Gerald Staley

I worked for a chemical company selling to the health care industry for 25 years. I also owned and operated three small business before I retired in 2005. Since then I've moved to Springdale, AR where I did nothing for about 3 months' then I went to work for a golfing community where I lived for seven years. It's a great retirement job that fits right in to what I enjoy most in life, traveling, spending more time with my grand children and being there when the new ones are born.
I've lived and exciting life. Everything from being a rodeo clown for 7 years to driving an 18 wheeler. I have pictures of Jimmy Hoffa setting on the couch at my house and have shook hands with Roy Rogers. I still have horses and spend a lot of time with Don (my brother) watching and laughing at each other getting bucked off the new ones, only to realize the ground is harder now than it was back then and recovery takes a lot longer. His ranch is about a mile down the road from mine.
To me, Life is the music and the journey is the dance, as long as the music plays I will dance.
I took up running and cycling when I turned 52. I have ran 23 marathons and logged more than 18,000 miles since I started in 1995. In 2007 I met my family in Orlando FL and 3 generations of us ran the Disney World Marathon. When we have our family reunions, we have them some where we have never been before and run a marathon while we are there.
I have also ran The New York City Marathon, The Country Music Marathon in Nashville, TN, The Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon in Oklahoma City OK, The Route 66 in Tulsa, OK, The Rock n' Roll Marathon in Las Vegas, NV and in 2008 I won my division of the Little Rock Marathon.
I have logged more than 70,000 miles on my bike since I started in 2007 and will compete in my first cycling competition in September of 2010 at the Senior Olympics in Hot Springs, AR, simply for the excitement and adventure.
In the spring of 2011, I will be in Tucson' AZ for a three week ultra athlete training camp.
All of my children and all of my grand children (even the babies) are runners.
Update on running: I received 1- gold and 2 bronze medals at the Senior Olympics in Hot Springs in September,2010. In June of 2011 I will compete in the National Senior Olympics in Houston,TX in a 10k road race, 2-cycling time trial events and a 24 mile cycling road race.
In November of this year, myself and 5 buddies placed 3rd in a 195 mile foot race accross TN.
On December 12, 2010, my 68 birthday, I ran the Fayetteville Half Marathon (13.1 miles) and won my division in a (-5) degree temp.
Up date on the Houston Senior Olympics. It was a hot 10 day event. The coolest temps. we had was on the last day of my events and that was 92 degrees at 7:00 a.m., most of the days it was over 100 degrees, however, I still managed to pull off the #9 spot in the country.
I recently finished 2 more marathons. I ran the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, PA with my oldest daughter Kim. We ran the entire marathon side by side. I missed qualifying for the Boston by one minute and 39 seconds. Twenty days later I ran the Route 66 marathon in Tulsa, OK. I have now complete 16 marathons and plan to do 4 more this year. 2012 has been a tough year for racing. I've been pretty busy getting into a new house and getting settled in with Jeri and getting her things to AR from CO, BUT, I had to get at least one race, so I chose to run the Fayetteville Half Marathon. It was 3 days before my 70th birthday. Great race. Managed to pull out a 2nd place in my division. What's fun about these races is, there were 570 in the race. I placed 170 over all, which means I beat 370 of those young pups. Not too many things feel better than running up a steep hill and passing those that are a 3rd my age. So let's see what 2013 brings....

One of my favorite memories of high school was my old 1950 black and white standard shift Ford. It had louder pipes on it than I have ever heard on a car. We called it the skunk. I would bring that thing on to the school grounds in low gear, wind it up and let off just as I got to the parking area and the windows of the school would rattle. O boy, the muscle cars we had back then. We were truly blessed to live in the era that we did. Life was plain and simple back then. Remember "Roaches Dairy Bar?" we would all pull up on a Saturday night and just have sodas and look at each others cars. I kept mine spotless (as did everyone else) One night at Roaches I had a date, she wanted a chili pie, I got it, took it back to the car and handed it to her through the window, but, the window was up. I spilt that chili pie all over the side of my car. What an impression I made on that girl.
My funny story comes from a special day at school we called "dress up day." Everyone in the school dressed up, even all the teachers. We were a fine looking group that day, except for one person, yep!!!! Ms. Suzie West, she was dressed like she always dressed, not bad but not dressie. We all really talked about her that day in class and down the hallways as we were going to our next class. Wow!!!! she was the talk of the day. She got more attention from being not dressed up than we did dress up. The funny part was, the next day, we all came back to school dressed as we always did, except Ms Suzie West, she came dressed in a gown that you would see at the President's Ball and thrown over her shoulders was an original mink stoll. She looked like something out of the movies, and again, Ms Suzie West had the attention of everyone in school. I have often wondered if she really forgot dress up day or was she the type of person that just like to swim up stream. However, looking back, she was a great teacher. She was the only teacher that I went back to see after I had been out of school for several years. She was still Ms Suzie West, "Hi Gerald, sorry got to go."