Mizes convinced of golf’s link to good health

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN TOM STOPPEL
If good health is a state of mind, Don and Joyce Mize of Hillsboro could be its co-governors.

The Mizes, residents of Hillsboro since 1952, are 87 and 83, respectively, but still play golf every day if possible.

“Golf is exercise,” Don said matter-of-factly. “Exercise is movement. You have to move to stay alive. If you don’t move, you’re going to be dead.”

And don’t assume these two active seniors ride the course on a motorized cart.

“No, we don’t have a cart,” Don said emphatically. “We have two pull carts and we walk every day. When you ride those carts, it doesn’t help your health. You drive right up to the ball, and it doesn’t do you any good.

“The people of Hillsboro need to be more courteous to the people who are walking on the golf course,” he added. “They’re just trying to get some exercise. The guys riding around in those carts are just trying to play tiddledywinks.

“That’s not playing golf. Golf is walking. It’s a health exercise.”

Don and Joyce have two grown children. Jackie lives in New York City and works for the International Office of Resettlement of Legal Refugees. Frank is a petroleum geologist in Wichita.

“Frank was the captain of the golf team at Hillsboro High School,” Joyce said proudly.

Living into your 80s isn’t automatic, and the Mizes’ fitness routine isn’t a new found fad. Rather, it’s the result of a lifelong commitment to good health.

“When I was born, my parents would come to my bedroom door and hear my heart murmur,” Joyce said. “They always told me, ‘Don’t run and don’t play hard.’ I had three brothers and I taught them all how to throw the ball and catch it, and how to kick the football, and I’d play and run as hard as I could.

“My heart is still murmuring, but not so loud now.”

Don entered the military in the late 1930s. Stationed at Pearl Harbor, he was scheduled to leave his tour of duty on Dec. 8, 1941. But one day before he left, the world was changed when Japan invaded.

Don spent three more years in Hawaii, and took advantage of the climate to work on his physical fitness.

“One time when I was in Hawaii, I swam for five straight hours and my feet never touched the ground,” he said. “I wanted to know how long I could last if the ship I was on sunk.”

He also recalled the time he swam 145 laps, with each lap being 300 yards long.

Also on his physical fitness “resume” was a stint as a weightlifter and Gold Gloves boxer.

“I knocked a guy out in Wichita,” he said. “I stopped boxing right after I boxed in Kansas City and got beat, but they just gave the decision to the other guy because he was from Kansas City.

“I wrestled in a couple of carnivals, too,” he added. “I was kind of crazy about wrestling.”

“When Don (who was trained as a watch craftsman), left the service, people told him not to start a jewelry store, because he’d go broke,” Joyce said. “Don told them he’d been in the army for eight years and had been told what to do every day, so he’d do what he wanted. My dad said move to Alma, where I’m from, and start a business.

“We were there for three years and decided we wanted to move to a bigger town,” she said. “We heard about a store in Hillsboro that might be for sale, so Don came and visited.

“Don called back to me and our daughter Jackie and said, ‘How would you like to move to Hillsboro?’ I told him I’ve never even heard of Hillsboro, but I said I’d like to go to a town with a Lutheran church.

“Our daughter, who was all ready for kindergarten said ‘if they have kindergarten, and if they have a slippery slide that has a hump, I’ll go.

“We’ve been here ever since.”

For many years, the couple operated Mize Jewlers, but even then they took time to keep active.

“While Don was working at the store, we’d get up every morning at 5 o’clock and golf nine holes, and then come home and take our baths and go to work,” Joyce said.

The couple didn’t begin playing golf until they moved to Hillsboro, but Don had had experience as a caddy.

“I caddied for the Kansas champion at Emporia, and he paid me 50 cents,” he said with a laugh.

Neither has ever taken a golf lesson. In fact, Don taught Joyce, his wife of nearly 58 years, to golf.

“He used to drive the ball and it would take me three times to get as far as his. Now, either I’m getting better or he’s getting worse, because it only takes me two times to get up to his,” Joyce said with a smile.

Essential to their fitness program is an emphasis on healthy eating.

“I graduated from K-State with a degree in home economics, so I do better than the doctor fixing our meals, and I’m careful about what we eat,” said Joyce, a former high school teacher. “I keep our menus fat free, and we eat lots of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables.”

“I eat a lot of hot dogs, too,” Don added.

“Don loves hot dogs, but that isn’t on the top of my list of healthy foods,” she said. “We eat a lot of poultry and we just trim the fat and skin off of it.”

“I eat three bananas and drink a glass of orange juice every morning for breakfast, too,” Don added.

Joyce doesn’t feel the diet of today’s youth is necessarily on a healthy course.

“Kids aren’t being fed right nowadays,” she said. “They give them too much fast food instead of regular salads and good fruits.”

Besides diet and exercise, the couple has a couple other hints about living life to the fullest.

“We thank God every day and we go to church every Sunday,” Joyce said.

Don added: “Live a good clean Christian life and try to be of some service to other people.”

Advancing age hasn’t diminished Joyce’s humor. She said the best thing about being their age is “being alive.”

Do they know of any others golfers their age?

“I don’t even know anybody else who’s our age,” she said with a smile.

Although diet is key to their longevity, exercise other than golf is also important.

“Don still lifts weights,” Joyce said. “He has a punching bag down in the basement that he still hits sometimes.”

“I have enough weights that I ought to sell a few,” Don said. “We also have a stationary free-standing bike that we use in the house, and I have a horseshoe pit and I like to throw shoes.

“I used to be pretty strong- and then I got married,” Don said with a chuckle.

“I wish I had some of those monkey walks, like they have on school grounds,” he added. “The kind where you go hand over hand above your head. That’s the best exercise you can get.”

“Don is pretty good help around the house, too,” Joyce said. “He pushes the vacuum for me, but he probably wouldn’t want too many people to know that.”

“I don’t brag about it,” Don said with a twinkle in his eyes.

In the end, the couple prefer the green grass of the golf course to help maintain their cardiovascular fitness.

“If you don’t play golf consistently, you don’t play as good,” Don said. “You always think you’re 18, but when you get out and try to do something, you know you aren’t.”

“Don is just healthy,” Joyce added. “He never goes to a doctor.

“I golf to relieve my stress,” she said. “I have diabetes and when I have stress, my sugar goes way up, so I golf to get rid of that stress.”

So it’s back to the golf course, bright and early.

“You ought to take up golf,” Joyce said. “It makes walking a lot more fun.”

“I’m going to cut back working on watches,” Don said as he got his golf clubs out of the trunk of their car and placed them on his pull cart.

“I think I’ll try to get back into shape one of these days.”

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