Patch Portrait: Swimming Laps Around Old Age

This week's Patch Portraits was produced and edited by Pam DeFiglio, Jenny Fisher and Allison Williams. Check back on Mondays for the next installment.

Also showcased, an  who talks to Northbrook Patch.

Many people who meet Conchita Goldberg think she's in her 60s or 70s. They'd never guess she's 91.

Goldberg isn't sure whether to attribute her health to the fact she swims four days a week and performs in a synchronized swimming group, or the fact she never drank or smoked and has always eaten a lot of healthy Puerto Rican food.

Goldberg's parents brought her to the United States from her native Puerto Rico when she was just six months old. As a little girl, she made a friend next door, Hymie Goldberg. They went to school together. 

"He was the most wonderful man in the world. There was no one like him," she said of the man she married and had a daughter and a son with.

Goldberg worked in diagnostic radiology at Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago when her children were older. One of her notable memories was of Dec. 1, 1958, when child victims started arriving at the hospital from a devastating fire at Our Lady of Angels Catholic School. Ninety-two children and three nuns died that day; Goldberg was just one of many hospital staff workers across the city pitching in to help calm the survivors. 

By age 70, Goldberg had lost her cherished husband, and someone suggested that she try synchronized swimming to give herself a fresh focus in life. 

"It opened up a whole new world," she said.

She made new friends, and admires her coach, Cathy Goodwin.  Goodwin puts the group through practices every Friday morning at the pool at Wright College in Chicago, and they perform occasional shows.

She's also active at the Niles Senior Center, calling the staff there "fabulous."

Goldberg also takes Aquarobics classes at the Leaning Tower YMCA in Niles on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as pilates and zumba.

But she gets most enthusiastic about synchronized swimming.

"I love every part of it," she said. "The drills, doing the figures, the choreography--everything."