Anyone who feels 40-years-old is over the hill or retirement is inseparable from 65, would see these prosaic age stipulations are not true after spending an afternoon with 80-year-old Ingeborg Johnston, who just last year took combat flying lessons and learned to dip and invert the plane on her own.

Ingeborg, also known as Inge or Sunshine, has accomplished more for others, as well as experienced more activities, adventures and events in one lifetime than most people would in three lifetimes.

She speaks of her life’s adventures and memories with a glint of excitement and mirth in her eyes, and says she simply sees many of her adventures as where life placed her. She attributes her proudest moments to attitude and the ability to handle what was before her in life, with a little creativity and gumption.

It is just the way she lives life … taking it by the horns and conquering it, feeling it, helping it, experiencing it, but never running from it or letting it intimidate her.

“Whatever you do, you might as well just jump right in — head first,” she said.

Johnston told of her childhood, which started in Berlin, Germany, in 1924, of learning to swim in the rivers of Germany, of her summer holidays at her grandfather’s bakery in a small village, where only very small circuses where able to entertain due to the circus/town ratio. She told of summering at the Baltic Sea, of starting secondary school at 10-years-old, of ending her junior college education at 14-years-old and there ending her schooling, due to World War II and Hitler having his way with Germany.

Inge told of her childhood dream of joining the Berlin swim team, the Nixen.

“I was accepted and I had my swim suit with a big “N” in the front. The “N” was as big as I was, but I never got to swim because of the war — but I had my swim suit,” she said.

When she was old enough, Inge became a nurse for the German Army. After the war, however, she went to the Allied Armies and offered her service to them. A move which she still believes is one of the smartest life decisions she ever made. They couldn’t use her, due to the influx of medical assistance arriving from other liberated medical personal. They did, however, feed her and, under their care, she was safe from internment.

After the war, Inge was crossing the Russian sector of Berlin and was nearly captured by Russian soldiers. She said her and several others were crossing a farmer’s field at night. They thought they had bypassed the Russian sector safely and so they started to whisper to one another, when out of the darkness they heard the word “halt,” in Russian. She, however, escaped with three others and lost a shoe in the effort.

Later, after falling for an American soldier, Jerry Rodell, Inge had to sneak from West Berlin into East Berlin, in the coal shovel compartment of a steam locomotive, to get legal papers so she could marry.

After marriage, she began the legal process for permission to come to the United States. Determined to have her first baby on American soil, Inge arrived in the United States in May of 1947, and gave birth to her first daughter, Eileen, in July.

In the following years in the United States, Inge worked with as a swimming instructor for young children who were deaf and/or blind, she taught physically disabled children swimming, and started a program for meeting the needs of blind children, such as clothing.

This program soon took off and broadened into a charity for all forms of needs, from Christmas toys to refrigerators, or anything someone might need.

“The proudest accomplishment, I would say, is my 25 years of volunteer service for the Red Cross. I taught swimming, and then started a handicap swimming program,” she said.

The between years were full of activity, work, the birth of her second daughter, Jacqueline, and the end of her marriage with Rodell.

When the Vietnam War broke out, Inge decided to help in her signature way — head first.

“I volunteered as a nurse at Fitsimmons Army Hospital. I thought that my services were needed more there than in swimming,” she said.

Inge also worked helping war amputees recover their equilibrium and muscle use by exercising them in water and helping them swim. Then, during Operation Babylift, the post Vietnam War operation to bring Vietnamese orphans out of Vietnam for adoption purposes, Inge helped take care of the many sickly babies during their stay in Denver, Colo.

After her second war, Inge married Jim Johnston and found her greatest fan.

“I say, marry Jim Johnston and be all that you can be,” she said. “He says, ‘You want to go to the moon? I think it’s stupid, but I’ll help you get there.’ … He encourages me.”

Between the two of them, they have amassed a wealth of adventures. Together, they started National Hug Day, lived on a boat for two years, sat in the eye of a hurricane, raced sail boats, sailed the Caribbean, scuba dived in the Great Barrier Reef off of Australia and motorcycled the Colorado Mountains. She also models for St. John’s Boutique in Denver.

“Now picture this, these 6-foot gals, they would take me by the hand — I’m just 5-feet — and we would do our thing, and they had so much fun, and so did I … They call me Inge St. John,” she said, laughing at remembered faces and situations.

Johnston said his wife never sits still and when she decides to do something, she does it.

“She’s just a tiger. Anything she gets into, it’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen in a first class manner — anything that she arranges, from things she does in the community to places we go — all the adventures we have. She’s a first class lady,” Jim said.

Having moved to Whidbey Island only a year ago, Ingeborg is already involved in a variety of clubs and volunteer work to keep her active and occupied.

She is involved with the Garden Club, the Retired Officer’s Wives Club, Babes of Dugualla Bay, which is a community service and social club, activities with Oak Harbor’s First Methodist Church, the Yacht Club, a German women’s speaking club, the Navy League and her own private life’s responsibilities and relationships.

Linda Ludlow, co-chair of Babes by the Bay, said Inge is an avid part of the club’s drive and energy. She said when Inge started going to the club’s meetings last Christmas, the group was gripped by the early life, adventures and hardships that Inge went through during the World War II, and all she has done since.

“I said, ‘Inge, you have to tell this story.’” Ludlow said. “You know how when some people tell their story, they have so much yuckiness or bitterness? Well, She has no yuckiness or bitterness when she tells her story.”

Ludlow said in the year she has known Inge she has come to admire her giving and bubbly nature, and said she hopes to have the same excitement, health and vibrancy for life when she reaches 80-years-of-age as Inge does.

Of her life now, Inge doesn’t think twice of her activities and involvements as being too much for her, nor of slowing down at all.

“Here I am — I don’t hear as well as I used to, but then I’m just doing. I just keep on doing,” she said. “I don’t know I’m 80, honey. I’m just here having a good time.”

Inge said she is a great advocate of nutrition and exercise. Not in the extreme of mainstream media or the perfect body type, but in the mindset that people are not able to do the things they enjoy or wish to do, for themselves or others, if their body and attitude are rundown.

Currently, she and her husband run an accredited distance education college in Denver, which helps educate doctors and other professionals, on the importance of nutrition for healing and improving health. They are also enjoying settling down to life on the island.

“Here you have an 80-year-old lady, who was doing things when she was a kid, and doing things when she was middle aged, and she’s still doing things,” Jim said. “And you can do things. You just need to get out and do them.”

The next thing on Inge’s agenda is scuba diving in December, when she and her husband cruise to warmer weather for the winter.

“Here is an example of someone who is out there banging away, and she has a good time doing it,” Jim said. “Age and quality of life are dependent on what you do with you attitude and keeping yourself healthy, as healthy as you can. People think, “Oh, I’m 65. I got to retire. And then, ‘Where’s the wheelchair? Where’s the sofa and the TV?’ And that’s Ok, if that’s their choice, but you can sure live a lot more active life, as my little friend here has shown the world.”