When most people get to be 78, they consider these years to be their twilight years, a point in which life is to be enjoyed by taking it easy, to spend time with grandchildren and to look fondly upon the good old days of better health and activity.

Dr. Mario Bartoletti, on the other hand, is incredibly active, despite his age. He first moved to Valdosta in 2006, with his wife, Lili, of 55 years. Since moving to Valdosta, he has become an active supporter of the local arts and the community he cherishes.

“We first found out about Valdosta through a friend of ours who kept telling us about what a great community it was,” said Bartoletti. “We made a visit in February or March and loved all the trees. The perfume was beautiful and the air quality was really nice, which we liked a lot, and decided to move here after retiring in 2006.”

Born in California, as the son of an Italian immigrant, Bartoletti learned at an early age the importance of healthy eating and physical fitness.

Raised on a small, independent farm, his father grew organic vegetables long before it became trendy.

“When I first met Lili, she too was very interested in healthy living herself and eventually our daughters became physically active,” said Bartoletti. “I remember at a Cadet Training program, Lili, at the age of 66, was still able to cross this swampy stream area on a rope, legs thrown over, and hand over hand. When she was crossing the swamp, all the young women cadets were cheering her by saying, ‘Woman Power!’”

Today, Bartoletti swims a quarter mile each morning during the summer months and his wife walks about two miles on the treadmill each day.

At the age of 17 and after graduating from high school, Bartoletti enlisted in the military as a naval medic and served during the Korean War. For two years he served until he began experiencing vertigo. He would lose consciousness for a few minutes as a result of a heart condition, called aorta valvulitis with arrhythmia and stress-induced atrial fibrillation.

His doctor recommended he be relieved of active duty and return to civilian life because of his condition.

“He told me to treat my heart as a muscle, to keep toned and fit in order to live a long and healthy life,” said Bartoletti.

Luckily, ever since he was a teenager and picked up the Charles Atlas workout system, he has used the Dynamic Tension technique to develop muscular strength.

After leaving the military, Bartoletti began his college education at the age of 21, a bit older than many of his classmates. While attending Blackburn University in Illinois, he met his future wife, Lili.

They had three daughters and Bartoletti began to work with families as a psychologist and therapist. He saw the steady increase of divorced couples in the ’80s and also the negative impact that it was putting on the children.

 His advice to young couples in marriage today is to nurture the individual in each person involved in the relationship.

“We have worked very closely together through all of these years,” said Bartoletti. “If you don’t recognize that there are two separate individuals, then you start leaning towards each other and it doesn’t take much for everything to topple over.

“You have to meet halfway. We build bridges to each other all the time, whether it’s Lili helping with editing or participating in the cadet-training programs as a volunteer, or when I would assist with her art or fashion. It’s a very powerful adhesive, so to speak.”

Throughout his life of helping families and children, he has written numerous medical studies and children’s books. Lili helps by editing and drawing illustrations for them.

“I’m very concerned with diabetes and heart conditions in young people,” said Bartoletti. “That’s the reason why I’ve spent the last year researching the effects of aging and health.”

He recently completed a paper, “Aging and Health,” which takes a autobiographical approach to the benefits of healthy eating and physical activity.

At the end of the paper, two pictures are shown which compare Bartoletti as a young man and one of him at the age of 77. Judging by the picture, he appears to be just as toned as he was almost 50 years earlier.

This is just one of many papers or stories that Bartoletti has completed and he is a regularly attending member of the Snake Nation Press writing group at the Annette Howell Turner Arts Center. At the group, members bring writing samples for critique.

Bartoletti is currently working on his memoir, which chronicles his military days, his early romance with Lili all the way to his life now in Valdosta. He expects the first volume to be completed this summer.

His writing career has always been a passion of Bartoletti’s, even when he traveled through Italy after military service as a young man writing articles for a Los Angeles newspaper highlighting the attitudes of young people towards the government at the time.

“I wrote nine articles during my travels through Italy. It was very minimal pay, but it was enough to pay my expenses,” said Bartoletti.

Today, in America, Bartoletti believes the political discourse has become divided, but that it has gradually become far more conservative than in the past.

“We’ve gone from a conservative and liberal discourse and the liberals have becomes moderates and the few independents are closed in with the moderates,” said Bartoletti. “My father always used to tell me that on either extreme, right or left, you get the same thing. Whenever you get extreme movements, you are in danger of losing democracy. I believe a true democracy is respectful of the exchange of opinion.”

If you’ve ever read an article about the biomass facility in The Times, or have seen a group of people outside the Industrial Authority or City Council wearing surgical masks and holding the “Biomass? No!” signs, chances are you’ve seen Mario and Lili, as they are both adamantly opposed to the project.

“In effect, WACE (Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy) is a natural fit for us, when I found out there were cancer-causing particulates that would be released by the plant,” said Bartoletti. “As senior citizens, we’re concerned about the health of our community and also very concerned that the prevailing winds would carry the wastes over to nearby schools.”

Bartoletti believes that one of the main problems with the project is that even though the facility has been approved by the Environmental Protection Division, the best technology for emissions control will not be utilized.

“There’s all kinds of ways to get involved,” said Bartoletti. “I like that and I have no intention of changing. That’s the key is to have meaningful activity.”

Bartoletti would like to continue traveling at this point in his life, but plans on continuing to live in Valdosta.

“In a lot of rural communities, there’s not much to do, but there’s a lot of culture here and we take full advantage of that,” said Bartoletti. “The fact that you have a community college, a university and Moody Air Force Base is an exciting thing. I feel like we’re right at home.”