She's 94, legally blind, and recently bowled 244

CENTRALIA — The pins stand more than 60 feet away. Esther Medley cannot see them. She grabs her bowling ball, shuffles forward and releases. The ball spins right to left, inching down the lane, toppling one pin after another until there are none left standing.

She listens for the outcome, the sound when ball meets pin at the perfect angle, the chorus of cheers coming from the folks a few lanes over.

"Did I get another one?" she asks, referring to a strike.

Now it's my turn. The distance of the pins, their placement, are the same — except one thing. I can see them. The ball rolls faster, with no spin and less grace, and lands in the gutter on the right.

"That doesn't sound good," she says, chuckling.

This is the bowling Esther Medley knows now, sight replaced by sound. She is legally blind, 94 years old and still capable of bowling a 244 as she did during a senior-league game in October.

That led to blurbs in Sports Illustrated and TIME magazine, an Associated Press write-up, a call from someone in Missouri wondering if they were related and a story idea. Hit the lanes with the blind bowler. Find out how she does it.

Turns out Esther has a secret weapon. Her 86-year-old husband Ralph. They met here in 1979, at this very bowling alley, Fairway Lanes on South Gold Street. His wife had recently passed away from cancer. Her husband also died that year.

She was bowling on lanes 15 and 16. He was having a drink. Someone introduced them.

It was love at first strike.

"We just clicked," Ralph says.

They married in 1980, intent on not wasting any time. They played pinochle and bridge and bowled in four leagues every week. They traveled across the country in a station wagon.

They blended two families — each has two sons and one daughter from their previous marriage — forming The Bowling Bunch. Next came grandchildren, then great-grandchildren, then great-great-grandchildren — five generations strong.

Then came the doctor visit in 1986. The diagnosis of macular degeneration. Slowly and surely, Esther would lose her sight.

"It comes so gradual that you really don't realize how dangerous it is," she says, "until you find out you're going blind."

Her hobbies — driving, reading and bowling were her favorites — slowly slid away. Driving went first, by doctor's orders, but she continued reading books with larger print until that also proved impossible.

Then one fall she showed up at the bowling alley. She could see the lane, but wondered why they sanded off the arrows. Ralph had to explain the arrows were still there.

And still, Esther considers herself lucky. She jokes about the two of them making cakes — him reading the recipe, her doing the majority of the baking.

"We haven't had too much illness," she says. "I've had a triple bypass and three angioplasties. Ralph had prostate cancer. But we never stopped bowling."

Esther never even considered quitting, not with bowling in her blood. She once rolled a 287, a split in the 10th frame away from a perfect score of 300. The thousands of games she bowled over decades formed the only sight she needed — the picture in her mind.

She can see the pins several lanes to her right, along with the blue paint above those lanes, with her remaining peripheral vision. She can see the lane in front of her, but the pins only register as black space.

That's where Ralph comes in. On each frame, after her first throw, she turns in his direction. He tells her which pins are still standing, and by memory, she knows where to roll the ball. The sounds that follow indicate the result.

She picked up four consecutive spares Tuesday afternoon, and her average is in the low 140s. (For the record, she beat me 134-98.)

After his wife bowled three strikes during warmups, Ralph joked that "maybe I should go home now." Usually, he says simply, "Sit down."

On that day in late October, he said it so often that by the third strike her team started saying the same thing. By the sixth strike, both teams were chiming in. And by the eighth strike, the 94-year-old blind bowler started saying it herself en route to the 244 score.

The couple can't bowl as many games as it used to. Their bodies are breaking down. Ralph, a Franklin High School graduate, once started a season with an average above 200. He says he's lucky to bowl 150 now, ever since arthritis crept into his right shoulder.

"Oh, well," Esther says to him. "You're still bowling."

Indeed they are. Ralph says a conservative estimate for their bowling total would be six games a week, 52 weeks a year, for 27 years — more than 8,000 games each.

Together, always. The friends they bowled with back in 1979 have mostly passed away now. But Esther heard of one man who bowled until age 102, and she says two of her aunts lived until that age.

"I hope I can continue to bowl this year," Esther says. "I'll only be 95."

And so Ralph and Esther Medley return to Fairway Lanes for senior leagues on Monday and Friday, often sneaking in a game or two on Tuesday afternoon. This Friday, they will celebrate 27 years of marriage.

How?

By spending an evening at the bowling alley where they met.

Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com