George Lombard, 59, a retired veterinarian from Traverse City, placed seventh in his age group last year at the Birkebeiner.

"It looked so hopeless," said Laverne Larsen, 65, a retired veterinarian, who is one of the 54.

The couple bid at auctions for charity two or three times each year, said Dr. Beckerman, a retired veterinarian.

"I think she'd like to sit in the President's chair," said Earle N. Peterson, 65, a retired veterinarian.

His father, a retired veterinarian, practiced in North Hollywood.

His father, a retired veterinarian, was an owner of the Stamford and Springdale Animal Hospital in Stamford, Conn.

Jules Silver, a retired veterinarian in Boca Raton, Fla., has patented a new form of low-fat butter that unlike margarine is made only from natural dairy products.

"She really brought some of these people and their stories alive," said Bill Meehl, a retired veterinarian and a longtime Middletown resident now living in Massachusetts.

"I lived through the bombing of Germany as a child," said Gisela Baumann, 68, a retired veterinarian.

Arnold Fleisher, a 67-year-old retired veterinarian from Long Beach, N.Y., found another way to get his foot in the door.