Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins, who became an inspiration for athletic feats in her second century of life, died Tuesday evening at St. James Place in Baton Rouge. She was 108.
Hawkins took up competitive cycling in her 70s, but she achieved national fame as a runner. In 2017, when she was 101, Hawkins earned her nickname by being the oldest woman to compete in the National Senior Games 50- and 100-meter dash events, records she broke two years later. Both years, she ran faster than the winners of the 94-99 age brackets.
She became the first woman and first American to establish a 105-plus age group track record, said Del Moon, director of communications and media for the National Senior Games Association.
Julia Hawkins runs in an event at the National Senior Games.
In 2022, Moon said that Julia was special.
He continued, “She’s basically the face of the Senior Games now in terms of her message about … staying active and healthy and pursuing an active lifestyle and what benefits that will provide you. There are many, many other people pursuing that same thing, and it’s very interesting to hear an 85-year-old person saying, ‘I just look up to Julia Hawkins. I can’t wait to be like her when I’m 103’ or whatever it is.”
She never ran competitively until 2016, when her four children signed her up for the Louisiana Senior Games.
"When your kids want you to do something, you do it," she told The Advocate in 2017. "You want to do it."
And, when Hawkins wanted to do something, it usually got done.
Born Julia Welles, she grew up in Ponchatoula. She met her husband, Murray Hawkins, when they were LSU freshmen. His first job had a no-marriage clause because the company was sending him overseas and didn’t want to pay to send a spouse, too. He was working in Hawaii when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor thrust America into World War II.
Murray had planned to return home to marry Julia and enlist in the military, but after the attack, he joined the Navy and stayed in Hawaii. Rather than wait, they got married by telephone. She got herself a bicycle, which she rode 7 miles to the school where she taught in Ponchatoula. They’d be married for a year before they saw each other again.
After the war, Murray taught at LSU and eventually led the petroleum engineering department. Julia left her career to raise their four children: sons, Lad and Warren, and daughters Margaret Matens and Julia “Jugie” Battle. They bought a lot in University Acres and built the house where Julia lived until she moved to St. James Place, a senior living and care complex, in Baton Rouge.
At 75, Julia Hawkins began competing in in cycling at the Louisiana Senior Games. In 1996, she went to her first nationals in San Antonio. In practice rides, she discovered that her five-speed bike was a significant disadvantage against her competitors’ 21-speed cycles. Her family bought her a 21-speed, and after training on it, she won a bronze medal in the mile race and finished fifth in the 5K.
She went on to win two gold medals at each of the next three National Senior Olympics. Hawkins was the only entrant in her 85-89 age group in 2001.
Hawkins believed in setting daily goals to always look forward to and in embracing the “magic moments” like a butterfly, a flower or a phone call from someone meaningful, Moon said.
“She had a very active mind,” said Tommy Campbell, a neighbor who has known Hawkins his entire life and who coached Hawkins and drove her to some national meets. “She has the experience that kind of age brings, wisdom. She was very compassionate about people, very thoughtful. She was a lot of things that made her add up to her being able to do so much at an age when most people long ago would be on a walker or deceased.”
Until shortly before she moved to St. James Place, she stayed active, gardening and riding her bicycle daily around her neighborhood. Even after her children coaxed her into running in senior events, her training never extended beyond that.
"At this age, you're not getting better. You're getting worse," she said in 2017. "You only have so many 100-yard dashes left. You have to save them."
In 2016, Hawkins' book "It's Been Wondrous: A Centenarian's Memoir" was published. The book recounts Hawkins' love story that spanned seven decades, struggles during WWII while her brother was in a German concentration camp and her fiancé was at Pearl Harbor, a tragic fire, teaching in Honduras and marriage by telephone. It goes on to cover her athletic feats. Hawkins said she spent more than 30 years writing the memoir.
Now, Hawkins’ 100-yard dashes are in the past, but her legacy lives.
