CORY MATTESON Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 12:00 am
At 89, Phil Brinkman was too old to get chemotherapy or any other type of treatment to stave off the leukemia he'd been diagnosed with a month ago. The doctor told him and his daughter, Ruthann Carter, that the disease would take him soon.
But not, Brinkman determined, before he'd become the oldest competitor ever to enter the Cowboy State Games.
"That was a driving thing for him," said Fred Taylor, who coached Brinkman and other Casper seniors as they prepared for the state table tennis competition. "He wanted to participate in the Cowboy State Games."
On Feb. 17, he did. He'd play five matches that day against kids as young as 15, losing all three games of each, breathing from an oxygen tank in between turns on the table. He loved it.
"He was a guy who lived life, and lived it right up until the end," Taylor said. "How many people do you know who are dying would play in a tournament at 89 years old?"
Phil Brinkman and his wife Ruth moved to Casper last summer to be closer to their only daughter, who said it was an honor to care for them as they approached the ends of two very full lives. The couple lived in Delaware for most of their adulthood, moving from Wilmington to Seaford in 1989 so they could be closer to the Atlantic, where Brinkman loved to sail.
Brinkman, a welder at DuPont for 34 years, always liked fast cars and big boats, Carter said. He had to give up sailing in his 70s, and moved away from the east coast for the first time last year. Ruth died July 31, leaving him to start a whole new life in his late 80s. He accepted the challenge, thanks in part to a game he hadn't played since he was in the Army, in 1943.
Ruthann brought her dad to the Casper Recreation Center in September, when Taylor began giving lessons to seniors interested in the game. Brinkman, like many others, took to it.
With Phil, the goal was simple - get him to hit the ball back. He came to the twice-weekly sessions ever since, trying to improve on that task.
"He always came in looking like he would enjoy it," Taylor said. "(In Delaware) his passion was sailing. His passion here was playing ping pong."
The seniors at the rec center were preparing to make a good showing at the all-ages state games tourney. The idea that no one older than Brinkman had ever played in any of the events appealed to him.
"That was keeping him alive basically," Taylor said. "He was having such a wonderful, wonderful time. He wasn't very good or wasn't going to get a lot better at age 89, but he really enjoyed himself."
On the 17th, he said he was having a good time at the tournament, that the kids he was playing were really nice.
"You need some youth pills or something," Brinkman said that day. "I don't know where you get those."
After the tournament, he went to dinner at Johnny J's Diner with his granddaughter, Heidi Huber, the one he named all his sailboats for, and saw a movie. He went to bed about a quarter after 10, much later than he'd been turning in recently.
"It's one of the best days of my life," he told Ruthann that night. "Every day now is a bonus day."
He went to lunch with his daughter on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, vowed not to go yet. Thursday morning, with his daughter at his bedside, holding his hand, he passed away, but not before fulfilling a promise only the fighting kind could keep.
"He's sort of an inspiration to the rest of us," Taylor said. "It means, 'Hey, I ain't dead yet.'"
Contact reporter Cory Matteson at (307) 266-0589 or cory.matteson@casperstartribune.net.