Hugh & LeBron: Great rebounders

Top BJ rebounder Hugh Downing

Retired BJ printer Hugh Downing sat on his patio in The Villages, Florida, soaking in the sunshine, and said:

“Tell everyone at the Beacon that I’m hanging in there.”

Indeed, when it comes to rebounding, Hugh is the LeBron James of health issues.

Hugh is rehabbing at home after open heart surgery and defibrillator installation.

Wife Sharon, the gal from Galion, Ohio, is at his side, as she has been since they wed in 1960. They lived in Medina when Hugh was a BJ printer. After his retirement they moved in 2000 to The Villages.

Hugh and Sharon were a big help to Paula and me since we first showed up in The Villages in 2013. Decades ago, my late wife, Monnie Turkette Olesky of Cinderella, West Virginia, and I got together with Hugh and Sharon on Siesta Key, adjacent to Sarasota, Florida, when Hugh and Sharon were staying in the late printer Bill Gorrell’s former Poor Bill’s rentals just across the street from the beach and the Gulf of Mexico.

Before that, of course, Hugh and I exchanged pleasantries at Ol’ Blue Walls, including when he was working in the APS-4 computer room in Composing.

Sometimes Hugh would come tooling to 1970s BJ State Desk reporter Paula Stone Tucker’s home in Lady Lake, Florida in Sharon’s 1995 Honda del Sol convertible with a big smile on his face.

Hugh and Sharon’s children are Mark Downing, who lives in Erie, Pennsylvania; Chris, who lives in Hudson; Ben and Jonathan, who lives in Toledo and Vienna, Virgnia. The four sons and

their wives have provided Hugh and Sharon with seven grandchildren.

Sharon is active in several sports in The Villages.

If you want to send Hugh a get-well card, their address is:

Hugh & Sharon Downing

17900 S.E. 87th Bourne Ave.

The Villages, FL 32159.

His phone number is (352) 259-7556.