If it's midday on a Wednesday you'll find Larry LaLonde on the tennis courts in the bubble at Nicollet Avenue and 40th in south Minneapolis. Never mind that he just turned 94 in March.
"My legs were starting to get rubbery, so I began eating a banana and bringing along a health drink and I feel fine," he said. "Tennis is a really big dynamic for me, and I enjoy the camaraderie and hitting the ball at someone as opposed to golf when you compete against yourself and hit a little ball way the hell out there someplace."
His game has actually improved since his wife, Barbara, died Dec. 31, 2011, from ovarian cancer. He still lives in their Linden Hills home where he served as her caregiver.
"I was being combative to the world because it bothered the hell out of me that evil was being perpetrated on my wife," he said, acknowledging those stresses have since eased.
The last of 12 kids born in the Iron Range town of Gilbert, LaLonde would read newspapers everyday to his illiterate father, Joe, a Canadian-born lumberjack and miner. Larry's mom died at 42 when he was a baby.
He voted for Norman Thomas, a socialist candidate for president, on his first trip to the polls in the 1940s.
"My father was among many in the Depression who worked hard but never acquired any wealth. He deserved better and it ticked me off he didn't have better."
A bombardier in World War II, LaLonde "pressed the button" to drop bombs from his B-17. "But I was never a warrior loaded with testosterone. It was a job."
