June 27 was the offical 80th birthday for George McVey but his family celebrated it this past weekend at the 15th Annual Canandaigua Lake swim.  Daughters Pam, Mary, Connie and Amy did the swim with him along with several grandchildren.  Daughters Mimi and Karen and wife Sue were cheering from the sidelines.  Below is an article written by Mark Hare which appeared in the D&C:

(July 26, 2007) — To mark his 80th birthday, George McVey did the annual Canandaigua Lake Open Water Swim on Saturday and finished first in his senior division. Four of his six daughters, and a few grandchildren, did the mile swim with him. It took about 30 minutes. Not bad.

"For Dad, life is all about getting out there and doing things," says Mary McVey, 44, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. "It's not about eating cake."

McVey, who actually turned 80 on June 27, is a retired dentist from Brighton. The idea to celebrate this milestone with a family swim originated last summer at Bethany Beach in Delaware where the extended McVey family was vacationing, says daughter, Connie, of Bangor, Maine. "Dad always gets up early in the morning to swim in the ocean," she says, "and we swim with him. We thought it might be a good way to celebrate his birthday."

"We're a family of swimmers," says Amy McVey, at 36 the youngest of the daughters. All the girls were AAU swimmers in Brighton as children, where they enticed George (a high school swimmer himself) to swim laps for cancer. Several of the daughters went on to swim in high school and college, and George now swims competitively (the breast stroke mainly) for the Rochester Area Masters Swimmers team.

"Dad is an inspiration," says Amy. "He's a model of how to keep yourself in shape well into your 70s and 80s."

"Swimming is not my forte," says Sue McVey, George's wife of more than 40 years.

"I'll swim for fun, but not like they do. I'm on the sidelines cheering."

I've known George and Sue since the early 1970s, when he was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. The birthday swim, Sue says, was a particularly fitting way to recognize George's "activist lifestyle."

The McVeys were an ordinary suburban couple in the mid-1960s when they first heard that the Rev. Phil Berrigan, a Josephite priest and Holy Cross College classmate of George, had destroyed draft files as part of a protest in Baltimore.

McVey thought it was a crazy thing to do until he spoke to his old friend. That conversation opened their eyes, the McVeys said in a 1972 interview with the former Times-Union newspaper. The McVeys also became friends with Berrigan's brother, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest, poet and peace activist who took part in many nonviolent war protests.

The McVeys opened their home to peace activists from around the country, and grew accustomed to regular visits from FBI agents who were always interested in their house guests. Both McVeys were subpoenaed to testify before a Harrisburg, Pa., grand jury investigating an alleged plot to kidnap then-presidential adviser Henry Kissinger. The charges were eventually dismissed.

For the past 15 years, George has been working 20 or more hours a week at St. Joseph's House of Hospitality on South Avenue, which provides food, shelter and other services for homeless people. "I'm a go-fer," McVey says. "I do a lot of work in the office. I shop at Foodlink. I pick things up and drop things off. But it's a very rewarding experience."

George and Sue have been about helping the powerless stand up to power.

"I wouldn't be in the condition I'm in without swimming," George says. The more time he spends in the water, the longer he'll be able to fight for change by swimming against the current.

I expect he'll be doing a mile — or two — at 90.