By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

MINOT – So how are you planning to spend today’s lunch hour?

At best, if the weather cooperates, some of us might exhaust the time leisurely strolling around the block in our office togs. At worst, there might be a fast food bag stuffed with a cheeseburger and fries and our name written on it.

Here’s some food for thought, for those us who think too much about food: John White expects to celebrate the stroke of 12 o’clock with swimming strokes. He’ll dive into Tarbell Pool at Bates College and splash around until he’s comfortable. Then he’ll swim laps for 30 or 40 minutes, moving more briskly with each turn.

Probably this is as good a time as any for White to put about a foot-and-a-half between your eyebrows and chin by sharing the minor detail that he turned 89 last month.

“You’ll never find anybody who can guess my age,” White said. “They all think I’m 20 to 25 years younger.”

This is as close to boasting as White ever gets, and really, the fastest swimmer in the country in his age group is probably entitled to a little self-promotion.

Then again, the men who line up against White in the 200-meter backstroke, an event in which he’s ranked No. 1 in America and seeded second on the planet, know exactly how old he is.

Certainly one or two of them are twirling a butane lighter in their fingers, eager to ignite that 90th candle, shake White’s hand and wish him well.

United States Masters Swimming separates its competitors into five-year age brackets, you see. White’s impending graduation to the unthinkable 90-to-94 group might give some of those young bucks a chance.

Normally it’s the other way around.

“Masters swimmers usually look forward to that next, milestone birthday,” said David Bright, the longtime swimming coach at Lewiston High School and himself a Masters swimmer in the 50-to-54 division. “The number of competitors is smaller, and you become the youngest.”

White, who can still cover the 200 in under five minutes, attributes his success to clean living.

He proudly declares that he never smoked or drank and that he maintained a healthy diet throughout his adult life in farming and real estate. White checks in at 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds, almost precisely the build he carried as a collegiate swimmer at Bates in the 1930s.

“Some of these Masters swimmers are former Olympians, and almost all of them swam in college. Most of these guys are six feet and over,” White said. “My brother was 6-3 and 215. I was the shrimp in the family. But I’m still here and they’re not.”

After his college graduation, White’s swimming was limited to summer excursions with his family in Taylor Pond. For years, his family’s Whiteholm Dairy farm on Turner Street in Auburn provided milk to L-A households.

In the mid-1980s, after a decade of working a desk job, White discovered a diminished spring in his step during winter. So he took advantage of an alumni perk and began swimming every Monday through Friday at the spacious pool inside Merrill Gymnasium.

“I could feel myself going downhill,” White said, “so I said, This has got to stop.'”

Then-Bates swimming coach George Purgavie persuaded White to join the Maine Masters swim club, where he quickly broke multiple New England records and emerged as the state’s top-ranked competitor in the 50, 100 and 200-meter backstroke.

During his stint in the 80-to-85 classification, White was ranked in the top 10 nationally in five different events. He’s also been part of a record-smashing relay team with octogenarians Norm Seagrave and John Woods and 72-year-old Arnie Green, who died of an apparent heart attack after a race in Massachusetts last Dec. 3.

White, a member of the Auburn-Lewiston Sports Hall of Fame, estimates that there are “several hundred” swimmers looking up at his lofty numbers in the current age bracket.

Once he hits the big nine-oh-boy, who knows?

“This shouldn’t be happening,” White said of his continued domination in the 85-to-89 division. “Usually the younger guys come in and undercut you. Maybe I’ve outlived the competition.”

Bright, a Brunswick resident who has been ranked in the top 10 worldwide in the 200 backstroke at his own age level, can’t fathom White’s pace.

“There’s a saying in Masters swimming that you don’t have to get faster, you just have to get older,” Bright said. “There are a couple other guys in their 90s who are still going strong, but not many. There aren’t many days when you won’t find John in the pool. He’s sort of like the Energizer bunny.”