MARIE MCDONALD: Making a Splash

Water instructor dives head-first into 2nd career

Marie McDonald leads her students at the Las Vegas Athletic Club on Rainbow Boulevard through several exercises. She was hired by the club's management five months ago when she turned 78. Photos by Shelly Donahue/View

Some people compete for a lifetime before winning top honors in their respective sport, but not Marie McDonald of Las Vegas.

The 79-year-old Hawthorne, N.J.-born swim and water fitness instructor had been involved with swimming in her earlier years, but it wasn't until she turned 60 that she really got into the swim of things.

"I was a synchronized swimmer when I was going on 19 or 20," she said. "I was in Elliott Murphy's Aquashow on Long Island, (N.Y.), the site of the 1939 World's Fair, but then I got married and that was the end of that."

In 1987, just before she became a sexagenarian, McDonald teamed up with the Red Bank (N.J.) YMCA to become its aquatics program director.

She did well enough that she entered the competitive swim scene at 62 and by 65 had qualified for three national competitions.

"I have a boxful of gold medals," said McDonald. "In all, I've got 89 medals and ribbons for master and state competitions."

Before moving to Nevada four years ago, Marie McDonald taught various water exercises for arthritis, water jogging and post-op mastectomy as well as water aerobics in Fort Monmouth, N.J.

"I retired when I was 75," she said, "but after that I took on the state of Nevada and won three gold medals in the Senior Olympics."

An active go-getter all her life, McDonald didn't want to sit at home day in and day out, so she turned to the one area she knew best -- the water.

"I wasn't satisfied just sitting at home, so I applied for a job at the Las Vegas Athletic Club, the one on Rainbow Boulevard," she said. "They called me on my 78th birthday and said I could start teaching. A lot of women would be scared to jump at something like that after getting to be 50, 60 or 70. But it's something I wanted to do, so I've been a fitness swimmer for the past five months."

McDonald realizes that not many women her age get a second chance in the work world, so she's thankful for her newly found opportunities.

"I'm very grateful for the chances they took to let me teach when I got to be 60 and 78," she said. "I owe them a big thank you for giving me the chance to do what I love."

McDonald, who used to write a fitness column for the Two River Times newspaper in Red Bank, N.J. also loves to write.

Her first book, "Your Personal Best, a Common Sense Guide to Fitness at All Ages," has gone to the printers and is expected to come out for sale in September or October, just in time for holiday giving.

"The reason for doing it is because I've been teaching water aerobics since I was 60," she explained, "and there isn't a day that goes by that somebody asks me how to stay fit, so I decided to write book about it."

She says her book is written more in a conversational style than with medical and scientific terms because "it's not for the intellectual reader, but more for the average person."

For her passion of water and writing, McDonald's part-time neighbor Cindy Kluesener of Hebron, Ill., whom she met at their condo's pool and struck up a friendship, nominated McDonald for one of this year's Ageless Champions awards sponsored by Prime View saying, "She is truly an inspiration to all."

Before being honored at a special luncheon June 22 hosted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Ventanas Summerlin, McDonald said, "When I got the phone call, I was shocked out of my mind. I couldn't believe it. Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to be honored for something I love to do."

Back in her synchronized swimming days, when McDonald and her other show performers were involved in water ballet and precision swimming, they were tagged with a name that has stayed with McDonald for some 60 years. So much so, she calls herself a "dolphin freak."

"They called us dolphin divers, which is why I relate to them so much and love them to death," she said while noting how her home is filled with dolphins. "It's my dream to swim with dolphins some day, but I'm not sure I should at this age."