Every morning for the last decade, Dale Ellis got up before 6 a.m., laced up his shoes, jumped in the car and headed out for a morning trek around East Hills Shopping Center.

But when the mall shut its doors to early morning strollers during repairs last year, Dale was left out in the cold.

“I wasn’t walking, I wasn’t feeling good and I was losing strength,” Mr. Ellis says. “I thought, ‘Well, I need to do something because I’m losing my arm strength and I’m not walking like I was.’”

So the St. Joseph native called up Bob Boyles of Body Image Personal Training and got started on regular exercise routine — working all of the muscle groups.

He says it’s working. He’s building muscles, toning up and feeling better.

It doesn’t sound like much of a story until you find out Mr. Ellis is 89 years old.

“You know anybody can start an exercise program,” says Mr. Boyles. “But to do it at that point in your life and then to see that he works full time when he could easily be retired and sitting around.

Yes, you read that right. Mr. Ellis also has a full-time job as a custodian of MRO spare parts at Omnium. So he puts in an eight-hour workday before he even steps foot in the gym. That’s better than most people half his age.

Retire? Oh, he’s already done that — back in 1982.

“I had done some consulting work while I was retired and I got tired of sitting around, frankly,” Mr. Ellis says. “I’m just not built that way. I want to keep busy. I want to keep my mind working and I want to keep active.”

So he went back to work.

“Even the younger people in here, and by younger I mean in someone in their 60s, they see that he is older than they are, and they are retired,” says Mr. Boyles. “This guy is still putting in eight hours and coming in an working and doing his thing. Even they think, ‘Hey, maybe I’m not thinking through what I really can do.”

And that’s exactly what Mr. Ellis hopes happens.

“I know too many older people that go and sit down in a chair and that’s all they do,” he says. “They don’t realize what they’re missing out on frankly. By staying active there’s so many things they could do besides working — you can volunteer, there’s so many things. And I think it’s important for people to keep active because they’ll feel a lot better.”

Lifestyles reporter Tamara Clymer can be reached at tami.clymer@npgco.com.