While leading a bunch of spunky octogenarians in exercise at Linden Knoll in Pittsford a few years back, Betty Perkins-Carpenter offered some sage advice.

    "Keep in mind," she told her students, flashing that infectious, ever-present smile of hers, "It is harder for the devil to hit a moving target: so keep moving."

    The devil has no chance against Betty Perkins-Carpenter. This 71 going-on-31 whirling dervish would leave Lucifer in the dust.

   "I stopped long ago trying to keep up with her," joked her daughter, Cheryl Orefice. "The woman's impossible."

   Never mind that in recent years, Perkins-Carpenter has endured a hip replacement and the death last Fall of her husband Mike. Never mind that her resume is already two or three lifetimes long. There is so much more that this year's winner of the Jean Giambrone Service Award yearns to learn and do.  It's easy to envision her leading exercise classes and making speeches into her 90's, perhaps beyond.

   Perkins-Carpenter currently is studying for her Doctorate in Health Administration from Kennedy-Western University.  Her work helping senior citizens improve their balance and avoid falls is cutting-edge stuff and a major reason she's making nearly 100 speeches annually in recent years.

   "People always ask me where I get my energy," Perkins-Carpenter said. "I guess I just love what I do. I really believe it all has to do with using what you have physically and mentally. And I really believe in the saying that life is a journey, not a destination. "

   And what a journey it has been.

   She has lectured on fitness for the young, the old, and the in-between in places as diverse as Northern Africa, Japan, Ireland, and Siberia.  She has served on the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports; written three books about geriatric safety and exercise; produced a video teaching infants to swim; coaches Rochester's Wendy Hyland in the formative years of a diving career that resulted in an Olympic bronze medal; started the Fit by Five nursery schools that were franchised throughout the country, and earned Small Business Person of the Year honors from the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce as well as a citation from the American Red Cross for saving a life.

   To long-time Rochesterians though, she is best known for founding the Perkins Swim Club, which for more than three decades taught thousands of local residents how to swim.

   That she would spend so much of her life in and around a swimming pool made sense because her mother, Bertha (Bert) Loeser, was a four time U.S. and Canadian swimming and diving champion.  Perkins-Carpenter's grandfather taught her to swim at the age of 2. By 6, she had won her first medal.  Her success continued at Frankin High School (class of 1948), where she won four straight City and County diving championships, and in the U.S. Air Force (1949-1951) where she captured an international Air Force title.

   She began teaching swimming in the background pool of her Penfield home back in 1959.  Her classes became so popular that she eventually had to build a large indoor pool at a building off the Penfield Road.

   At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Perkins-Carpenter was asked to coach Turkey's diving team.  She accepted, becoming the first woman to coach both a men's and women's team at the Olympics. 

   Along the way, she developed numerous diving champions, her most famous pupil being Wyland who won a Bronze the Tower at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

  But of all the things she has done, nothing has been as challenging as the pursuit of a Ph.D. at age 71.

  "My house has become a dissertation," she said.  "I have research papers and books strewn all over the place.  Good luck finding a place to sit and eat."

   Perkins-Carpenter said she had no intention of pursuing a Doctorate until the doctors and professors she's worked with through the years told her that her work on balance and falls wouldn't be readily accepted in the medical community and academia unless she had some letters attached to her name. 

   "I've never faced anything as demanding as this," she said.  "I'm praying that I can pull through this. Hopefully it will bring more attention to my work because this is a huge problem for older people and it's going to become an even bigger problem as our population grows older. 

   Receving and honor named after Giambrone means a great deal to Perkins-Carpenter because she and the long time Times Union sports writer have been friends for decades.

  "Jean is a sweetheart, even if she did almost drown me once," Perkins-Carpenter said, chuckling. "She was afraid of deep water, so I had her come into the deep end of the pool with me in hopes we could remove her fears.  We got in the water and I asked her to push me down so I could show her how your body shoots back to the surface.

   "Well she pushes me down and then becomes frantic.  She's holding onto me and I can't get to the surface.  I'm thinking this is great. I can see the headline now: OLYMPIC DIVING COACH DROWNS IN HER OWN POOL."

   Fortunately Perkins-Carpenter resurfaced and went on to lead an extraordinary life. It's a life still very much in motion; a life still rich in its impact on others.