104- year- old bowler’s in a league of her own
Grace Browning still loves to bowl and greets each strike by dancing a jig. McMartin,
Last Friday afternoon in Surrey’s Scottsdale Lanes, Grace Browning stepped up, took a fivepin ball in hand and, as she has done for longer than many people live, prepared to bowl. Grace is 104.
Grace, rather than taking a run before throwing, stood at the foul line.
Beside her, to make sure she didn’t fall, was Grace’s daughter, Bev Norman. Bev is 76. Bev, compared to her mother, is a novice.
“I started bowling after I got married,” Bev said, “and I was married in 1957, and my parents were already bowling then. So she’s been doing it herself for ... oh gawd, let’s see ... I’m going to say for at least a good 60 years.”
Grace bowls in a 55- plus league. Her stature is such that her teammates call themselves Gracie’s Kids: There is Grace, Bev, and David and Karen Greenslade, a married couple. Between the four, the average age is just over 80 years old.
Of the four teams that comprise the Friday afternoon league at the Scottsdale Lanes, Gracie’s Kids currently rank fourth.
“We haven’t won for a little while,” Bev said, “but we have fun.”
Grace is blind — she has some peripheral vision but can’t see the lane or pins — and she suffers from dementia. Bev has to help her out a little.
“I don’t tell her how to bowl ... I just go up to her and she knows she has to start with the full five pins. And she’ll take her one ball and I’ll have the other one, and I try to tell her where the head pin is and where to aim for it. And she’ll throw her first ball down, and I’ll tell her whether it goes in the gutter or not. Then I’ll tell her how many pins she has left and where to aim.”
Grace loves the game, Bev said, and is known to dance a jig when she makes a strike or spare. And her mother, she said, throws the ball harder than a lot of the women in the league who are much younger than her.
“It’s not as fast as it was but it’s not as slow as some of them, either. She does the best she can but she has a twist in her wrist that I’m trying to get her to stop. But then, we all get into our little ruts.”
They bowl together 10 months of the year, Bev said, taking time off only in July and August.
Aside from her blindness and dementia, she said, her mother’s health is good.
“I’m very proud of her. To do what she can do — even though half the time she doesn’t know what she’s doing — yeah, I’m just amazed that she still wants to continue doing it. I think that’s what helps keeping her going, you know?
“It gives her an outing, and she knows we’re going bowling on Fridays, and we have dinner afterwards. It’s a good day for her. So, ya, I enjoy it. I’m just so darn proud of her.”
At one time in her life, Bev said, her mother used to have a bowling average in the 170- 180 range. Her average is now 58.
On Friday, on the first frame of the first game, Grace threw a gutter ball. Then she threw another. Then she threw another. Bev did better. For the three league games they bowled that day, Bev scored 182, 157 and 154.
Grace, in her three games, came back from that rocky start in that first frame and managing a couple of spares.
In her three games, Grace scored 67, 68 and 60, beating her average.