Tom Gibbons looks particularly fit for a 70-year-old.

The garage of his southwest Bend home is full of cross-country skis, the implements of a sport at which he has excelled on national and international levels. A mountain bike is parked against the front of the house, which is nestled off a Widgi Creek Golf Club fairway.

The bike, he says, “hasn’t been ridden in a while.”

Maybe not. But it is a clue to just how active a life Gibbons leads.

A more obvious sign comes with the discovery of his real age. He may look it, but he is not 70. Not even close.

No, he will turn 91 on Wednesday, and the fact that he looks like a man many years younger is no accident. At 90, Gibbons gets in more physical activity in a week than many men half his age do in a month.

Though he no longer competes in high-level nordic skiing races, Gibbons still skis three times a week each winter. Twice this year he has shot a score lower than his age while playing golf with his beloved Hackers group each week at Widgi Creek. And he still hikes regularly.

How can he still do it? Simple, he’ll tell you.

From the time he was a kid growing up in Portland — where he would take the streetcar to Gresham, then hitchhike some 40 miles to Mount Hood for a chance to alpine ski — Gibbons has ALWAYS done it.

“The only reason I am still around,” he concludes, “is because of staying active.”

Always on the go

The son of a salesman, Gibbons grew up in Portland with his two brothers in the midst of the Great Depression.

He was introduced to golf by his father, usually playing the week after Christmas during his dad’s vacation on muddy Top O’Scott Public Golf Course (now named Eagle Landing) while his dad played wearing a pair of rubber overshoes fitted with golf spikes, Gibbons recalls.

Gibbons also picked up downhill skiing, and during spring break from school he would pay for the lift ticket with money saved from his paper route.

“When I first learned to ski they only had a homemade (chairlift) at Skibowl at Mount Hood,” Gibbons remembers. “It was $1 for an all-day lift ticket, and we would get in sometimes 20 rides.”

He served in the Navy during World War II, spending two years on a ship that transported fighter planes in the South Pacific. After the war he climbed to the rank of lieutenant (he went to officers school at the University of Notre Dame). Along the way he would play golf when he could, teeing it up on courses in Hong Kong, Manila and elsewhere.

Courtesy of the GI Bill, Gibbons went to college after the war: first at the University of Washington, then Oregon State before graduating with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oregon. At UO, he also met his future wife of 63 years, Lois.

“He was wonderful to see when he was 27,” recalls Lois Gibbons, now 84. “He was an athlete then. … He was really fun to watch.”

In 1952, immediately after college, both Lois and Tom Gibbons landed teaching jobs in tiny La Pine. By then married, the couple spent only a year at the town’s lone schoolhouse before returning to Portland. But while they were in Central Oregon Tom and Lois fell in love with nordic skiing, which was introduced to them by Jack Meissner, a legendary local skier.

“He’s the one who got me into cross-country skiing,” Tom Gibbons says. “That winter (of 1952-53) on a makeshift pair of cross-country skis — they were Army mountain troops (skis), which were like two-by-fours with the edges cut off — I did the John Craig (Ski) Race over the McKenzie Pass.”

He actually won the race’s novice division, even though “I knew nothing about the sport,” he says with a laugh.

Family on the move

Tim Gibbons, Tom’s 56-year-old son and one of his three children, remembers well what weekends were like when he was growing up with his older sister Gail and younger brother Steve (both of whom now live in the Portland area).

Both teaching in Beaverton by the mid-1950s, Tim’s parents would use their summers off to explore the backcountry of the Northwest with their children. Winter weekends often meant trips to Mount Hood.

“It was spent backpacking as a family, whitewater rafting, hiking,” says Tim Gibbons, a former college ski coach who now coaches the cross-country running team at Redmond High School, in a phone conversation. “You were constantly exploring and being active. … It creates a lot of memories and adventure when you are outside every day.”

As a member of the Portland-based Mazamas mountaineering club, Tom Gibbons coached junior skiers and helped build two cross-country trail systems near Mount Hood.

His children developed into expert skiers who were competitive at a national level. And as with any father, nothing gets Gibbons talking more today than the accomplishments of his kids.

“They were great, great competitors in four-way skiing (nordic, alpine, slalom, and ski jumping),” says Tom Gibbons. “We spent a lot of weekends at the mountain. I always had anywhere up to 10 kids (including Tim, Gail and Steve) when I was coaching.”

Spending time in the mountains became a way of life for the Gibbons family.

“We traveled the Northwest and had some wonderful races in Washington, Idaho, Montana,” says Lois Gibbons, who was introduced to skiing by her husband. “It’s been an adventure because we’ve made many fine friends along the way.”

Tom Gibbons, who also has two grandchildren, retired from teaching at his Beaverton middle school in 1984. And he and Lois moved to Central Oregon in 1987, when they built a log home just south of Sunriver.

Tom came to a realization — that “I could really put in some time training and skiing,” he says. And the couple began to play golf more frequently, mostly at La Pine’s Quail Run course after it opened in 1991.

He also found a perfect ski-training partner — his wife.

“When we came to Bend, that’s when I really started loving (skiing),” Lois Gibbons says. “I just had a wonderful time.”

Living life to the fullest

His office at his Widgi Creek home of 17 years is splashed with reminders of his interests.

A plaque from Widgi Creek that commemorates the first of two hole-in-one shots — he hit it in 1999 on Widgi’s difficult 11th hole — hangs on one wall.

“It was Sunday morning, so I didn’t have to buy a lot of drinks,” he says with a laugh, recalling his 1999 ace.

An impressive collection of books, including a slew of novels by military fiction writer W.E.B. Griffin, is tucked in an office corner.

Most striking, though, is a display case full of ski medals — most won when Gibbons was racing in national and international Masters races (for ages 30 and older) — that occupies another wall.

“That’s all skiing,” he says with a grin while he points toward the ornate display. “Well, there is one up there for golf.”

Gibbons, who in 1996 helped start the Tumalo Langlauf Club (now known as Meissner Nordic), turned himself into a world-class skier for his age. Lois followed suit.

Their competitors became their peers and closest friends.

“I can truthfully say that I resented him pushing me into this,” says Lois Gibbons, a Minnesota native who initially preferred flatland over the hilly terrain the couple would often ski. “But then after we got to having so much fun I told him, ‘You know I resented doing this, but I really enjoy it, Tom.’”

The couple competed in the U.S., Canada and Europe, racing others in their age group who were as athletic as themselves.

Tom Gibbons competed seriously for the last time three years ago in British Columbia in the men’s 85-to-89 division at the Masters World Cup, his final cross-country ski event.

He did not hang up his skis because he was no longer competitive. In fact, at the races in British Columbia, he won two gold medals and a silver.

“There were only four of us in the 85-and-up age class,” Gibbons says. “We all knew each other and we were all Americans. No Canadians, and of course that is a long way from Europe. The next six (World Cup races) were going to be in Europe, so I said it’s time to hang it up.”

Not slowing down

Tim Gibbons recalls leading a group of cross-country skiers, most of whom were in their 60s or 70s, out to Virginia Meissner Sno-park one day last winter. (The sno-park features a cross-country trail system that both Tim and Tom Gibbons were instrumental in designing.) About 2 miles in from the trailhead, the group encountered a skier just going about his business.

It was Tom Gibbons.

“My dad comes up, skis up, talks to us for a little bit, and then skis away,” Tim Gibbons recalls. “Everyone just has their mouth open, going, ‘How old is he?’ And they go, ‘Oh my gosh! I hope I am skiing at 90. I hope I am still ALIVE at 90.’ ”

The golfers at Widgi Creek who know Tom Gibbons often have the same reaction.

After Gibbons shot an 87 in July — again achieving a hallowed accomplishment in golf by shooting a score lower than his age — Ann Kieffer could not help but be amazed.

“Tom has won international recognition as a nordic skier over the years, but he’s equally skilled around the golf course,” says Kieffer, 70 and of Bend. “It’s people like Tom that inspire and motivate people like me.”

Today, Gibbons suffers through more aches and pains than he used to. And he cannot ski as often as he once did.

But he takes no prescription medication and is still fit enough to ski regularly through the winter.

“It’s just recreation,” Gibbons says. “I’m not interested in REALLY training hard, just training enough to enjoy recreational skiing.”

His impressive fitness level for a man just short of 91 is not lost on him. But whether he shoots an 88 on the golf course or wins a medal in an international ski race, he likes to remind others that he is no superhuman.

“In both sports, as you get older, the competition dwindles,” Gibbons says. “You in effect outlive your competitors. But that is not to say that shooting your age isn’t still something you’re proud of.”

Lois Gibbons no longer skis because of an arthritic condition in here legs, but she still plays golf regularly.

“I have no regrets about anything we did,” Lois Gibbons says. “Life is good.”

As Tom says it, sounding not unlike a contemporary, Yogi Berra: “I guess you just keep doing it. At my age, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t keep doing it.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7868, zhall@bendbulletin.com.