Local Navy vet, bowler, 88, shows no sign of slowing down

Ted Ackley is a perennial optimist. At 88, he considers this trait to be a contributing factor to his longevity.

“Some way, somehow, I think things are going to work out OK,” he said.

A longtime resident of Myrtle Trace in Conway and head of the communications committee at the retirement community’s HOA, Ackley stays plugged in and engaged, editing the association’s newsletter and updating the website. He has been editor of the newsletter for 21 years.

Ackley is also an avid bowler, a league secretary and league statistics coordinator for Myrtle Beach Bowl, formerly Waccamaw Lanes Bowling Center in Myrtle Beach. You can spot him there more often than not.

He has five children and two stepchildren, and has been married to current wife Betty Ackley for 48 years. He served in the Navy in World War II and enjoyed a career in administration and later personnel for corporate juggernauts Alcoa, Martin Marietta and the Fairchild Corporation.

For the past few years, he has been checking off “bucket list” items, most recently a trip to Boston this year – and as we will see, Ted Ackley is all about forward-motion.

Ackley was born in Vermont, but said he spent the first 38 years of his life all over New York State.

“My parents split up when I was 3, and I wound up with my grandparents,” he said. “My father disappeared and resurfaced about 12 years later. He remarried and I wound up back with him. And then my mother and I were both in the military during World War II at the same time.”

She was an Army nurse.

He enlisted in the Navy as soon as he got out of high school and found himself on a light cruiser on the Atlantic for 15 months.

“I was very fortunate,” he said. “The war in Europe was over by the time I got out there on the water. And shortly after that, the war in the Pacific was over. They dropped the bomb.”

Although he didn’t see any combat, he had a story of intrigue to share – what he calls his best war story.

“I was living with my grandparents in the Catskill Mountains and my mother was a nurse at Bellevue Hospital, and she wanted to see more of me. They worked out a deal where I lived in a boardinghouse in Jackson Heights, Queens in 1937 and 1938 and went to public school so I could get to see her weekends.”

The three-story brownstone had an attic that stayed padlocked. Ackley and a group of kids who also lived there constantly pestered the lady who ran the place about wanting to see the attic. The woman would get angry and punish the kids. Eventually Ackley left to a boarding school and later returned to the Catskills with his grandparents.

The upshot of this was that a story came out in 1942 in the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune which said that the very same lady who ran the boardinghouse was arrested as a Nazi spy.

“She was going into the lower end of Manhattan and observing the ships that were coming in and out of New York Harbor – and by shortwave radio in her attic, she was contacting Nazi submarines in the North Atlantic, giving them information about the ships that were moving in and out of New York.”

Ackley went to Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., emerging with a business degree.

He was sports editor for the college paper and sports director for the school radio station, doing play-by-plays at the edge of the ice. He also wound up as second-string goalie for the hockey team after being approached by the coach.

“You have to remember that in those days the first-string goalie played all of the time unless he got hurt, but the coach wanted a moving body in the net at one end of the ice, and this way he could have two goalies for practice. I wasn’t very good at it but it was a lot of fun,” he said.

These were also the days before goalies wore masks, or even helmets.

Ackley once took a nasty hit in the eye with a puck, which abscessed a tooth and caused a blood clot in his eye. “The clot dissolved and I lost the tooth, but other than that I was fine.”

At that time, he wanted a career in sports media, and landed a job at a radio station in Plattsburgh, N.Y., as a staff announcer. This station was part of the Mutual Radio Network.

“I was a DJ and I would read the news,” he said. “It all came over teletype – and I worked from three to midnight for 74 cents an hour.”

He did that for a few months until the station hired back a previous announcer, but they warned Ackley that this might happen, and the station found him a potential gig in Saranac Lake, N.Y.

“I talked to them – and they were going to pay me 75 cents an hour,” he said. “But they wanted me to work from 6-9 in the morning and 6-12 at night. Well – what kind of a life was that going to be? I was single at the time, and I said ‘no thanks.’ I knocked on the door at Alcoa and they hired me.”

He said most of his career at Alcoa was administrative, and he spent 14 years with the company. After he divorced from his first wife, Ackley relocated to Maryland and got into aerospace, which he said was a whole new world for him.

He worked two years for Martin Marietta and ultimately joined Fairchild Industries, now the Fairchild Corporation. This in itself brought things full circle in a strange twist of fate: Company founder Sherman Fairchild and Ackley used to play together when they were children.

Ackley said he always had an interest in personnel work, and after six or seven years with Fairchild, he got his chance, starting out as recruiter and becoming a supervisor of personnel services – which covered all of the benefits, the cafeteria program and more.

“I finished up as a human resources manager, still responsible for those things,” he said. “I really liked working with people, and I still do here where I live now. It pleases me when someone calls me with a question because I like to be able to solve other people’s problems for them.”

The Grand Strand came into the picture in 1987, when Ackley was talking to a cousin who lived in Little River. His cousin suggested checking out the area as a retirement option. He had never been, but said his friends would come down to golf every winter.

Serendipity struck when Ackley saw a brochure for Myrtle Trace on the bulletin board at his job – and ultimately the Ackleys came down for a visit and a look around.

“We came back two or three times and looked at some other places, but always came back to Myrtle Trace,” he said. “We were convinced that this place was for us. I thank my stars every day and it has been wonderful.”

Myrtle Trace has been home for 24 years, and Ackley has long been involved with the HOA there in one capacity or another, from president to his current post of chairman of the communications committee.

Les Gerhart, current president of the Myrtle Trace Homeowners Association and liaison with the communications committee said that if there was anybody he would call “Mr. Myrtle Trace,” it would be Ackley.

“Whoever you are, Ted will talk up Myrtle Trace, and he takes umbrage if anyone says anything negative about it,” he said. “It is very obvious from the first time you meet the guy that he never regretted the fact that he made the decision to move here after retirement.”

Gerhart also observed that Ackley is quick to volunteer for any task that might come up.

“He does everything. On top of being the communications chairperson and the editor of our newsletter, he has also taken upon himself learning how to work with computers and handle the website. He is our accounts payable person and writes all of the checks to pay our bills. I get his input on almost everything.”

He also said that folks try to talk Ackley out of taking on more responsibilities because he has already got enough on his plate.

“Ted is the kind of guy that, if he weren’t here, you’d really feel lost,” he said. “Because he is here, it’s a great asset to me or anyone else who is in the governing agency of the HOA.”

Ackley has been bowling since 1954, and he quickly got plugged in on the Grand Strand, especially at Myrtle Beach Bowl. He says his average right now is in the 160s.

“I used to be close to 180 and still have hopes of getting back into the 170s,” he said.

But he is also league secretary, something he has done for decades at various times. He has been doing this here constantly for 23 years.

“I was always interested in how the other guys were doing,” he said.

Ackley has also served on the board of directors for the Grand Strand United States Bowling Congress [USBC] and was elected to the Grand Strand Bowling Hall of Fame.

“As a proprietor, you get to know your bowlers,” said Larry Nowak of Myrtle Beach Bowl. “Ted has been bowling here for over 20 years, and as league secretary, we’ve become extremely close.”

He said that Ackley has a knack for finding USBC members that belonged in the local bowling hall of fame.

“Ted has worked tirelessly over the last 8-10 years getting the historical information and nominating people from all of the different centers – bowlers that needed to be or should have been looked at as being hall of fame members.”

Nowak added that Ackley has also worked for better than a decade at Myrtle Beach Bowl, doing what he called the league record service.

“When the league bowlers are done, their scores get pulled back into the computer. They have to be processed and put into a standard form – and he is the guy that has done that here for over ten years,” he said. “Sometimes he gets too excited to wait until the next morning to do it, and I hear stories of guys that barely get home and they have got a congratulations from Ted on a great bowling series.”

He said that Ackley goes out of his way to make sure that things are right.

“Ted has an incredibly big heart, and he is what you’d call a true public servant. It’s not about him. A lot of people have no clue, but he is the guy behind the scenes that really cares so much about them.”

Debby Kicklighter, president of the Grand Strand USBC Association and vice president of the South Carolina USBC Association, has known Ackley since 1998.

“At the time, I found that Ted was a very kind person,” she said. “Over the years we have worked together with the bowling organizations. Ted is a very caring and passionate person when it comes to the bowling family. He cares about each bowler whether it be a high average or a low average. He likes to make sure that all are recognized for their achievements. He likes to make note in his column when a youth bowler does something outstanding even if it is a small accomplishment. When Ted believes in something, he battles hard, and he is a friend to all.”

Ackley was involved in the Honor Flight program here, and has taken the flight as an honoree once and as a volunteer twice.

He has been checking off bucket list items since 2007, starting with an 80th birthday trip to Cooperstown, NY, with his kids for Cal Ripken’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2011, he went to the US Open in Bethesda, MD. In Boston this year, Ackley went to a ballgame at Fenway Park, did the Freedom Trail, walked around downtown, and went out on the duck boats there – amphibious vehicles that drive on the street and take people out into Boston Harbor.

“Last year we went to Toronto and went to the Hockey Hall of Fame,” he said. “We also went to a baseball game up there and went up in the CN Tower.”

Next year will likely be a trip to Pennsylvania for perhaps a Pirates game and a visit to the World of Little League Hall of Excellence, a trek to Letchworth State Park in New York, known as the Grand Canyon of the East – and maybe a Nationals game in DC.

In addition to bowling, Ackley can be spotted on the links at Burning Ridge Golf Club.

“I plan on being around here for another eight or 10 years. I plan to keep what I’m doing, and I enjoy everything I do.”

And his advice for a long and healthy life?

“Don’t do anything in extreme,” he said. “Don’t overdo anything too much.”

This story was originally published September 20, 2015 at 9:18 AM with the headline "Local Navy vet, bowler, 88, shows no sign of slowing down."