GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — One of Ann Smith's big goals in life is to live longer, and she has a sentimental reason behind that objective.
"I decided many years ago that I wanted to live out the dream that my great-grandfather had, which was that one of his children would live to be 100. One of his children did live to be 99, but I decided to take up that mantle," she said.
"So if you're going to live to be 100, you want to make sure that those last years of your life - the 70s, the 80s, the 90s - are used so that you enjoy life, rather than that sort of downhill slide."
At 84 years old, Smith is doing a pretty good job of avoiding that downhill slide. She's been swimming competitively since she was 72.
"I decided I wanted to do a triathlon, and I knew that I needed a swim coach to learn how to swim in open water with a wetsuit with a lot of people," she said.
Ann's friend Madeline Murphy Rabb introduced her to that coach, Derrick Q. Milligan.
"I created a women of color traveling team called Team Dream, where we use swim, bike, run to empower ourselves personally and professionally," said Derrick, who has his own reasons for wanting to stay in shape.
"I have a lot of heart disease and lifestyle diseases on both sides of my family. The triathlons I started doing in college became more of a insurance policy, especially after I saw both grandmothers survive heart attacks, and lost my father age of 61."
As part of Team Dream, Ann and Madeline have competed and medaled in the National Senior Games.
"Both of us do six events - the 500, the 200, 100, and the 50, freestyle, and the 150 backstroke. To compete with women who are 50 to 100, from across the country, I think is very powerful," Ann said.
Their performance was so powerful that the story got picked up by a documentary crew. Today, an 18-minute film called "Team Dream" is being shown across the globe.
"I knew how heroic they were. I knew what outliers they were and I'm tickled to death the fact that the whole world gets to understand not only that they're heroes, but to see their journey," said Derrick.
Team Dream calls their film a "social justice film disguised as a sports movie." They're hoping they can inspire seniors to live an active and healthy lifestyle, and they also want to create change when it comes to drowning deaths.
"Every summer, there are more African American, young kids who die of swimming compared to white kids. So one of the social justice issues that we see is there should be more swimming pools available for all children across the country," Ann said.
"In many cities, they're closing their swimming pools, because they just don't have enough staff to take care of them. But we really should be opening more swimming pools, because swimming is the one sport was aim is to save your life."
If you'd like to see the documentary, there will be a showing at 5 p.m. Thursday inside the Loosemore Auditorium on Grand Valley State University's downtown Grand Rapids campus. It is open to the public and there will be a question and answer session after the screening.
The screening is part of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration Week at GVSU and is put on by the Office of Inclusion & Equity and the School of Communications.
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