GUTS AND GLORY
By Derrick Z. Jackson

Boston Globe
August 16, 2008
United States

Vahram "Vee" Sookikian, 81, section-hiked the 2,175-mile Appalachian
Trail at age 64. (Derrick Z. Jackson/Globe Staff)

AS MIDDLE-AGERS at the Beijing Olympics exalt the iron abs of
41-year-old swimmer and mother Dara Torres, the gold medal for guts
goes to 81-year-old Vahram "Vee" Sookikian. Three days before the
games began, Sookikian jubilantly bore his backpack on spindly legs
back into base camp at the Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, N.M.,
the oldest national high adventure camp of the Boy Scouts.

He finished a 10-night, 60-mile trek in the mountain wilderness
with one of the four, 12-person crews from our Boston Minuteman
Council. Sookikian’s crew included his 50-year-old son Steve and
15-year-old grandson Julian. There are families where three generations
can chat on a porch. There are three generations capable of a gentle
stroll or a genteel round of golf.

Few are the families in our sedentary nation where three generations
share a trail, undulating between 7,000 and 10,000 feet under a
withering sun. Few families have an octogenarian who can carry 40
pounds on his back for a week and a half to sleep on the ground
under the stars. Vee was sturdy enough to fall off a log bridge
into a stream, right himself, wipe himself off and keep hiking,
only complaining that he drowned his digital camera.

Few families have a grandson who thinks this was another walk in the
park. "He’s always been out there with me," said Julian, a sophomore
at Waltham High School. "I remember him in my earliest memories,
camping out, sleeping in an old station wagon, fishing, hiking around
in Vermont. It’s a big deal to other people around me. To me it’s
just normal."

Sookikian, a retired electronics engineer, never stopped walking from
the time he joined a troop in Brooklyn, in time to be part of the
90th birthday celebration in 1940 of Dan Beard, a founder of American
scouting. By age 16, as World War II sapped the adults from the troop,
Sookikian played scoutmaster, leading younger Scouts onto subways
and buses in full backpacks to woodland camps out of New York City.

"My dad walked everyday in his life and lived to 86. I never knew him
to be sick until just before he died," said Vee, whose Armenian parents
escaped genocide in Turkey. "When I started, I never thought I’d make
a good Scout or hiker. I never made Eagle (Scouting’s highest rank)
because I could not do a standing broad jump . . . My family being
Depression-poor, we had no equipment, no mess kits, not much food,
slept in blankets pinned together, and wore city shoes with leather
soles with no grip."

He stayed in shape over the decades by starting a troop in Watertown
and completing a Philmont trek at age 45 with Steve. Vee section-hiked
the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail until he finished it at age 64. At age
74, he hiked Philmont again with two other grandsons. He vowed to do
it with Julian as well. On the last day, even Julian as amazed. "We
gave him a big head start but we’d always thought we’d catch him,"
Julian said. "But we were huffing and puffing and when we got to where
he was, he was sunning himself with our sister crew from Texas. On
his good days, he was a speed demon."

Sookikian said the one time he was scared was also on the last day,
when a storm of lightning, hail, and 40-mile-an-hour gusts hit the
crew atop an exposed, 9,000-foot peak. "I was slipping and falling
several times," Sookikian said. "My knees were starting to fail. I
was mad at myself because I thought I might create an emergency."

The storm subsided, allowing the jubilant victory steps down to
base camp. Philmont has no record of the oldest person to finish
a trek. Sookikian needs no record or gold medal to know how rare
he is. "I knew so many people who, when they turned 65, all they
could talk about was sitting in a lounge chair and smoking a pipe,"
a glowing Sookikian said. "To me, that was like preparing to die. I
hope to do this until the day I die."

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

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