upholstering carriages.

When the sun went down he went to the gym. "We worked out two nights a week. On weekends we had track, with a field meet on Sundays." It was the turn of the century, and Dellert got good. He got so good, in fact, that his athletic instructor Karl Heckrich suggested he try out for the upcoming Olympics. He and brother Charles both.

The games lasted five days 80 years ago when the Dellerts were contenders. There were 350 athletes competing and competition was tough. But the trackmangymnast thinks today's meets are tougher. "That Carl Lewis, oh, he's very good," Dellert said. "And that fella on the side horse, doing the saddle He gave his head a shake.

"Very, very good, too. "The (events) are much advanced to what we had back then. They do more stunts now, more difficult exercises. More difficult work." When Dellert didn't win in the Olympics in 1904, he planned to try again in London four years later. But at an exhibition meet in Frankfurt, Germany, just before the games, he injured his knee on the horizontal bars.

That fall, Dellert thought, dashed his chance for the gold forever. And then he fell for Miss Hilda. Dellert met his wife, most appropriately, at the gymnasium in St. Louis. "She was a gymnast, too," he said, his face with that glow again.

"She belong to the ladies' club." He paused a moment. "In them days, they wore bloomers oh, well, I'll never forget." One night the gymnastic society sponsored a dance. "She was sitting there with her parents," the centenarian said, "and everyone was pretty much dancin'. So I went over and I asked her would she dance with me. She said yes, and that was it." Dellert married his bloomer girl in 1911.

They had two children Roy Dellert and Myrtle (Dellert) Reinhold and their romance lasted a golden 53 years, until Hilda died in 1964 at the age of 75. These days Dellert keeps as active as he can. He exercises every day. He's a regular down at the Boynton Beach Shuffleboard Club. In fact, they're holding a birthday bash for their star next Thursday.

"I don't play (shuffleboard) anymore, I used to. Gave it up two years ago," Dellert said. "Now I go two nights a week and play cards. "Pinochle." Asked about his luck at cards, the old man grinned. "Oh, I win and I lose both," he said with a very strong emphasis on the win.

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