Skeet shooter still active at 100
HERNSHAW, W.Va. – For Dr. Bill Rossman, skeet shooting is the hobby of a lifetime – a long, long, long lifetime.
So, when the retired psychiatrist celebrated his 100th birthday, he did it in the company of his fellow shooters, at the West Virginia Clays shooting club he helped to found.
“Really, I’m overwhelmed at the amount of support and heartfelt friendship these people have shown for me,” Rossman said shortly after club members read him a celebratory proclamation from Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, presented him with a commemorative plaque and shared with him an enormous birthday cake.
The day’s chilly temperatures and the lingering effects of an injury prevented the newly minted centenarian from shooting, but he happily spent the afternoon swapping jokes and affectionate insults with his compatriots.
Considering Rossman’s role in helping to found the 60-year-old organization, the celebration seemed wholly appropriate.
In the mid-1950s, a group of Charleston-area shooting enthusiasts founded the Coonskin Skeet Club. Although he never shot skeet at the time, Rossman joined the club as one of its founding members and happily took up the pastime.
He’s been with the club ever since. When the Coonskin clubhouse burned in 1990, he helped move the club to Putnam County, where it became the Sportsman’s Gun Club. When the Winfield-area landowner refused to renew the club’s lease in 2010, Rossman stayed with the organization while its leaders renamed it again and moved it to its present home near the Kanawha-Boone county line.
He called his 60 years as a skeet shooter and club member a rewarding period of his century-long life.
“It has been like an ongoing lesson,” he said. “To be effective as a skeet shooter, you have to keep your skills honed and trained. At the same time, I’ve been fortunate to develop long-standing relationships with my fellow shooters.”
Even at his advanced age, Rossman tries to spend time at the club as often as he can.
“I don’t shoot much during cold weather, but when it’s warm I try to get in at least one round a week,” he said. “As much as possible, I try to keep my skills from slipping.”
He said that apart from a recent injury, his 100-year-old body has held up pretty well.
“As soon as I’ve recovered from (that injury), I’ll be good to go again,” he said. “But I’ve developed some problems with my eyesight, and that’s been keeping me from shooting as well as I have in the past.”
He said he doesn’t know if he’s the only skeet shooter to remain active after age 100, but he suspects that if he isn’t, he’s among a select few.
“I plan to keep doing this for as long as I’m able,” he added. “The sport has been good for me.”
And, say all the club’s members, “Doc” Rossman is good for the sport.