Category: Stories

81-year-old pole vaulting champion on winning any challenge

Flo Meiler, the oldest pole vaulter in the world competing at the 2015 World Masters Athletics Championships in Lyon, France. (Photo/Alex Rotas)

Flo Meiler may be 81, but she’s still at the top of her games. She actually competed in 18 different sports last month at the World Masters Athletics Championships in France, added three new world records to her 15, including one new American record in the triple jump and one in the heptathlon.

“Do you know what a heptathlon is?,” she asks excitedly. “It consists of 80-meter hurdles, the high jump, the shot put, and the 200-meter run on the first day. The second day, you do the long jump, the javelin, and 800-meter run…I got 5,730 points. The other gal got 5,135. I was pretty happy about that!”

Meiler grew up on a dairy farm in a small community in Champlain, NY.

“I was always very active in high school,” recalls Meiler, now the oldest pole vaulter in the world. “I played basketball, I was a cheerleader, I took tap dancing lessons, I was a baton twirler, I played trumpet. I was in everything. I was always a go-getter.”

Today, she lives with her husband of 55 years in Shelburne, Vermont. They moved around a lot throughout their marriage as he was a B-52 bomber pilot in the military.

“We were stationed in Orlando, Florida for 3.5 years, and we did a lot of water skiing competitions there,” says Meiler, who ended up taking part in more than 30 years of waterskiing competitions. “That strengthened my legs and arms a lot.”

Together with her husband, she took up tennis at age 40, and now they enjoy ballroom dancing. Independently, she started competing at the Vermont Senior Games at 55, and she didn’t start track and field until she was 60.

“I was playing tennis with my husband, and my training partner asked me to try track,” remembers Meiler. She said, ‘I think you’ll be good at it,’ so I did it, and that’s what started my track and field career.”

Out of all the sports she competes in, she says the pole vault and the hurdles are her favorites, “because they are very challenging, and I’ve always loved anything challenging.”

Flo Meiler competing at the hurdles last month. (Photo/Alex Rotas)

She says she owes a lot to her training partner, and advises others to get one if they want to get serious about getting fit.

“I am very fortunate to have Barbara Jordan with me, because we challenge each other,” says Meiler. “When we compete, we’re the best of friends. We do the best we can. Two years ago, she had a mastectomy, and they took out part of her left lung. I call her my angel. If she wasn’t as fit as she was, she could not have [survived]. Fitness really counts when it comes to health.”

Meiler says she’s taking it easy now – training only an hour and a half, six days a week, instead of two and a half. Her next competition isn’t until January – the Dartmouth Relays in Hanover, New Hampshire, which she’s been doing for the past 15 years.

One of her life’s biggest challenges has been personal, however.

“I had the misfortune of having two miscarriages,” says Meiler. “In those days, they didn’t have the medical equipment they had today. I also had a 3.5-year-old who died from aplastic anemia. Then we adopted three children – a 3.5 year old from Vermont, then another 2.5-year-old boy from Canada, and a 5.5-year-old from Korea. We have an international family. We all played tennis together, and did waterskiing.”

What’s one piece of advice about life that she would tell her younger self with the wisdom she has now?

“Not everybody has had the opportunity that I had. I married a fantastic husband, and he was able to provide. I didn’t have to go to work, but I kept busy with doing something for the community – I volunteered for the American Heart Association for 27 years. If you’re not going to be working, you really should be doing something for your community,” says Meiler. “Don’t rest on your laurels. Keep active…be active in your church, be part of your community, take real good care of your family, and put the good Lord first in your life. He has really helped me in my life.”

September 16, 2015
A life dedicated to sharing the importance of our national parks

Roberto Moreno, founder of ALPINO Mountain Sports Foundation and the Camp Moreno Project. (Courtesy Roberto Moreno)

Throughout his life, Roberto Moreno has worn many hats from mountain real estate developer to journalist to mountain hotelier. However at 68, his lifelong mission is not even near completion.

For more than half a century, he’s been introducing the Latino community to the benefits of the outdoors and to embrace our national parks as a way of life. In 2006, he founded a Colorado-based non-profit the ALPINO Mountain Sports Foundation. Under the umbrella of the National Park Service, he also oversees the Camp Moreno Project with his wife, Louise, since 2008. Together, they have created overnight mountain recreation experiences for more than 28,500 Colorado, Arizona and Texas multicultural children and families. The project operates in seven national parks out West, including Saguaro and the Grand Canyon.

Last September, Moreno was honored as one of the major contributors to Rocky Mountain National Park for the park’s 100-year celebration as part of a permanent exhibit.

“The exhibit, located at the History Colorado Center – our State History Museum – features a section devoted to my contributions to Rocky Mountain National Park,” says Moreno, who resides in Denver. “It features a continually running video and a historical pictorial of my history with the park…I’m the only Latino to ever receive such recognition.

Moreno’s love affair with the outdoors began because of his father, a U.S. World War II vet born in Mexico. One day in 1956, when Moreno was 9, he remembers his father coming home very excited.

“He just happened to see the movie, ‘The Long, Long Trailer,’ with Lucille Ball and Cuban actor Desi Arnaz where they went to Western destinations, like Yosemite National Park,” says Moreno, whose parents were campesinos. “My dad said, ‘If Ricky Ricardo can go camping, so can we.’ From that day forward, we went to Yosemite every single year.”

Moreno says that experience led to him falling in love with the outdoors and make him want to share the experience with others who might not otherwise think about it as an option.

“Camping is one of the less expensive ways of getting involved in the outdoors,” says Moreno. “There’s a tremendous amount of interest in the Latino community, but if you don’t grow up in it, you end up developing ridiculous stereotypes that it’s very hard and life threatening. A lot of it revolves around fear – you don’t want to be the only Latino family at a campground.”

Through his camp program, Moreno says he tries to make families understand the fundamental value of the outdoors to families and teach them how to replicate the experience on their own.

“Having quality time together, and convincing people that we should be taking advantage of it, because it belongs to all of us.” he adds. “We are a program that shows how you can be a camping family for less than $200. How you can shop garage sales to get the basic materials you need. All of my grandkids now are involved in the outdoors. When my family gets together, the experiences that mean the most to them is the times we spent outdoors.”

Roberto Moreno at one of his mountain getaways with 30 kids and their families. (Courtesy Alpino Mountain Foundation)

He says he only wishes he had more finances and resources to be able to provide for the demand that’s out there.

“We have waiting lists,” says Moreno, who wants to plan a camping trip to one of the national parks in the Northeast if possible in the near future.

But he will continue sharing his knowledge about parks one family at a time, because he understands how it impacted his life for the better.

“It makes you understand that you have options,” says Moreno. “It makes you understand that there’s a world out there that’s bigger than the one that you were born into. In my case, it was East LA. I wanted to be part of [the outside] world. It’s with some pride that because of my father that happened to see a movie that I started on a path that has ruled my life, and why I’m so dedicated to this whole problem of exclusivity…If we don’t have a way to make [the parks] resonate with people of color, if they’re not relevant to their life, they won’t support them financially, and they are not going to feel any obligation to protect them.”

Looking back on his long career, what does Moreno wish he knew when he was younger?

“I wish as a younger person, I’d have had more faith in my interpersonal skills,” he says. “One of the reasons why I focused on print journalism, rather than television, was that growing up in East LA, I had an accent…When I went to Columbia University, I had to decide whether I wanted to study print or broadcast journalism, and I chose print because I thought I’d have more impact, but I would have liked to give broadcast a shot…I probably didn’t have as much confidence as I do now. Over the years, I realized that I became pretty good at public speaking, and I even became a keynote speaker. I probably would have liked to explore that side of me a little. That’s my one regret, but it’s been a blast.”

August 26, 2015
East Hampton artist says, “Always have a project you love to do”

Nicole Bigar in New York City on July 16, 2015. (Photo/Kristina Puga)

“I used to spend hours on the rocks watching the waves splashing, smelling seaweed, collecting shells…,” Nicole Bigar wrote briefly about her strict childhood in her 2011 book, “Koukoumanias,” which is a colorful conglomeration of her then 45-year career as an artist.

To this day, she loves nothing more than the ocean and creating art. It was painting that consoled her when she was a new arrival to New York.

Bigar immigrated from Paris to New York City, during World War II. She was 14. In between high school and college, she took time to study anatomy and drawing at The Arts Students League. Later, she studied philosophy and Spanish at Barnard College.

“Then I had children. When they went to college, that’s when I seriously became a painter,” says the 88-year-old. “I met my husband in New York when I was 17. I got married when I was 19. He just died.”

And it is art, which is again helping her heal – this time from losing her husband of 65 years. Her love of art has been a part of her as long as she can remember.

“I always wanted to sketch, look at beautiful work – I see beautiful things around me – especially nature,” says Bigar who spends her winters living in New York City, and her summers in East Hampton. “I want to do paintings that I have never done before. I travel a great deal. Everytime I go to a country, I like to paint it. I’ve been to Egypt, Norway, India…and I’m still very attracted to the beauty of France.”

Presently, she says she’s painting a whole series on Times Square.

“When I went to the theater, I was fascinated by the lights,” Bigar recalls. “So all winter, I’ve been working on that. I might do a book with it.”

In her current show, “Muses: Past and Present,” exhibiting now through the July 26 in East Hampton, Bigar says she used ceramic, sand and paint on canvas in creating her pieces of art.

A piece in Nicole Bigar’s current exhibit “Muses: Past and Present.”

“My inspiration was that I love East Hampton,” says Bigar. “I love to give joy. People look at my paintings and it makes them happy. I use a lot of bright colors. Painting is my happiness, and whatever happens, if I’m not feeling well, or I’m aching, it helps my morale.”

She adds that one of her muses in her current exhibit was inspired by a continuing education class at Barnard College about French novelist Marcel Proust. She started to paint a lot of characters from his novels.

“I think the secret to getting old is to be interested in something beyond your day to day life, and then life is not boring,” says Bigar, who also loves to exercise and swim. “You always have a project.”

She says when she was younger, she always had a lot of things to do. When she was married, as well. For her, the advantage of her age is that she can now devote all of her time to painting.

Her one piece of advice to her younger self:

“Always have a passion. Always have a project that you love to do. Always learn…Also, slow down once in a while and meditate and live in the moment.”

And for a long and happy marriage:

“As my husband became older, I thought I don’t need to take care of him – I want to take care of him. I then did my best to have him have a happy life.”

July 22, 2015
From “Thunder Cats” to acupuncture and following your gut

Anthony Giovanniello (Photo/Adam French)

Anthony Giovanniello grew up in an Italian-American household in Queens, NY, but for as long as he can remember, he says he’s had an affinity for Asian culture.

“My parents thought they picked the wrong kid up from the hospital,” says Giovanniello laughing. “We were Catholic. So Friday nights we used to order all these vegetable dishes at the Chinese restaurant. They always sent me to pick up the food, but I would take so long because I would spend so much time talking to the owner about China.”

His parents let him embrace his love of everything Asian, however. Giovanniello started his first yoga class at 15, and then took martial arts, and finally when he was 19, he took his first trip to Japan.

“It solidified my understanding that my love of Asia was more than this life,” says Giovanniello.

Today, at 60, he is an acupuncturist at a clinic in Nashville, Tenn., as well as the founder of the non-profit Acupuncture Ambassadors which organizes sustainable acupuncture schools, training programs and treatment clinics for the care of refugees, victims of violence, and the poor around the world. In October, he will be going to help heal the trauma victims of the Nepal earthquake.

“I love Nepal – it’s one of my favorite places in the world,” says Giovanniello. “Thank God my friends are alive, but most of them are homeless.”

He says he’s been to Cambodia, Vietnam, and many other places throughout Asia, but Nepal is where he goes most often.

“I’ve been four times years in that past 10 years,” says the soft-spoken healer. “I feel at home there. The first time I went there was in 1998. It was this incredible feeling. There was a square where the King of Kathmandu had his court, and when I walked out of the taxi, I started crying like I came home.”

Giovanniello says he knew he wanted to be an acupuncturist when he was 20 – right after he had his first acupuncture treatment.

“But then I realized there were no schools to study acupuncture in the U.S. around 1980 – you had to go to China,” says Giovanniello. “You probably spend 5 or 7 years there, and then you come back and maybe you don’t find a job. So I put that idea to the side.”

Since he grew up playing music and was in a band through his 20s, he was very familiar with recording equipment. It made sense to start a career in audio production. Eventually, he became a soundtrack supervisor for the animated television series, “Thunder Cats.”

“I loved the animation which came from Japan, but late in 1999, I was in a place where life didn’t work anymore,” Giovanniello remembers. “I thought, ‘If I don’t do this acupuncture thing it’s never going to happen.’ I was 45. I went back to school in January 2000…I was determined to graduate by the time I was 50, and I did. I have a skill, but I feel it’s more of a calling, because I’m passionate about it.”

He explains that acupuncture – a form of alternative medicine involving inserting thin needles into the body at specific acupuncture points – was originally created side by side with the Chinese religious tradition of Daoism.

“You embrace the earth and nature and believe that mankind is at one with nature,” says Giovanniello. “Most won’t say it’s a spiritual practice, but it can be if you allow it. It works on animals and they have no belief systems. Most thoroughbreds have their own acupuncturists.”

He says the most memorable moment of his career so far was when he was working on the streets of Nepal, and a woman brought her 30-year-old son who had been such a severe alcoholic that he ruined his liver and was crippled.

“They came in a cab, and he needed four men to pick him up. He screamed the whole way being carried,” remembers Giovanniello. “We thought the needles were going to hurt him so I thought the best I can do is do ear acupuncture. He laid there for a couple of hours with the needles in his ears. The second day he came, and he was a little better, not screaming. He came every day. By the fourth day, he got himself onto the bed himself. By the fifth day, we were putting needles everywhere, and by the sixth day, he was walking himself to the cab. Acupuncture allows your body to kick in the hormones we already have to heal our own bodies. At the end of 7 days, he was still very weak, but he was able to get himself into the cab. It was an amazing transformation.”

Anthony performing ear acupuncture in a monastery in Nepal.

He says he started his non-profit organization, right in his living room, when he realized that acupuncture was more of a calling than a business.

“It’s been an amazing journey,” reflects Giovanniello. “My first ‘get my feet wet’ mission was in a Navajo reservation in Arizona. I went there, and it solidified everything to me. It is interesting, fun and helpful..it gets me up in the morning.”

Currently, Giovanniello works five days a week at the clinic, and his two days off he spends fundraising for Acupuncture Ambassadors.

What piece of advice about life would he tell his younger self if he could?

“I would tell my younger self never to be afraid of doing what you thought was right.”

June 10, 2015
“La Bamba,” “Zoot Suit” writer on the importance of building community

Luis Valdez (Courtesy El Teatro Campesino)

Do you remember reading the play, “Zoot Suit” in high school or watching the movie “La Bamba” (1987), based on the life of 1950’s rocker Ritchie Valens, starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Esai Morales? They were both written by multi-award winning playwright and director, Luis Valdez.

He is also the founder of the longest running Chicano theater in the U.S. El Teatro Campesino is located in the rural community of San Juan Bautista, Calif. – approximately 150 miles northwest from where he was born to migrant farm worker parents.

“I was born in 1940 in a labor camp in Delano…the west side of Delano was separated by the railroad tracks,” says Valdez, now 74. “The Asians, Mexicans, and African Americans were on the west side, and the White people lived on the east side of the tracks.”

Valdez says he remembers understanding as early as age six, that he was born into a segregated land.

Years later, in 1955, he remembers the segregation continued. There was a young man who was called “C.C.” who decided to sit in the middle of the movie theater and not in the section designated for “non-whites.”

“The police took him away,” says Valdez. “There was no law – it was custom. They released him, and the following week, a whole group went and sat in the middle of the theater. Years later, I went to work with the UFW [United Farm Workers], and my mom said, ‘Don’t you know who C.C. is? He is Cesar Chavez.”

It was in 1965, while volunteering with the UFW, that Valdez founded El Teatro Campesino – a theater troupe for farm workers and students. The theater, he says, served as a way to inform, educate and also provide laughter during very hard times for strikers.

El Teatro Campesino performing in the 1960’s. (Courtesy El Teatro Campesino)

“I’ve seen the evolution of theater, film and television,” says Valdez regarding his continually growing work with El Teatro Campesino, which still continues today. “My focus has been on historical periods so people can know who we are today…now we’re focused on developing the young.”

Valdez says it was school that changed the trajectory of his life. It was his mom who sent him and his brother to school one day with their lunches packed in a little brown paper bag – a luxury, he says, in those days.

“I used to take care of my little bag, but one day my bag was missing,” Valdez remembers back to the first grade. “My teacher said, ‘I took it. It’s for a mask I’m making for a play.’ I forgave her for the bag, and the next week, I auditioned and I got my first part in a play – a monkey. I was looking forward to my first debut in front of the world on a Monday. I told my mom, and she said, ‘We’re leaving Friday. We were being evicted.”

Valdez says he was six and devastated. However, that episode in his life was crucial, because it gave him the insatiable desire to pursue theater for the rest of his life.

“It was at San Jose State University that I began to write and produce,” says Valdez. “I wrote my first full-length play there, and just last month, my son produced ‘Zoot Suit’ – it ran two weeks. It’s come full circle – 50 years after I graduated.”

What piece of life advice would Valdez tell his younger self if he could?

“I would tell my young self, and others, that it’s important to develop people skills…It comes with giving respect when respect is due. Genius is not an excuse to mistreat other people. A true genius is a genius of compassion and humility…I’m happy to say that El Teatro Campesino is composed of 12 people who have been together the past 40 years. They have had other careers but are still pitching in and helping out. In an odd way, that keeps us young. That’s a great feeling. It’s amazing to me. They’ve become maestras and maestros in their own right…We got a slow start incorporating women into the group, but some of our greatest collaborators have been with women. I would talk to my younger self about the importance of that…These are lessons they I’ve learned along the way. We are all human, and we all have a heart.

May 13, 2015