Published: May 05, 2007 09:38 pm      

Octogenarian loves her dancing shoes

EDMOND — If you want to keep up with the Edmond Senior Center volunteer of the month for May, you will need your running shoes. Your dancing shoes will come in handy, too.

Betty Windsor enjoys the line dancing and the tap dancing classes offered at the center, but her real love is running.

“I run 3 miles every day in Hafer Park,” said Windsor, 87. “I love it.” In fact, she has been a member of the Oklahoma City Running Club for 27 years. She joined at age 60.

Windsor, however, stops running long enough to help during the center’s lunches. “I help serve the drinks and help get the kitchen ready,” she said. “You have to be invited into the kitchen. We can serve as many as 120 for lunch. We usually have 90-100, but some days we’re full.”

Windsor also goes on doughnut “runs.” She explained that the local Daylight Donut shops donate leftover pastries at noon each day, and she picks them up and brings them to the center.

“I do anything that’s needed; little things. It really helps you get to know all the people better,” she said of her volunteer work.

Windsor is excited about the Oklahoma Trails Centennial Project that links different running trails together and routes the trails around lakes. Edmond’s trail, which opened in late April, begins in Fink Park, goes through Hafer Park and ends at Arcadia Lake. She said she is ready to try it out.

She also stays in shape by lifting weights at the Edmond YMCA three times a week. She often takes her tap shoes to the Y, and practices her tap routines.

“I’m not doing the aerobics classes or the kick boxing right now,” she said. “I’m concentrating on the line dancing and tap dancing. The line dancing is a littler easier, but tap dancing is a different character.”

She also enjoys her garden and working in her yard. Her children help her keep her yard up. “They’re very supportive of me,” she said of her three children and their spouses. She said her daughter and son-in-law, Susie and Paul Strahan of Tulsa, were the ones who encouraged her to start running years ago. Her sons, Brad and Scotty, and their wives live in Edmond. She has four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

“I don’t go in organized runs anymore,” she said. “I’m just too busy.”

In fact, she has been busy all of her life. Born in Custer, Windsor and her family moved to Edmond when she was in ninth grade. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oklahoma, she moved to Washington, D.C., to take her first job. She then taught — you guessed it — physical education in Orlando, Fla., and in Oklahoma City for a total of 20 years.

Upon retirement from teaching, she went to work at the main post office in Oklahoma City, where she remained for 20 years.

Next to the tap dancing class, the people at the senior center are Windsor’s favorite benefit of senior center

membership.

“The people are like family,” she said. “These are not old, helpless people. It took me until I was 84 to decide I was a senior. I’m impressed with all of the activities there. It really keeps you

motivated.”

Look for Windsor to appear in the next senior center production.