Errol Flynn encouraged her to take up the sword. Philip Vincent, an instructor at the now-closed Lifelong Learning College, helped her refine her technique.
In truth, Doreen Lowther saw Flynn in a movie fencing with an opponent and became interested. At the Lifelong Learning College six years ago, she took up the saber. And five years ago, she helped found The Villages Fencing Club and is still the president.
“We started off with six women in the class. Six years later, I’m the only one that kept going,” she says.
The club, with 21 members, is now a full voting member of the U.S. Fencing Association. The members meet at Odell Recreation Center on Monday mornings and on Thursday afternoons at El Santiago Recreation Center.
Unlike the duels to the death we often see in the movies, fencing today is bloodless and high tech.
“We have electric cords running from the weapon, up our arms and down our backs, hooked up to a reel and onto a scoring machine,” Doreen says.
The reel unwinds and retracts the cord as the fencers move. Fencers score points by touching their weapon on the opponent’s body. And, of course, both are wearing protective clothing, gloves and a mask – all of which are electrically conductive.
A weapon touching the body completes the circuit, scoring a point. But even with protective clothing, “We all end up with lots of little bruises,” Doreen says.
In club matches, fencers have three-minute bouts, a minute of rest, then another three minutes. The first to reach 10 touches is the winner.
Fencing also is a sport of manners and honor.
“We begin each match with a salute to the spectators, a salute to our opponent and then a salute to the referee. The end of the match is the same and perhaps we’ll also shake the hand of the opponent and the referee,” Doreen says.
Fencers use three varieties of weapon. Doreen’s favorite is the saber.
“It’s the weapon I learned first, a slash-and-cut approach,” she says. “It’s sheer adrenaline off the mark.”
The fencing saber does not look like the long knife-type used by the cavalry of old – it’s more of a long, heavy rod with a handle and guard. A point is scored when the fencer is touched anywhere on the body and cross body slashes, downward cuts to the head and even slashes to the opponent’s back are possible.
“Usually, though, that’s for younger and more flexible fencers,” Doreen admits.
Other weapons include the popular epee – a long, thin-pointed weapon that is used to thrust, rather than slash. The foil, much like a lighter and more flexible epee, also is a thrusting weapon.
“Many fencers start off with the foil, learning the rules and the strikes and parries before moving on to the heavier weapons,” Doreen says.
For small-stature people, fencing is an especially physically demanding sport.
“I’m five-eight and I’m fighting guys who are six feet and well over 200 pounds,” Doreen says.
Much of the work is in the legs, footwork being a key component of the sport.
“The say that when you get to the line you should have a plan A and a plan B,” Doreen says. “When I get to the line, I’m either in attack mode or on defense, or maybe I’m just moving to see what my opponent is thinking. It’s a game, back and forth, and then you strike like a snake. It’s a head game.”
Not surprisingly, fencing is just one of Doreen’s passions. She also is an artist in several mediums, specializing in colored pencil.
“What I use depends on the subject,” says Doreen, who serves as membership co-chair of her colored pencil art club.
Art has been part of Doreen’s life since she took classes – art and psychology – at a community college in Connecticut.
“I was in the junior women’s group while I was going to college and helped at a mental health halfway house,” she says. “I would bring my three kids along do art with them. It was interesting to see the colors they used. One gentleman would use only black and red.”
This was in the early 1980s when “art therapy” hadn’t yet come into vogue.
Writing also has been an important part of Doreen’s life. She won a newspaper Christmas story contest while living in Hawaii. And she belongs to a children’s writing group in The Villages.
Doreen’s path to The Villages took her to many parts of the world. Her husband, Tom, who passed away in 2010, worked for Pratt & Whitney and his job took them to places like Paris, Madrid, Hawaii and Montreal.
That wasn’t a problem, because Doreen was used to moving. A Navy brat, she was born in Hawaii and moved every year or so with her family.
“Moving to a bunch of different schools, you learn to be with people and that people are basically the same all over the world,” she says.
Another passion is hosting parties for her clubs in her Village of Poinciana home. She is expecting a full house for her Halloween party at the end of the month and has decorated every room with spiders, masks, skeletons and other scary items.
In addition to traveling – Doreen took a trip to Peru last year and climbed up to Machu Picchu – one of her main goals now is to remain healthy. Breast cancer, which had been in remission for the past few years, has returned.
“I want to be positive and say, ‘Hey, women, you can still get out and do things and be positive.’ My fencing club knows and they don’t baby me. I have to earn every point, because if I didn’t have work for it, I wouldn’t respect them,” she says.
You can learn more about The Villages Fencing Club at https://thevillagesfencingclub.webs.com/
John W Prince is a writer and Villager. For more information visit www.GoMyStory.com.
