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RangerJoe -> RE: The AE Geezer Thread! (8/26/2020 3:11:07 AM)
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If you are thinking that you are old and decrepit!
Mark Sertich, world's oldest hockey player, dies at 99 in Duluth
Well known in Duluth hockey circles, Sertich last skated in July.
quote:
The world’s oldest hockey player has taken his last skate around his beloved rink.
Mark Sertich, of Duluth, was 99 when he died Monday surrounded by family and friends in the house where he grew up and lived independently up until his last days, suffering from a stroke.
With his signature handlebar mustache, “Sertie” as his teammates called him, was well-known among Duluth’s hockey circles, skating for years on a squad with many retired or active firefighters at the Essentia Duluth Heritage Center. A community of fond teammates became his hockey family and watched him bounce back after numerous injuries, including losing teeth at the rink, breaking his ankle, puncturing a lung and bloodying his face in a fall.
Sertich took no painkillers or medicines because he didn’t believe in them, feeling his body would heal itself, said friend and fellow hockey player Dane Youngblom, one of a group of guys who often had postgame coffee at Sertich’s house.
“He was so good at curing himself,” Sertich’s daughter Cynthia Flood said. “He got himself through so many injuries where everybody else said, ‘That’s it, no more hockey,’ and a month later he was back out on the rink.”
Sertich showed strength throughout his life; he served in the U.S. Army in a division that liberated a concentration camp in Austria and served under Gen. George Patton in World War II’s Battle of the Bulge. He raised seven children with his wife and coached their youth hockey teams. He took up marathon running and had a lifetime entry into the NorthShore Inline Marathon.
https://www.startribune.com/mark-sertich-world-s-oldest-hockey-player-dies-at-99-in-duluth/572218322/
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