Story Photos
 South Kelso resident Howard Monroe, 83, takes a lap around a former neighbor's house that he converted into a personal roller skating rink. Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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Kelso man plans on skating to 100 and beyond
Sunday, August 17, 2008 1:01 AM PDT
By Amy M.E. Fischer
Printable version
E-mail this articleHoward Monroe was a regular at Skate World before the rink closed last year, but the 83-year-old South Kelso resident always preferred the private rink he built himself.
"At Skate World, the kids would knock me down all the time," said Monroe, a wiry man wearing a POW baseball cap and a trendy open-collared shirt.
When his neighbor died about 14 years ago, Monroe bought the circa-1928 house beside the one he and his wife, Margie, have lived in since 1955. Over the next couple of years, the retired teacher gutted it, knocked out walls and covered the floors with sanded plywood. He installed soft wheels on his skates to absorb the bumps. He bought an old tape recorder at a Lower Columbia College equipment auction.
He's been rolling ever since.
"The only bad thing is, I can't really skate backwards in here safely," said Monroe, who can do seven laps a minute around the interior perimeter of the house.
Monroe's been skating since he was a boy, when his family moved from Seattle to Minnesota. In wintertime during recess, he and the other children would ice skate, wearing clamp-on skates with iron blades. In high school, Monroe would roller skate at the dance hall across the street from his parents' house. When he was drafted into the U.S. Army at age 18, he skated at rinks wherever he was stationed, wearing rented skates.
In 1945, when World War II ended, Monroe bought his first pair of skates. They had maple wood wheels. He still has them somewhere, he said.
Thursday afternoon in the cool dimness of his personal skating rink, Monroe strapped on a pair of 40-year-old skates and popped in a cassette tape of rollicking piano music. With an effortless grace, he began to glide through the rooms, past his collections of old "junk," as he calls it-shelves of typewriters, adding machines, movie projectors, horse bridles, blacksmith tools, baking tins, books, telegraph wire bulbs.
No one else has ever skated at his rink. These things are for his satisfaction, he says.
Monroe usually skates for half an hour at a time-the length of one side of a cassette tape. Sometimes he skates more than once a day.
"I already skated before lunch," he told visitors Thursday as he breezed by. "I enjoy this. It relaxes me. It's funny, I can chop wood all day and be just so tired I can't move. And then I come over here and start skating and I'm not tired at all."
He sewed Velcro straps on his skates so he can easily slip them off to massage his feet.
It's been more than 60 years since he almost lost them. As an infantryman in World War II, Monroe's unit was captured by German forces in the Alsace region. His feet froze repeatedly in the months he worked forced labor at the Bad Orb Prison Camp.
"They were black with no feeling," he said. "If I coulda got to an American hospital, they would've cut 'em off. When the feeling came back they were so painful, I would've chopped 'em off if I had an ax."
But the pain of a 100-calorie-a-day starvation diet was worse, he recalled.
When he was liberated from the camp, Monroe was so frail he didn't think he'd live to see 65. That's when he began researching nutrition and health, while earning a teaching degree at St. Cloud State College in Minnesota. He taught school in the Portland, Clatskanie and Eastern Washington before settling in Kelso, where he taught at Wallace School for eight years. He spent the last 15 years of his career as a librarian at Coweeman Junior High.
A couple of years ago, when he noticed he was "feeling like I was getting old," Monroe incorporated sardines, pinto beans, bran and sunflower seeds into his daily meals. Since then, his energy has surged.
Unfortunately, his wife, whose weak bones have left her wheelchair-bound for the last year, can't abide the smell of sardines, he said.
But he has no intention of kicking his diet. It's all part of his goal to surpass the 120-year age mark, which he's read the human body was designed to do.
"I was telling everyone I was shootin' for 120. Now I'm thinking a little more than that," Monroe said with a grin.
Which means he intends to live more than 37 more years. And he knows what he plans to do with his time.
"Roller skate," he said. "I plan on roller skating until I can't walk."
kelso mom1 wrote on Aug 17, 2008 12:19 AM:
bluE wrote on Aug 17, 2008 3:54 AM:
98626 wrote on Aug 17, 2008 5:37 AM:
TMAN wrote on Aug 17, 2008 1:50 PM:
northnurse wrote on Aug 17, 2008 2:23 PM:
98625 wrote on Aug 17, 2008 5:05 PM:
gr8 ant wrote on Aug 17, 2008 6:12 PM:
Mr Monroe...you are an inspiration!!! "
glowgirl wrote on Aug 17, 2008 6:56 PM:
turbinedoctor wrote on Aug 18, 2008 12:36 PM:
"YOU HAVE OUR HEARTS!"
DAV#32 "
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