Wednesday TigerBlog - Happy Birthdays
September 24, 2025 | Tiger Blog
TigerBlog starts out today with something quite impressive.
Did you catch this on Instagram? It's from the Princeton Rowing teams, all of them.
Make sure you have the sound turned up.
That's extraordinary, no?
It's an amazing display of pride in the program, something that is obvious to anyone who has ever remotely been around the boathouse. It's also a sign of the unity that exists between the all of the teams who share that boathouse.
It is a unique dynamic, what with the sheer number of rowers all, literally and figuratively, pulling in the same direction. This is something that leaps out at you from the Insta post.
And with that, TigerBlog segues from today's opening and follows up on yesterday's "Happy Anniversary" theme. Today?
Happy Birthdays.
Somewhere in that boathouse is a shell with the name "Gary Walters '67" on it. Gary certainly deserved the honor, with everything he did during his time as the Director of Athletics to help rebuild the boathouse into the gleaming Shea Rowing Center it has become — as well as all of his other contributions to Princeton.
Gary came to Princeton in 1963 from Reading High School, where his American Government teacher was also his basketball coach — Pete Carril. Gary has talked often about his Reading roots and how proud he is of them.
He's also talked about the day his father dropped him off at Princeton and the uncertainties he had about his place here, coming from the humble background he did. He would have had no way of knowing that day just how huge an impact he would make here.
He was the point guard on the 1965 Final Four team. He was an assistant coach on the 1975 NIT championship team. He was the Director of Athletics for 20 years, with a staggering legacy of head coach hires, facility upgrades and advocacy for the student-athlete experience that became his signature "Education Through Athletics."
His background from a world without privilege and the work ethic that came from that beginning, coupled with the successes he carved out for himself, has always reminded TigerBlog of his own father. TB's father grew up in Brooklyn on Eastern Parkway. He graduated from Boys' High School, went into the Army, bounced around a few jobs afterwards and then finally settled into a hugely successful career in the insurance business.
It wasn't until he got married, when he was 24 years old, that he first had an actual bed. Think about that.
Both FatherBlog and Gary were shirt-and-tie men long after the world turned to the casual. Both of them were able to use their work successes to achieve something they'd treasure — for Gary it was his house on Cape Cody; for FatherBlog it was traveling to see the world, something he's done over and over and over again.
They will both be celebrating major milestone birthdays this weekend, as Gary will turn 80 and FatherBlog will turn 90.
When TB asked his father if he had considered why he has achieved such longevity, the response he got was somewhat typical: "I attribute it to the fact that I am very handsome," he said.
Okay. Fair enough.
TigerBlog did a little research to see what percentage of Americans live to be 90. The answer seems to be that, of the current population, somewhere around 0.67 percent are in their 90s. If you go by the population rate of 90 years ago, then about 1.8 percent of the people born then have made it his far.
That is not a huge number. FatherBlog is hardly a model of physical fitness. He's never met a steak he wouldn't eat or a dessert that he passed on.
There can be no explanation as to why some people live long lives and others do not. Why did MotherBlog pass away at the age of 55, so many years ago? Why have so many others not even made it that far in life?
You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure it all out.
Or you can simply smile and say Happy Birthday to Gary Walters and to FatherBlog.
TB chooses to do the latter.