Look who's turning 65 this month
Find out which celebrities are turning 65 this month!
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| Image Source: Wikipedia |
June 14 Eric Heiden, speed skater
Smashing record after record, Eric Heiden dominated speed skating at the 1980 Olympics, setting four Olympic records and a world record in the event. In fact, he won more gold medals (5) than any single nation except for the Soviet Union and East Germany. Heiden may be the best speed skater who ever lived, winning both sprint and long-distance events.
Along with his sister Beth, Heiden excelled at cycling and cross-country skiing as well as speed skating. When he retired from skating in 1980 with 15 world records to his credit, Heiden became a professional cyclist. He competed unsuccessfully in track cycling, then turned to road racing, becoming a member of the 7-Eleven Cycling Team. He won some American professional races and competed in the 1986 Tour de France, where he crashed and had to withdraw five days from the finish.
Like his father, Heiden became an orthopedic surgeon and was the team physician for the NBA Sacramento Kings and WNBA Sacramento Monarchs. He also served as physician for the US Olympic speed skating team for many years. He co-authored "Faster, Better, Stronger," a book about the science of exercise.
Heiden has been married since 1995 to hand surgeon Karen Drew. The couple has a daughter and resides in Utah. Although Heiden was offered a mountain of sponsorship opportunities after his Olympic wins, he declined the vast majority. His reasoning? He said he had enough money and he preferred the anonymity.
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| Image Source: Wikipedia |
June 15 Wade Boggs, baseball player
Third baseman Wade Boggs spent 18 seasons in professional baseball, playing for the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He’s only the 23rd player to reach 3,000 hits and was elected to the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2004 and the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.
Boggs managed 12 straight All-Star appearances, and in 1997 he garnered the 95th spot in the Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. Pretty impressive stuff for someone who was picked in the seventh round of the 1976 MLB draft and signed with the Red Sox for $7,500.
Many don’t know that Boggs played in the longest game in professional baseball as a member of the minor league Pawtucket Red Sox in 1981. You may recall the game lasted 33 innings, clocking in at eight hours and 25 minutes over April 18 to 19!
Boggs hit over .350 in four straight seasons. In 1987, he had seven RBIs, a career high, at Fenway. Retired pitcher Tommy John wrote that "...for pure hitting, Boggs is the best I've ever seen. He's a phenomenon, a pure hitting machine. I've never seen anything like him. He lit me up."
Boggs was known for his superstitions, which included eating chicken before every game and practicing only at certain times, like running sprints at 7:17 pm. After retiring, he made several cameos on TV as himself.
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| Image Source: Wikipedia |
June 20 Mark Milley, Army General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Mark Milley is the highest-ranking officer in the United States Armed Forces and the main military advisor to the president of the United States, the secretary of defense, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council. Not only did Milley join the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) before graduating from Princeton, but Milley has a Master of Arts degree in international relations from Columbia University as well as a second Master of Arts degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College.
Milley began working in 2017 to speed up and modernize the system that delivers military weapons, vehicles, and aircraft. "If we adapt to the changing character of war, and we embrace the institutional changes that we need to implement, then we will continue to be the most lethal fighting force in the world for the next seven decades and beyond. If we do not, we will lose the next war," he said.
He also established Security Force Assistance Brigades, with training similar to Special Forces, to train foreign military units in conventional light infantry tactics. A combat veteran of many battlefields, Milley instigated a new Army Combat Fitness Test in 2018. "We want to make sure that our soldiers are ... in top physical shape to withstand the rigors of ground combat,” he said. “Combat is not for the faint of heart, it's not for the weak-kneed, it's not for those who are not psychologically resilient and tough and hardened to the brutality, to the viciousness of it."
In 2019, Milley commissioned a report by the US Army War College on how climate change would alter both society and military operations. With contributions by a plethora of government institutions, the report predicted increasing civil and military conflicts due to water scarcity and the failure of global food systems.
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| Image Source: Wikipedia |
June 29 Rosa Mota, long-distance runner
The only woman to be the European, World, and Olympic champion marathoner at the same time, Rosa Mota from Portugal may be the greatest woman marathon runner ever.
Mota ran cross-country in high school but did not enter her first marathon until 1982. It was the European Championships of 1982 held in Athens, Greece and the first marathon just for women. No one knew who this upstart was … until she beat the favorite to win gold. Over her 10-year career, Mota often triumphed. Running an average of just two marathons a year, she won 14 out of 21 races.
What many people never knew is that Mota suffered from both sciatica (pain going down the leg from the lower back) and asthma (an inflammatory disease of the airways in the lungs). It was her indomitable spirit that allowed her to battle opponents to the finish line, giving it her all and, more often than not, winding up the winner.
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Blog posting provided by Society of Certified Senior Advisors
