WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Floyd Bockelman was born in 1922, making him 101 years and 5 months old. Each week, he continues to bowl with his bowling group.
Bockelman grew up on a farm in southeast Kansas, and bowling wasn’t something he knew about.
“Bowling wasn’t on the menu then at all,” Bockelman said. “I never even heard the word ‘bowling,’ but I did hear about the word milking. I had to milk that was my job, to milk those cows. So I had to get up real early in the morning and milk the cows, and I had to walk a mile to school, and I’d come home and do the milking again.”
He graduated high school in Girard in 1940, then moved to Wichita.
“I came to Wichita with some of the other high school kids who came to Wichita to work in the aircraft factory after World War II was started,” Bockelman said. “Everybody was flocking to Wichita to work, and so I came to Wichita, and I got a job at Boeing.”
He went to the Emmanuel Lutheran Church, and the men there organized a bowling league.
“I didn’t know anything about bowling,” Bockelman said. “I never even had a ball and didn’t know anything about bowling, and so they wanted me to bowl in their league. I said, ‘I don’t know anything about bowling.’ They said, ‘You’ll just fit in just perfect, good ’cause nobody else does. You’ll be just right with us.’”