PHOTOS BY DAN IEL LIPPITT
Winning
In A
Walk
Until the weather warms,
Tel-Twelve is the place to be for a
fast-paced group of mall-walkers.
YAACOV D. SCHOLAR SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
Ellis and Rita Rifkin
speed through the
mall.
lthough he says that he started walk-
ing at 6 months old, Julius Spielberg
did not begin walking seriously un-
til he was in his 50s.
That is when Spielberg took up
speed-walking as a hobby. Now, at
age 93, he is one of the regulars
walking for exercise at Tel-Twelve
Mall in Southfield.
Every day, Tel-Twelve opens its
doors two hours prior to the start
of shopping to accommodate the
approximately 100 regular ex-
ercise-walkers. Mall
marketing director
Jennifer Fox says this
has been going on for
at least 15 years.
Spielberg, current
1,500- and 5,000-me-
ter national Senior
Olympics race-walk-
ing champion in his
age group, says he
usually walks five
days a week for about
an hour each day.
That's four to five
miles daily.
A retired pharma-
cist, Spielberg leads
anything but a retir-
ing life. He works out
on Nautilus machines
five times a week at ‘
either the Oak Park
or West Bloomfield
Jewish Community
Centers. He also delivers Meals on health and you have your mind, you
Wheels and says that he is active in can consider yourself temporarily
blessed because nothing lasts forever."
45 charitable organizations.
"I've been athletic all of my
Spielberg's wife of 70
life," says mall-walker Sid
Henry Bo ckoff, 83,
years, Anna, with whom he
has two children, five grand- passes an a dvertising Forst, who ran the South-
eastern Michigan Health As-
children and nine great- post er.
sociation before retiring. Now,
grandchildren, "wants to see
more of me," he says. "She complains the 75-year-old Forst limits his athlet-
that I'm out of the house at 9, and then ics to walking and playing golf, shoot-
ing in the 90s. 'The other sports are too
she doesn't see me again until 4."
Another athlete who walks the mall fast for me," he says.
Many of the Tel-Twelve Mall walk-
daily is Hy Shenkman, who at age 76
just received his Michigan state life- ers, like Pearl Forst, Sid's wife, were
guard license. Shenkman is a member prompted by their doctors to take up
of Dearborn's Wolverine Pacers, a race- walking as exercise. Mrs. Forst says
walldng club. He walks the mall in the that she started mall-walking after
winter and then switches to outdoor undergoing an angioplasty.
According to Mrs. Forst, although
walking when the weather improves.
Walking is a "hobby and a sociable most of the men who walk the mall are
thing," says Shenkman. "The idea of in their 60s and 70s, all of the women
walking is to do well, have fun and feel are age 39 or less. "Being 39, I have chil-
dren that are older than I am," she says.
good when you're done."
Carol Perliss, also "39," has been
Shenkman's athletic specialty is
swimming, and in 1993 he won four walking since she retired from her job
medals, three gold and one silver, as a librarian/researcher six years ago.
while competing for the U.S. senior She says mall-walking is more than ex-
ercise. "It has also become a social event."
team at the World Maccabiah Games
Part of a group of men who walk the
in Israel.
Maintaining an active lifestyle since mall together every morning, Carol's
retiring from his interior decorating husband Don, 75, started mall-walk-
business, Shenkman is a freelance ing three years ago after having a cou-
ple of heart bypass operations and a
writer for newspapers and a produc-
valve replacement.
er/interviewer for cable television.
Others in the mall-walking group
"I do my TV show," Shenkman says,
"because a man needs two kinds of ex- include Henry Berlow, 85, a former
ercise: exercise for his health and ex-
ercise of his mind. If you have your WINNING page 40
0,
CO
39