Article 1371

by Barbara Dunbar

March 18, 2002

On Sunday March 17, 2002, I was reminded about why masters swimming is all worthwhile. We had a short course meters meet here in the San Diego-Imperial LMSC and were blessed with a visit from and swim by a wonderful friend of mine, 90 year old ISHOF inductee Maxine Merlino , who drove herself down from Long Beach to San Diego (about 98 miles) in order to swim the meet. She had been encouraged to get back into masters swimming and to come swim in this meet by 84 year old Rita Simonton , another wonderful and talented swimmer from the Los Angeles area, who often visits our meets. We are very grateful that Rita kept prodding Maxine to return to competition.

Maxine swam a superb 400 meter free in 10:45.34 and smashed the existing world and national records of 14:16.35 by a bit over 3 1/2 minutes. She made quite an impression on many of the other swimmers present. Since I am the SI LMSC Records and Top Ten Recorder, it was my honor to fill out the paperwork and send off the record application forms.

Barbara, 3/18/02

Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen has done a fabulous job of generating press releases regarding the SDSM team and its members as well as other San Diego-Imperial LMSC swimmers and of getting the releases published. Except for sporadic notices to the press over the years, we have not had anyone who was able to perform this function until recently. We are all grateful to Karlyn for her superb and effective efforts.

Barbara Dunbar , President, SDSM, 11/29/99