BEATRICE, Neb. — When the 27 women in the early-morning water aerobics class at the YMCA begin jumping and gyrating in the temperature-controlled aqua blue, it's a little rough on the lone woman in the lone swimming lane.
But Lois Rush remains unruffled.
The grandmother in a white swim cap and black one-piece continues her languid backstroke, each arm lifting in a Miss America-like wave before disappearing once again.
Back and forth, back and forth, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while the water aerobics class does its thing.
Freestyle first, backstroke second and then into the 104-degree hot tub.
"I'm old," says Lois, 85, taking a dip in the steamy water, "but I'm not that old."
Lois has a fan club here at The Y on the east edge of this Gage County town.
You can count "Aquasize" members Gail Butler (who called the newspaper) and Doris Ourecky (who swam straight for a reporter to gush) among them.
The first time Doris watched the Pawnee City woman ride the waves with such grace, she posed a question: Were you once a synchronized swimmer?
"She just gave me a blank look," Doris said recently. "She said, 'I didn't start swimming until I was 70.'"
That sounds about right, Lois says.
She doesn't remember the exact year, but it was after she'd raised her four boys and moved from Omaha to the Southeast Nebraska town 45 miles from this low-slung brick building and its roomy indoor pool.
Her knees were bad — arthritis — and walking was painfully out of the question. But she wanted to stay active.
"I had a son," she says, "who showed me you don't quit.'"
That son's name was Bill.
A boy born with his umbilical cord compressed in the birth canal, cutting off oxygen for two minutes. Two doctors told her he'd be blind, deaf, unable to speak and incapable of learning, Lois says. They told her to put him in an institution.
Bill Rush became the first quadrapeligic to graduate from UNL — and with honors to boot.
He was a writer and an activtist, his story featured in Life magazine.
Bill was 49 when he died in 2004, a married man who'd had his autobiography published — each word typed letter-by-painstaking-letter with a special stick attached to a helmet on his head.
"You couldn't tell him, 'You can't do it,'" Lois says. "Or that it wouldn't work. You just kept going, even if it hurt, even if it wasn't graceful."
His mom and his brother were more than a bit alike, says Jim Rush, oldest of the four boys.
"You're not going to tell her what she can do."
Or can't.
And Lois couldn't swim much more than a lick when she started. But she'd always liked water, so she went to buy a suit, asking for a "dressing room with no lights and no mirrors."
She started paddling around in a lake near her Pawnee City home, until her boys and a swarm of water snakes convinced her the chlorinated waters of the Y would be a better choice.
That's where she learned to put her head in the water "and blow bubbles" like the little kids she watched at their swimming lessons.
Since then she's lapped a hundred miles. The Y gave her a T-shirt.
She doesn't mind the three-times-a-week drive. She hauls a few "ladies" with her. "We have a kid who comes with us; she's 51."
Lois laughs her raucous laugh.
Then she's out of the hot tub and back in the pool for a set of water exercises before heading back home.
Her son says his mom told him a reporter was planning to show up at the pool to write about her.
"She told me last night," Jim said. "She thinks it's kind of stupid."
That's because Lois thinks her swimming isn't very special.
"I figured I drove 20,500 miles to swim 100 miles. Doesn't make much sense, does it?"
Now she's shooting for 200. Don't tell her she can't.
Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com