Bravo gets fit with Bob Fulton

An athletics icon from Carolina's past stays healthy-and sets an example for everyone—by working out regularly.

By Marshall Swanson

It's in Bob Fulton's will that when he departs this earthly life for what he calls the Big Microphone in the Sky, he wants his headstone inscribed with this notation: “Wait until next year.”

“I had two choices of what I wanted on the stone, the other being, ‘I'll be back in a moment,’ but I thought the first choice was more appropriate,” said Fulton, the legendary Voice of the Gamecocks who announced thousands of Carolina football, basketball, and baseball games during an unprecedented 43-year career from 1952 to 1995.

Just don't go looking for that headstone any time soon. At 86, Fulton is alive and not just well—he's thriving.

His well being, he said, is attributable to daily workouts at the Lexington Medical Center's Health Directions Wellness Center, where, for an hour each weekday, he works out on the center's machines to strengthen his shoulders, arms, biceps, and legs, then walks at least a mile.

The physical activity does wonders for his mind, body, and spirit, he said: “If I miss two or three days of exercise I can tell the difference. I feel better and my mind is more alert when I work out every day.”

Fulton got into regular exercise about 12 years ago because his wife, Carol Ann Fulton, “who is in excellent shape,” regularly worked out. “I'd be watching her while I was sitting in an easy chair and not doing anything and thought, ‘This is ridiculous.’ ”

He started walking as much as seven miles a day, five days a week at the Leisure Center in West Columbia. Two years ago, he began working out at Health Directions because Carol is a volunteer at the Lexington Medical Center, and he serves on its foundation. This past June Health Directions featured Fulton on the cover of its newsletter as “a call to other people my age to get off the couch and start exercising.”

“It's pretty well established that maintaining an exercise routine in even moderate intensity can certainly enhance the quality of life in a number of ways,” said Greg Hand, an associate professor in the Department of Exercise Science in Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health where he is associate dean.

In addition to helping normalize blood sugars and blood fats that can stave off a host of chronic diseases, exercise also enhances the quality of life in a number of other ways, Hand said, from maintaining body weight to improving cardiovascular activity and boosting other physiological functions.

“We're also learning how much of an effect it has on cognitive function in elderly people through enhanced learning, memory, ability to maintain focus while driving, helping sustain an elevated mood, things like that,” Hand said. “There certainly is a selfefficacy that appears to be associated with maintaining an exercise regimen that enhances the quality of life in elderly people.

“The things Bob Fulton is doing in weight and cardiovascular training also can have a very good effect on joint function and balance, lifting activities, and maintaining a variety of other physical abilities that younger people take for granted.”

At this stage of his life, Fulton notes that his outlook is one of wanting to pay back. Exercise helps him do that, too.

He continues as a consultant with the Department of Athletics, is writing a book about his career, and serves as host in the Lettermen's Lounge during football season and in the McGuire Room during basketball season.

That fans still approach him to talk about Carolina athletics is fine, he said. He gladly takes time to visit with people who recognize him or his voice, and goes out of his way to have a kind word for strangers. “If I go to the beach and say something to the girl at the cash register, as soon as I start to speak people who hear my voice are apt to say, ‘I know you.’ ”