For Mary Jane Kirkpatrick, the key to a long life is laughter

CEDAR RAPIDS — Mary Jane Kirkpatrick hits the gym at 7:30 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday. She gets on the treadmill, chats with friends and shares laughs. It's a routine she's repeated for more than a decade.

And on Friday, she turned 100.

'I like to walk, stretch my arms,' she said. 'I can still touch my toes.'

Kirkpatrick has participated in UnityPoint Health-St. Luke's Hospital's On Track program, which is part of the hospital's cardiac rehab department.

'This is more of a 'maintenance program,'' said Julie Peterson, Cardiac and Pulmonary Rehab manager. 'It's geared for people who already had cardiac or pulmonary rehab or those who are high-risk, so people with high blood pressure, are diabetic, need to lose weight.'

It gives individuals a way to exercise in a safe environment, she added. Medical professionals check participants' pulse and blood pressure before and after workouts as well as supervise activities.

That's why Kirkpatrick got involved — she had congestive heart failure. She admits that several years ago she wasn't sure if she'd make it to her 100th birthday.

'Mary Jane is a star pupil,' Peterson said. 'She says (the program) is part of why she's as old as she is.'

Kirkpatrick loves the social benefits of the program as much as the physical. She's made friends who go to the Village Inn restaurant with her after workouts and take her to the gym now that she no longer drives.

'I like it here. I've been connected with hospitals wherever I've been,' she said, explaining she volunteered at hospitals throughout most of her adult life. 'I should have been a nurse.'

Kirkpatrick has always lived a fairly active life — the youngest of four children and the only girl, she 'was always doing what her brothers were doing,'

'I fell out of a tree, I fell off a shed,' she said. 'I played basketball.'

As an adult living in the Big Band era, she fell in love with dancing, going to clubs and doing the waltz, the fox trot and the two-step. She met her husband, Howard, at a club, though he didn't like to dance.

'He couldn't keep up with me,' she joked.

The two fell in love, got married and had one daughter, Janis Davis. Kirkpatrick's husband died when he was 64, and she now lives with her daughter.

She said looking back over her life sometimes makes her cry. She's been a widow for a long time.

But she feels lucky to still be alive and to have had such a full life, from helping raise horses, pigs and chickens on her family's property to traveling to Chicago to see bands play and to dance.

It's her stories that started her friendship with fellow On Track member Lee Overton, 78.

'I sat next to her at an exercise machine one day,' he said. 'She reminded me of my mother, and I thought it would be fun to know some of the old stories.'

Overton, a retired salesman, said he loves history and wanted Kirkpatrick to help fill in some of the blanks, from stories about growing up in the Great Depression to funny anecdotes about driving her brother's Ford Model T out of the garage when she was only 14.

'I look forward to seeing her every week,' he said. 'She's just a spark. She has a great sense of humor and likes to joke and be needled a little bit.'

In fact, it's Kirkpatrick and the other 7:30 a.m. regulars that keep Overton coming back every Tuesday and Thursday. He started coming to the Cardiac Rehab gym six or seven years ago before work, he said.

'Now that I'm retired, I don't need to be up and here at 7:30,' he said. 'It's this group.'

After their morning exercise this past Thursday, the group threw Kirkpatrick a birthday celebration of cupcakes and coffee. They sat around the St. Luke's cafeteria chatting and laughing — something Kirkpatrick said is the secret to making it to 100.

'I laugh a lot. I laugh at myself,' she said.