As soon as the Henderson County Family YMCA opens on most weekday mornings, Tommy Alexander is in the swimming pool, steadily marking off 25 laps on the way to finishing his daily one-mile swim.
Because of that discipline, the 81-year-old retiree reached 4,000 swimming miles on Oct. 7, doubling a 2,000-mile mark he reached at the Y in 2016.
Back then, Alexander was swimming two miles every day, but he has now scaled back to one mile, which still equals plenty of pool time. It’s kept him at the top of the leaderboard, though he said there are other dedicated lap swimmers at the Y.
“I’ve always been a ‘a stay-in-shape’ kind of person. My goal is to be healthier,” he said when he passed his 2,000-mile mark.
Alexander, who has been swimming for about 15 years and has kept a lap log at the Y for about 12, doesn’t do it for trophies or accolades. In fact, he said he never even wore a “500 Mile Club” warm-up jacket he won 3,500 miles ago, noting that “I don’t need to advertise it.”
He swims because it keeps him in great physical shape and able to do other things he loves, such as travel, but even more because “the good Lord gave me the ability to do it.”
Alexander has been given the ability not just to be a committed swimmer but to do a lot of things. The 1961 Henderson County High School graduate spent a career in military law enforcement, which sent him around the world, and when he retired from the Air Force, he worked in the military prison system at Leavenworth, Kansas.
Swimming provides Alexander with some valuable quiet time, during which he mostly thinks about life and how to help those he knows be better in their personal relationships.
“Life is too short for you to be miserable,” he said, noting that his personal philosophy involves leaving the past and its events behind. “You’ve got to get on with life and live for the future.”
His own life experience has brought him to that conclusion. Years ago, Alexander sought early retirement to provide care for his first wife, Sheila, after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
For five years he stayed by her side in their Kansas home 24 hours a day except for one afternoon a week when hospice workers relieved him so he could do grocery shopping and run errands.
Dealing with loneliness and grief after her death, he prayed to God for companionship, and it was not long until he was reconnected with a childhood sweetheart he had known growing up in Spottsville.
He and Beverly Ann were married for 15 years, but she contracted pneumonia and passed away in early 2017.
After that second difficult loss of a spouse, Alexander thought about making a fresh start in a new part of the country, and he took a short break from swimming. He checked out one area that appealed to him, but ultimately decided to stay put in Henderson County.
He’s glad he made that decision, otherwise he wouldn’t have reconnected with a mutual friend of his wife Ann, whom he had also been acquainted with years ago in his school days. That was four years ago.
In the past few years the couple has really been enjoying travel adventures, with trips to Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, our nation’s capital, Nova Scotia, Mount Rushmore, Peru’s Machu Picchu, Glacier National Park, Niagara Falls, Florida and other locales.
When those adventures take place, Alexander puts swimming on hold to make time for new experiences.
Though there has been a lot of life changes to adjust to, Alexander hasn’t changed his swimming routine much, including his schedule and technique.
“I’ve really been blessed,” Alexander said, lamenting the fact that so many of his childhood classmates are in poor health or are no longer on this earth.
“My doctor says I’m healthy as a horse, healthier than he is.
“Swimming has served me well,” he added. “It keeps me going. As long as I can do it, and enjoy it, I’m going to do it.”
