Perris Jensen has 124 days until his birthday, three fewer than the number left until the start of the 2002 Winter Games, in which he has a part.
Jensen was chosen to carry the Olympic torch in Salt Lake Valley a couple days after his Feb. 5 birthday. Not a bad way to celebrate turning 100.
"It's an honor," Jensen said of being an Olympic torchbearer. "I wish I could carry it on my two feet."
Inflammation in his left knee will probably relegate the otherwise healthy Sandy man to a wheelchair for his short stretch of the 13,500-mile Olympic torch relay.
Jensen will join some 11,500 people — 900 of them Utahns — who will jog, walk or roll two-tenths of a mile with the Olympic flame as it wends its way through 46 states over 65 days to Salt Lake City.
A ray of sunshine will ignite the flame in a special ceremony in Olympia, Greece, before it arrives Dec. 4 in Atlanta, site of the 1996 Summer Games and the last place in which the Olympic flame burned in the United States.
The Salt Lake Organizing Committee was scheduled to announce the names of torchbearers Thursday evening on the steps of the state Capitol. About 7,200 people were selected based on brief essays written by family, friends or colleagues explaining how the person embodies the Olympic spirit and inspires others. Olympic organizations and Games sponsors get to pick the remaining 4,300 at their discretion.
Torchbearers are cancer survivors and organ transplant recipients. Scoutmasters and schoolteachers. College students and graybeards. Each is a hero to someone.
Perris Jensen
Born in Heber City in 1902, Jensen may well be the oldest person to tote the torch on its trek.
Jensen quit high school to get a job. While working at a bank, he decided to become a lawyer. Two years into a four-year correspondence course, he found out his last chance to take the bar exam without a college degree would be in six months. He told his wife, with whom he already had three sons, he could finish the course if he quit his job and studied 16 hours a day.
"And she gave me a classic reply, 'Hop to it,' " he said. Jensen passed the test in 1935 with the highest score in the class and went on to a long career in law.
In 1983, Jensen, who never earned a high school diploma, graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in independent studies. He was the class valedictorian.
Jensen keeps himself busy these days writing letters — two or three a day — to friends and his vast posterity. He attributes his long life to fortitude and an even temperament.
"When I was young, I was the puniest kid in the school and much picked on. But I learned to roll with the punches, so it didn't bother me. I learned to control my anger and emotions. I firmly believe anger or jealousy or fear are all poisons."
Jensen showed his pluck at an early age. When he was 10, he rode his bicycle on dirt roads from Heber City to Salt Lake City for a glimpse of a traveling exhibit of the Liberty Bell.
Jeri Wehrli
A mother of eight and grandmother of 19, Jeri Wehrli will be thinking about a boy she never met when she carries the Olympic flame.
Eight-year-old Jeremy Lyman's death three years ago gave the Holladay woman a chance to live. And she hasn't squandered it.
"I wouldn't have all these opportunities if it wasn't for him," she said.
Wehrli, 56, suffered from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare liver disorder that attacks the bile ducts.
She had waited more than a year for a new liver when Jeremy was hit by a car while riding his bike home from a park. The boy's mother, Sheri Tabler, had become an organ donor a month before and told doctors her son would have wanted to do the same.
Wehrli later created a fund through the Granite Education Foundation in Jeremy's honor that helps low-income students go to Mill Hollow, a popular summer camp for schoolchildren. She also volunteers at Intermountain Donor Services.
Wehrli recently had the chance to attend an anatomy lecture with her college-age son. "I was just amazed and very thankful all over again for the medical miracles that take place."
John Assel
John Assel considers himself a regular guy. Yet someone must think of him as a hero. He suspects it might be one or more of the dozens of boys, including 30 Eagle Scouts, he has mentored as a Boy Scouts of America leader.
Never a Scout himself while growing up on a Missouri farm, Assel, 51, was asked to work with 12-year-old boys in his LDS Church ward 20 years ago. He has been a Scout leader in Missouri and Utah in one capacity or another ever since.
"I love the out of doors. I practically live in a tent," said Assel, who once went seven years camping each month for all but one month. "I like teaching the boys how to survive outside and how to do things on their own and learn things on their own."
Assel, a land surveyor for the Utah Department of Transportation, often takes under his wing boys in single-parent families or those teetering on a life of crime. It's rewarding, he said, to get a boy with low self-esteem to go to college, find a good job and have a family.
Assel is modest about the efforts he made to ensure each boy had a good Scouting experience. "I was just doing what I had to," he said.
Shawna Fisher
Cancer isn't going to stop Shawna Fisher from fulfilling a vow she made to her dying grandmother four years ago.
A top long-distance runner for her age group, Fisher's grandmother was diagnosed with uterine cancer shortly after finishing the St. George Marathon. She died several months later.
"At her bedside, I promised her I'd do a marathon in her honor," said Fisher, who was a tennis and basketball player but not a runner. "I didn't know how I was going to do it. Then I found out I had cancer."
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma knocked her off her feet. Chemotherapy and radiation beat back the disease for a time. And then the cancer was back, in her bone marrow this time. More aggressive chemo left her weak, and regular doses of Prednisone caused her to inflate like a beach ball. Doctors 11 months ago gave her a year to live.
Fisher, 28, made a list of things she wanted to do before she died. Running a marathon for grandma topped the wish list.
Just as she started to lace up her running shoes, a freak collision in an ultimate Frisbee game left her with a broken back. She didn't walk for four months.
Three half marathons, one triathlon and 80 pounds later, she is preparing this month for the St. George Marathon, the last one her grandmother ran.
Fisher just keeps telling herself, "If you stop now, you'll never know how far you can go."
Vern Gillmore
Rocking chairs and 69-year-old Vern Gillmore don't seem to agree. He just doesn't know when to quit.
Although he "retired" three times, he finds himself working again. Currently he's the director of community relations and student placement at Provo College.
He enjoys helping young people find jobs. For years he worked with emotionally challenged young people and volunteered for the Special Olympics.
Gillmore started his life of service as a 19-year-old Marine. He was shipped off to Korea where he took a bayonet to the shoulder and a bullet through the left arm.
"It was hand-to-hand combat," he said.
In 1979 Gillmore was diagnosed with a brain tumor. "It was the size of my fist," he said.
After it was successfully removed, he took up long-distance running to show that he was healed. "The only thing that will prove is that you're crazy," Gillmore recalled his doctor saying.
He has competed in 16 marathons, including the prestigious Boston Marathon. In 1984, he ran a 100-mile endurance race through the Sierra Nevada mountains in little more than 30 hours. The San Francisco Marathon was his last race, which he ran on his 65th birthday.
"You hit the wall at about 18 miles," he says. "From then on you are running on guts."
Kimberly Leinbach
Even if Kimberly Leinbach doesn't think she inspires anyone, her nominator certainly does. Of course, fathers always look out for their daughters.
"I nominated her because of the obstacles she has overcome to get where she is now," said her father, Robert Leinbach.
Kimberly Leinbach contracted mononucleosis and Epstein-Barr virus near the end of her mission in the Netherlands for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It took her more than a year to shake off fatigue and depression. And when she did, there was dancing in the streets.
Leinbach, a business management major at Brigham Young University, recently returned from a tour of the British Isles as a member of the BYU Folk Dance Ensemble.
A letter notifying her she would carry the Olympic torch in the St. George area was waiting.
"It was actually kind of humbling," said the 25-year-old Las Vegas native. "I just thought I'm not that inspirational."
Among the other Utah torchbearers whose names were released Thursday by SLOC are:
Kelly Milligan, who was a member of the U.S. Nordic Ski Team at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo. She inspires young skiers and women over 40, and at age 41 hopes to make the 2002 Olympic team.
Tiffany Barnes, 19, who became a straight-A student, Sterling scholar, athlete and musician in high school — all without parents. On her own since age 12, Barnes now attends the University of Utah where she is involved in orchestra, choir and the bowling team.
Vickie Harper, 60, who is a volunteer firefighter, EMT, hazardous-materials team member and schoolteacher in Box Elder County and who goes beyond the call of duty.
Despite losing her brother and father and raising five children in war-time Indonesia, 82-year-old Winny Van Gils harbors no bitterness. The St. George woman returned to her homeland four years ago as a missionary and to teach English and other life skills.
At age 5, Ross Smart, 75, shouldered many family responsibilities after his father died. He joined the Navy during World War II. He will retire as a veterinary medicine professor at Utah State University this month.
St. George resident Dean Losee, 56, is finishing his 32nd year as a teacher and principal. He always has students' best interest in mind and helps them develop self-confidence and pride in their work.
A premature twin weighing just over one pound, 21-year-old Aspen Gillespie survived with a will power to overcome challenges. She graduated from East High School and was an honorary coach for the volleyball team.
Contributing: Rodger Hardy
E-MAIL: romboy@desnews.com