Feature Writing

By Lilly St. Angelo

Published June 25, 2019 in the Kokomo Tribune

Tecky Short leaned down with ease, fastening the buckles of her dancing shoes.

Gold heels with soft suede bottoms, they are made for twirling and gliding on hardwood dance floors.

“All together now, one, two, three,” the 97-year-old said as she stood up on the Senior Center’s dance floor. She was ready.

Harold Fields took Short’s hands and they began to sway in three-quarter time. Short’s golden shoes stepped with precision as she waltzed across the room with Fields, mirroring and anticipating his steps. The waltz is her favorite.

“The rhythm, the flowing of it, it’s just nice,” she said.

She tangoed to “All I Ask of You” from "Phantom of the Opera," cha-cha-ed to “Best of My Love” and danced a samba line dance called the “DC Shuffle” to “Hot, Hot, Hot.” Only after the "DC Shuffle" was she tired.

Short began dancing over 40 years ago with her late husband, Harry Short, and she hasn’t stopped since. Tecky and Harry joined the Delco Electronics Ballroom Dance Club in Kokomo in 1978, which is now the Ballroom Dance Club of Kokomo.

“I had always wanted to learn how to dance because my parents did, they danced in the' 20s, that type of shimmy stuff,” Short said.

One of Short’s co-workers in the Logansport High School lunchroom took dance classes in Kokomo. Short said her husband made the mistake of telling her he needed to exercise more. She said she knew just where to go.

“We signed up and came over here, lined up like a bunch of kindergartners, all the men on one side, all the ladies on the other,” Short said. “Jack Hollowell was our teacher and we were hooked.”

Short and her husband began dancing when Harry Short retired from his job on the railroad, making them one of the oldest couples in their dance classes.

“We looked around and we said, ‘Oh my gosh we’re the oldest ones here. We’re going to have to practice,’” she said.

After each lesson, they would practice at home to cement the lesson in their memories.

With all their practice, they became quite good. Tecky Short recounted winning first place for the ronda (or tango), waltz and cha-cha at a senior ballroom dancing competition at the Indianapolis Shrine Club.

When Harry Short died in 1990, Tecky Short didn’t leave her house for weeks. The first time she went back to the ballroom dancing club, her friends greeted her warmly.

“They said, ‘You keep coming and we’ll keep you going’,” Short said.

The friends she has made in the club have become a second family. All the men take turns taking Short and the other women without partners out on the dance floor. Short said there’s one man in the club that’s also 97 but he’s six months older than her and he always reminds her.

“He said, ‘If we live to 100, we’re going to get out there and show them how it’s done,’” she said. “See how we look forward? We don’t want to look back.”

Looking forward and living with purpose seem to be Short’s secrets to her longevity. Besides ballroom dancing, she keeps busy with her singing group Joyful Sounds and her own personal mission to collect old newspapers for veterinarians’ offices.

“It’s given me quite a lift to not just be sitting in my room,” she said.

Short also is a self-proclaimed “car nut.” Even though she always drives the speed limit, she still duels for superiority on the road.

One day, Short was driving her 1999 Dodge Stratus at 35 miles per hour in town when an orange Dodge Charger with a black racing stripe started riding her tail. The car whipped around her into the other lane and sped ahead. But there was a stoplight coming up.

“I’m hearing this 8-cylinder thing,” she said. “Here we are, up at the stoplight, and the minute the light turns green, I’m on the accelerator and I’m half a block down before he comes to.”

Short’s tenacity and energy inspire all of her friends, Michael O’Hair, president of the Ballroom Dance Club of Kokomo, said.

“One of these days I’m going to be too old to play golf or ride a bike and I don’t know how long I can dance, but if she can make it to 97 and if I can make it to 90 and still be able to dance, that may be the only thing my wife and I can still do,” O’Hair said.

Short said dancing added a whole new dimension to her and her husbands’ relationship when they began to dance after he retired. Her three sons were surprised to see their over 6-foot father on the dance floor.

“They would tell us ‘must be love,’” Short said. “Never thought their big railroad daddy that used to wear overalls to work and shovel coal years ago would be out on the ballroom floor dancing.”

When Short’s friend Carol Thompson started dancing with her husband, they didn’t see each other much during the day because of their busy work schedules but they danced together.

“We started ballroom dancing and we met all these wonderful people,” Thompson said. “We travel with them now, they’re our friends, you can call them in the middle of the night with an emergency. It’s been so good.”

There are people of all ages in the ballroom dance club and Short and the other members want to keep it that way. They are hoping more young people will join the club to keep it going.

“Young people who come here for the beginning lessons say, ‘We didn’t know it was this much fun,’” Short said.

She said people just have to try it.

Short doesn’t give any credit to herself for her longevity but instead gives most of it to God, who she believes has kept her going when the odds were against her.

“The Lord had a better plan,” she said. “We’re always thinking we know our way. No, we don’t. Not really.”

But just like her 20–year-old Dodge Stratus which she keeps in tip-top shape, she keeps herself on the dance floor, in the community and out of her room.

“Maintenance is everything,” she said.