From FBI agent to the pool

His suit was dark, his shirt was white, his tie was straight and his gun was loaded.

For nearly three decades he was Bob Voege, FBI agent, and he came from a time of dangling interrogation lights and rising cigarette smoke.

He arrested mobsters, murderers, bank robbers and Klansmen. He kicked in doors and always walked out alive.

Now he's known as "Coach Bob" and the only fingerprints he finds are on his sweatpants.

The small swimmers he coaches sometimes hug his legs after they've eaten chocolate and their fingers are messy.

At 81, the Venice resident has seen the worst of the human condition. Now he's enjoying the best. He is a coach for the Sarasota Sharks and the Special Olympics.

"The kids are what I live for," he said.

To see his eyes brighten as he comes across a young girl's birthday party at the Selby Aquatics Center, you'd never guess he once sat next to Robert F. Kennedy at a Senate hearing on organized crime in the late 1950s.

Or that he once infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan.

He worked for the FBI from 1951-79, and spent another five years in the CIA.

One day he even guarded President Lyndon Johnson at an appearance in Pittsburgh and spent more than an hour discussing horse racing and boxing with J. Edgar Hoover.

"You couldn't meet a better human being," said Maggie Riggall, county coordinator for the Special Olympics Sarasota County. "I guess you would expect someone with a little harsher personality considering what he would have seen in his career."

Voege is a volunteer track and field coach for the Special Olympics and also announces swim meets.

Marc Portnoy is one of the people Voege has helped. Portnoy is 37 and has Down syndrome.

He was discouraged this year because he was unable to race his wheelchair in Special Olympics events.

His spirits lifted after Voege bought a shot put and taught him how to throw it. Portnoy is back competing again.

"Bob's a loving a guy," said Len Portnoy, Marc's father. "My son lights up when he sees him. All of the kids do. He puts his heart into everything he does."

And he has done a lot.

He served in the Navy during World War II and his destroyer protected other ships from kamikaze planes in the Pacific.

The last recognized fatality of the war happened on his ship. Voege volunteered for dangerous minesweeping duties after the war.

He competed in the 1964 Olympic trials in judo.

He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and a master's degree in social studies and physical education from Colgate, where he played lacrosse.

When he was 80 he showed up at a Colgate alumni lacrosse game. The coach asked him when he last played. He said 1947. He suited up and played defense the whole game.

In 1998, he won the Blue Cross Blue Shield Ageless Hero award for vitality. President George H.W. Bush presented him with the national award in Chicago.

Last month he won five state masters track and field championships, and he swam competitively until 2000. He is thinking about starting again when he turns 85 and goes into a new age group.

He married Fran on June 10, 1951 and together they have five children, 14 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

He moved to Honolulu in 1987 after applying for the University of Hawaii's director of athletics position. He didn't get it, and wound up teaching physical education to kindergartners instead.

He coached masters swimmers at the Oahu Club, which is where he became good friends with Rowdy Gaines.

Gaines, a three-time Olympic champion, was living in Hawaii at the time.

"Bob is one of those guys with a million stories," Gaines said. "If only 20 percent are true, he's lived an amazing life."

There's more. Voege also survived two heart attacks. Both came when he was swimming.

The first happened in 1979, when he was 52. Voege was swimming in a lake when he felt chest pains. He clung to a buoy for an hour, then slowly swam a mile to shore and drove himself to the hospital.

The second happened in 1994, when he was 68.

Voege was swimming in a masters race in Hawaii and was trying to break his own 100-meter backstroke record.

When he finished he noticed his lane was completely dark. The other lanes were bright.

He drove himself to the hospital.

Triple bypass surgery followed.

But he won the race.

And set a new record.

"It wasn't worth it, was it?" he said.

That he wound up an FBI agent was something of a fluke.

An acquaintance trying to recruit new FBI members convinced Voege to apply. Voege showed up in New York to appease the man and was one of 5,000 applicants, never thinking he had a chance.

On the day he was offered a job by the FBI, he was also offered a job as an assistant swimming coach at the University of Florida.

He chose law enforcement and soon found himself face-to-face with FBI director Hoover.

The man who set out to coach kids was now wearing a snap-brimmed hat made of felt and carrying a .38 caliber pistol in a holster.

"He was always a bit careful about giving too many details (about the FBI)," Gaines said. "But from what I understand, from talking to other people, he was right in the thick of some major stuff going on with FBI."

As a special agent based in Jacksonville in the early 1950s, he served in a security unit that kept a sharp eye on the Ku Klux Klan.

Voege cultivated informants and would learn where cross burnings would be held.

Though he never showed up at meetings, he said he wore a hood and a robe one time.

"I peaked through it and figured I overstepped my bounds," Voege said. "I didn't want anything more to do with the secret stuff.

"I had a lot more fun being out in the open and being known as an agent."

He was transferred to Pittsburgh, and from 1957-79 tracked the inner workings of the mob.

At one point he was in charge of the La Cosa Nostra investigations in Pittsburgh.

Sometimes he would set up in a store or an old warehouse and listen to wired-up mob guys, just like in the old movies.

He knew who they were. They knew who he was.

He would often approach them and say things like, "Hey, good to see you. How's your wife?"

The work could be tough, but sometimes it was as mundane as watching them play cards for hours on end.

"They are the dumbest people I've ever met," Voege said.

Voege said he arrested Sebastian John LaRocca, who at one time was the head of the Pittsburgh mafia and was present at the famous mob boss meeting in Apalachin, N.Y., in 1957.

One thing that really made an impression on Voege was testifying against the mob before the Senate.

"That was like a movie," he said.

Voege said Kennedy, then U.S. Attorney General, sat next to him and was writing notes for his autobiography. He was already well-prepared to speak on the mob and didn't need to rehearse.

"He was a very personable guy," said Voege. "He had tremendous energy. He could hardly wait to get out of there and do the next thing."

Voege learned one thing from the experience.

"The mob will always be with us as long as there's greed and the KKK will always be with us as long as there's evil," Voege said.

Voege did other things in the FBI as well.

At one point he did surveillance on suspected communists in Pittsburgh.

In Miami he was part of the FBI's short-lived apprehension force. Other agents would track criminals to a specific location and Voege was one of the agents who would bust in and make the arrest. He loved that.

Once, in 1953, he tracked a man who killed his own family.

Voege learned the man was working in a store as a photographer. Voege located the store and posed for a portrait. As the photographer positioned Voege just right, the two were inches apart.

Voege stared into the killer's eyes.

After the killer clicked his camera, Voege arrested him. He still has the picture.

He also handled bank robberies, which were often accompanied by gunfights in those days.

"There were a lot of grizzly, I mean horrible, holdups," Voege said. "That's the way it was back then, you needed intimidation to get money.

"The bank robbers were wild men, really. They'd blast their way in and blast their way out."

When it came time to retire from the FBI in 1979, Voege's co-workers took up a collection and presented him with a check.

He signed it over to the Special Olympics to build a new swimming pool.

Voege has been coaching for the Sharks since he moved to Venice in 2000. He works with ages 4-8.

"I just love them," he said. "I've always made it my rule to have an impact on at least one kid a day in any sport that I've ever coached."

You will often see him walking around the Selby Aquatic Center, congratulating the newest birthday girl, talking to the little kids, trying to get new recruits for his swim team.

His life was once filled with stakeouts, gunfights and criminals of the worst kind.

Now it's filled with children, hugs and chocolate stains on his sweatpants.

"This is what I was sent to do, work with kids," he said.

"Law enforcement just paid the bills."