Sarasota resident plays tennis, racquetball, works out daily and lifts 250 pounds.
SARASOTA
Younger Doug handed Older Doug his early-bird special, that’s for sure. Site of the senior smackdown? The racquetball courts at the nearby YMCA.
A few blistering corner serves, a few ceiling shots that had the old guy muttering something about needing a nap, and it was over. 15-9, 15-9, 15-10, thank you very much.
OK, I’ll give you the shirt I wore required two washings.
Give you I beat a guy without the knees God gave him. Four years ago, medicine provided two better ones.
Give you his age. Like that should make any difference.
Even 83-year-olds need the occasional humbling.
Thing is, Doug Wright, graduate of Yale and Harvard Business School — where he shared a class with New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft — retired paper company CFO, devotee of concerts and operas, accomplished piano player, Porsche Panamera driver, got even on Saturday.
His Y weight day, Wright’s third of the week. The 25-year Sarasota resident works out daily, playing singles tennis against Sally, a graduate of Brown University and his 82-year-old wife of 56 years, team tennis against players always younger, and racquetball.
“He’s committed to all the activities that keep him fit and he spends a lot of time working on each thing,” Sally said.
But pushing and pulling iron always has been the activity that most pumps Wright up. He attended camp as a 9-year-old from Montclair, New Jersey, and returned forever committed to physical fitness.
Nearly 75 years later that passion is exhibited as Wright grips the bar of the pulldown machine. The 180 pounds in plates seem formidable opposition, until the 170-pounder jerks down the bar with ease.
One after the other. Twelve in all. Wright arises from the machine and I slip in. A well-placed racquetball kill shot carries no weight here.
And barely did I elevate this one. One half-baked attempt was followed by the realization I preferred my shoulders remaining in their sockets.
Wright moved on to a chest-press machine, performing 12 reps at 250 pounds. In his heyday, which doesn’t seem too far removed from the present day, Wright bench pressed 320 pounds in free weights, clean and jerked 260, military pressed 240. He could perform 100 push-ups.
“I can do 100 pushups now,” he said, along with 25 conventional chin-ups, 35 behind his neck. People now noticing the senior in superior shape to a majority at the Y, Wright ends his workout with several chin-ups in front of the Y’s mirrored wall.
He’s challenged to raise his legs parallel to the floor as he does them. Challenge accepted. Challenge met.
It sounds great and all to say Doug Wright is the motivational poster graybeard for octogenarians everywhere, until you watch him sling weights that would stymie men much younger. For his age he’s a physical anomaly, more marvel than inspiration, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I enjoy being what I am.”
Besides, few seniors have Wright’s workout pedigree. As a boy at his Montclair home, he sent away for a Charles Atlas-type workout program, eventually setting up in his basement.
In the seventh grade, for reasons he still can’t explain, Wright got hooked on pole vaulting. In his backyard, much to the dismay of his father, a banker, Wright dug a pit.
He fashioned the box where the pole gets planted, the uprights and crossbar. Wright mail ordered a bamboo pole “and I got a 16-foot long package in the mail.”
He worked at the sport, clearing 12 feet and finishing second in the state at Montclair High. He got A’s and B’s as a student even while failing to fully apply himself. “It came easily, not naturally,” he said. “I didn’t spend any time doing homework. I knew I could have done better.”
When the time came to apply to colleges after graduating high school in 1953, Wright applied to only one: Yale. “They had a good track and field team,” he said. “I was thinking track and field.” He got in and dad soon was paying the $1,700 yearly bill for tuition, room and board.
Wright did pole vault at Yale, but only as a freshman. “I was very near-sighted and I got to the point where I could not see where I was going to put the pole,” he said.
Glasses weren’t an option. Wright’s pole would hit the frames as he ran with it. So along with three buddies, Wright formed Yale’s first gymnastics club. It wasn’t sanctioned by the school and had no head coach.
Wright chose the rings as they demanded the most strength. He had fun with his friends on the mat and elsewhere. Often they challenged each other to weird feats of daring and strength.
“Walking down the middle of Elm Street in New Haven on your hands in a snowstorm,” he said. Pretty tame compared to the group doing handstands on the edges of buildings.
“Talking 4-5 stories,” he said. “We were crazy. It required nuts, mostly.”
His aversion to homework continued at Yale. He told the story of a teacher about to award him a “B” in a class despite Wright having aced every test.
Wright didn’t hand in one less assignment than was necessary. He didn’t hand in any at all. But he wanted an “A,” so Wright returned to his room and in one night, completed the semester’s homework. He got his grade.
Armed with a degree in math, Wright got a job with a company as a computer specialist. But six years in, he felt pigeonholed, stereotyped. He wanted a career in general business management. Once again, Wright shot for the mountaintop.
“Picking the best,” he said. “Once again, like I did with Yale, I applied to only one place. I said, ‘If I don’t get into Harvard, I’m not going.’ “
He did, calling those two years “most intense, but a great two years.” Forced to study every night until 2, Wright discovered his identity.
“It was like an epiphany,” he said. “I was never studious before that. I found where I wanted to make a mental commitment. It was like putting on a glove.”
Wright earned his MBA from Harvard and got a job at Hammermill Paper Company in Erie, Pennsylvania, eventually rising to senior vice-president, CFO and chief administration officer.
He remained there 22 years until the company was seized in a hostile takeover. Wright moved onto another paper company in the same capacity until that one was taken over as well, in 1990.
“I was 55,” he said. “I figured there was a message there. It’s time for me to retire.”
A couple years later, determining that a summer home in New Hampshire and another in Connecticut was too much, the couple moved to Sarasota.
Activities Wright did back then, he continues to do. He attends concerts and operas with Sally, and is a big fan of the West Coast Symphony. He took three years of piano lessons, and combined with the genes inherited from his grandmother, a concert pianist, allows Wright to play piano concertos. He’s a sucker for Wagner.
“The piano teacher wanted him to be interested in going to (The) Julliard (School),” Sally said. “He wasn’t interested in that.”
He doesn’t smoke, will have one St. Pauli Girl Non-Alcoholic beer — “it’s the best thing going” — before a dinner that never includes wheat, sugar and dairy. For special occasions like Christmas, Wright will have a sweet.
Except for an enlarged prostate he keeps under control, Wright has no major health issues. Frankly, he doesn’t have the time for them. Christmas Day got in the way of one workout. Before that, a September cruise around the British Isles kept him weight-less.
Only in the morning following a workout does he feel his age. “I’m as stiff as hell,” he said. “Within two minutes, it’s all gone.”
He’s led a life as rounded as his muscles. His strength is in his strength.
The Wright stuff.
My worry for our rematch.