At 93, Flo Gurwin ’55 keeps Columbus moving daily
The Ohio State alum leads water fitness classes, lifts neighbors’ spirits and shows how steady activity fuels long lives.
Watch Flo Shleiferman Gurwin ’55 on the go for just a few minutes and you’ll never doubt the value of steady movement. At 93, Flo instructs three water fitness classes a week at Bexley’s Jewish Community Center (JCC) and attends spinning, core and stretch, yoga and Pilates sessions. Afternoons often find her visiting friends, running errands or taking the occasional online dance class.
“I grew up in a neighborhood of all boys,” she says. “If it was light out, I was outside. I learned to fight for myself. It colored my world for when I got older. I’ve just always been active.”
Flo kept moving at Ohio State, where she met her phys ed requirements with tennis, bowling, fencing and two terms of modern dance. A psychology major, she also managed the Buckeye student government party’s office and was a member of Hillel, Delta Phi Epsilon sorority and Panhellenic Council.
Two months out of college, Flo married Phillip Gurwin, whom she met at Ohio State after he returned from the Korean War. Their 60-year marriage blessed them with two sons and six grandchildren. Each time one of Flo’s seven great-grandchildren was born, she smiled thinking what the moment would have meant to Phillip, who died in 2015.
Through the years, Flo’s roles have included probation officer, stay-at-home parent, public relations director, homelessness prevention chief, volunteer and advocate for friends and acquaintances in need. Dozens of JCC members are thankful she accepted the job of water fitness instructor 17 years ago.
“I owe my mobility to Flo,” says Carl Williamson, who worked at Ohio State for 30 years, 25 as a driver for the Campus Area Bus Service. “She is like a sensei. She can pinpoint every weakness in your body and help you develop it to get stronger.”
Williamson started working with Flo and other JCC aquatics staff after a 2015 car accident left him barely able to walk. With coaching, water classes and a more healthful diet, he gained strength and flexibility and shed 162 pounds. More than a decade later, Williamson volunteers to lead fellow class members through workouts on the two weekdays when water fitness isn’t offered.
“I enjoy Flo’s tenacity, her caring for everyone in the class,” says Jackie Norris ’76 MA, ’76 MA, who takes Flo’s classes with her husband, Michael. “She makes the class feel like a community. Everybody looks out for one another.
“She’s very positive, too—a force of nature. We all wake up with little aches and pains, and I’m sure Flo does, too. But that doesn’t stop her.”
7:40 a.m. Flo meets up with Marie Sneward in the JCC’s women’s health club. The pair live near one another in Columbus’ Berwick neighborhood and take fitness classes together.
9:30 a.m. A weekly High-Intensity/Low-Impact class gives Flo a good cardio workout and helps her maintain strength, balance and coordination. She’s been taking it for several years.
10 a.m. Flo leads a deep-water Aqua Power class every Tuesday morning. Jackie Norris (left) says the endurance and flexibility enhanced by the full-body workout sped up her recovery from knee replacement surgery. “[Medical staff] were extremely impressed by how much I could bend my knee after surgery,” she says.
11:15 a.m. Building strength, balance and flexibility is the aim of Restorative Water, the second of Flo’s back-to-back water fitness classes each Tuesday. “I try to offer a full-body workout. I like to say, ‘If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re absolutely right.’”
2:15 p.m. Flo visits longtime friend Barbara Flox at Creekside at the Village, an independent and assisted-living community in the JCC complex. Their sons attended Columbus Torah Academy together, and the moms both served as PTA presidents and field trip chaperones. “I think people need to maintain friendships to stay healthy, not just physically but emotionally,”
Flo says.
3:20 p.m. Next up at Creekside is a chat with Susan Schubert, a former consultant whom Flo met when both were working full time. Flo often drops by the community to see friends.
P.S. After our day together, Flo learned she had fractured a vertebra in her lumbar spine. She was sidelined for two weeks and then, with the OK of her doctor, gradually resumed her water fitness classes and other activities.
