Your Incredible Neighbors: Couple give their hearts to the Games

Richard and Carolyn Beaubien have witnessed a lot of changes over their 22 years of dedication to helping make the Green Valley Senior Games what they are today.

There in the beginning when bank manager Lew Denny organized a 10K run that spawned the Green Valley Senior Olympics, as they were called then, the Beaubiens recall the years when the track meet and some swimming and tennis were pretty much the whole thing.

“The 10K didn’t last very long because it took so many people to ‘man’ it that they outnumbered the contestants,” said Carolyn, who took over the track meet in 86, recruiting her equally athletic husband to help, the two of them winning gold in many of the events in those early days.

Requiring months of preparation, the couple had to get timers and measurers, recruit helpers, inventory, purchase, and maintain officiating materials like watches and flags and tapes, create courses and line up emergency and traffic control personnel, get pins and numbers, and arrange for facilities through the Sahuarita Schools athletic program.

“All the track and field was held at Sahuarita High School and they provided everything we needed,” Richard remembers.

“They were great and we couldn’t have done it without their help.”

The Beaubiens became avid runners after Richard’s retirement from 31 years in the Forest Service, where they had spent much of his career in Arizona and New Mexico, eventually settling in Washington where he was a supervisor at the Olympic National Forest.

High school sweethearts soon to celebrate 55 years of marriage, the Beaubiens have continued to assist as volunteers for the Games since that first year, Richard constructing the stands for Carolyn’s familiar historical T-shirt display.

In fact volunteering has become a way of life for them.

Carolyn, a retired secretary and once a flight attendant bringing displaced persons to New York from the WWII concentration camps while Richard was serving with the Air Force in Korea, works as director of research for the 390th Memorial at the Pima Air Museum where Richard volunteers when he isn’t conducting tours at Titan Missile Museum, soon to achieve his 2,000 hours badge.

In addition to a regular shift at White Elephant, he’s a Master Gardener for the UA Extension.

Both have participated in the Spring Follies, and Carolyn, a tap dancer, has written scripts for them, as well as writing and announcing for the Aquabelles.

Together they contribute between 40 and 45 hours a week with their volunteer activities.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Richard said as he tried to total it all up, “but what would I be doing if I didn’t have this?”

Carolyn, who put together an historical account of the track and field for GVR, remembers a lot of the ups and downs of the Games that were once part of the Arizona Senior Olympics.

“Over the years, we have worked with eight different GVR employees who helped direct the Games,” she said, “and everyone was great. They never refused us anything. The competitors always displayed sportsmanship.”

Both certified NCAA track and field officials who used to officiate meets at UA, the Beaubiens added events each year, like the softball and football throws, obstacle course, and even a short-lived relay event organized by neighborhoods.

Carolyn, who won a lot of medals, as did her husband, remembers the Senior Iron Event in 93, a 2.5-mile bike ride to five laps in the pool to a two-mile finishing walk, when Lew Denny’s wife Marilyn had to ride the whole race on a flat tire.

“We gave him a hard time about sending his wife out all that way on a flat tire,” she said.

And, then there was Buffy, as they named him.

“He was the only outsider at the time,” Carolyn recalled.

Bufe (short for Buford) Morrison drove in from Texas in the mid 90s, even bringing along his own starting blocks. Fiercely competitive, she said, he angered “the locals” by taking the gold in all the sprint events.

Her husband reminded her, though, that she beat him in a distance race and he was so humiliated, Richard claimed, he never came back.

Carolyn also recalls the time when Alice Trimble got lost on the 10K course, forced to run an extra mile or so, and the Camera Club’s photo in 1996 of Carolyn running past Paul Pixler, who fell down in the distance race they were in together.

“When people saw that picture, I got accused of running the guys off the course,” she said, laughing.

In 1999, the Olympics became the Senior Games, and today there’s table tennis, racquetball, pickleball, cycling, card games, billiards, bocce, basketball, etc.

The Games include 30 events in all, with participants approaching the 800 mark, some from surrounding states and cities, as compared to the 100-150 or so in about a dozen events 23 years ago.

Director Lew Denny gave way to Ed Clark, Dick Smith, who added lots of events, then Fred Lawrence, and finally Karen Rans of GVR, who again heads up the Games this year.

Carolyn continues to compete, already picking up in 2008 yet another medal in distance running, and the Beaubiens, of course, remain a testament to the dedication and personal sacrifice from literally hundreds of volunteers that it takes to make the Games a success.

As the familiar saying goes, “Volunteers are the heart of GVR.”

Mike Touzeau is a Green Valley freelance writer. Comment on this story online at www.gvnews.com.