Ninety-two-year-old Arlyn Melcher recommends never being afraid to try new things. He has set new swimming goals for himself to supplement his intense daily reading, music, and gardening activities! (Photo by Claire Guidas)
Claire Guidas
Despite Arlyn Melcher being a farm boy who taught himself to swim in the sand pits of Nebraska, there is much more to this humble SaddleBrooke resident than the high-point award he recently earned in his first swim meet ever. Arlyn is remarkably active, both physically and mentally, in capacities that would exhaust many folks 30 years younger!
According to Arlyn, “People think they’re too old or weak to take on an activity, but with no exercise, they slide downhill even faster over the decades.” Along with physical activities, Arlyn has always challenged himself mentally with a variety of intellectual pursuits he continues to this day.
Arlyn’s education began in a two-room Nebraska schoolhouse near his family’s farm, and it never stopped. Moving to California in his teenage years, Arlyn earned a junior college degree. But his thirst for knowledge meant his education had barely begun. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration (MBA)from UCLA and then a second MBA and a PhD from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.
Working in the fields made Arlyn strong, as well as agile and competitive. He played football in high school and wrestled on the team at UCLA where he also spent a lot of time in the weight room. But his main athletic activity eventually became running where he frequently came in first in his age group.
After earning his PhD, Arlyn taught business at both Kent State and Southern Illinois Universities where he taught at all levels for 28 years, including serving as chair or co-chair on more than 30 dissertation committees. He also served as a department head and conducted business research for many years. Highlights and cherished memories include lecturing around the world. He fondly recalls visiting China and Japan before 1975 when they were very different countries. Arlyn certainly would have stayed working at the university if his hearing hadn’t started to go. Even so, Arlyn continued working there until the ripe young age of 77!
Arlyn and his wife Deborah moved to SaddleBrooke in 2009 immediately after Arlyn retired. In his first two years here, Arlyn wrote his autobiography entitled A Boy Off the Farm, which is more than 300 pages long! He now belongs to the Freethinkers and Fly Fishing Clubs. Partly because Arlyn had to give up running in his 70s due to deteriorating knees, he continued to swim and recently found new friends by joining the SaddleBrooke Swim Club.
Outside of clubs, Arlyn is an avid gardener and reads a book every day or two, mostly biographies, history, and fiction. A dense book might take a week to finish. He owns more than 1,000 music CDs and listens to an hour or two of music every day. If that isn’t enough, Arlyn swims five or six days a week, both with the club and on his own. He says, “Unlike running, I don’t feel the years when I’m swimming. Instead, I feel like a couple of decades just dropped off.”