Mark Story – Living in Three Centuries

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mark01

110 year 115 day-old* – man of German and Irish descent. Several of his grandparents lived past 100. He served in the Army in World Wars I and II and then worked as a railroad brakeman. During the Depression he traveled much of the country riding the rails with hobos.
At 102, he was walking ten miles a day. Now he walks three miles a day and can still read the bottom three lines on an eye chart.
He gave up drinking in his 60s, but smoked into his 80s.
He continues to work a few hours a week at a tanning salon/espresso cafe.
He said, “I still chase good-looking women around. I just can’t catch up with them – my legs don’t work fast enough.”

*not verified by Gerontology Research Group


mark02

101 year-old – Mongolian woman who had lived through nineteen life-killing droughts and forty-seven years of brutal Communist repression.
Historically, the Communists did not like the independent spirit of the Mongolian people.
She was four feet tall, seventy pounds, and in perfect health.


mark03

110 year 320 day-old – American man of Native American, African American and Swedish descent – the 44th oldest living person in the world.
His father stood on the platform next to President Abraham Lincoln as Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address.
His father was the illegitimate son of Lincoln’s Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, who became President after Lincoln’s assassination.
He is quickwitted, opinionated, blind, talkative and one of the last living veterans of World War I.
“Why have you lived this long?” I asked. He said, “I don’t fool around with women, beer, wine or whiskey.”


mark04

114 Year 226 day-old – African American woman – the 3rd oldest living person in the world,
and 2nd oldest living woman in the USA. Both of her parents were slaves.
The family ate the food they grew. She never watched her diet and was never heavy.
She never smoked or drank, and was 100 years old when she first saw a doctor.
She was married to her second husband for 72 years and has
3 children,
5 grandchildren,
46 great-grandchildren,
95 great-great-grandchildren,
and 38 great-great-great-grandchildren.


mark05

108 year-old – American man of English descent. He grew up on a Montana ranch that he later inherited from his father, who lived to 101. He had 1,500 head of cattle and rode Kentucky-bred horses.
Fifty years ago he liked to drink whiskey and gamble.
Now he’s into fitness; at 102 he was still doing thirty push-ups a day.
He walks a mile to church every Sunday in his black cowboy boots, white suit, pink tie and Stetson hat.
“I don’t drink, smoke or chase women;” he says, “they chase me.”


mark06

102 year-old – Chinese woman who had lived her entire life in the same mud house, which stood behind the Beijing Hotel.
She spoke of living through the rule of China’s last Emperor, the Boxer Rebellion, two World Wars and the Communist Party’s rise to power.
She was afraid her home was going to be torn down because the hotel was expanding.


mark07

105 year-old Italian man born in Sicily. 101 years ago, his family came to America on a boat;
he remembers his mother negotiating for food for his family and waving at the Statue of Liberty.
At 18, while working at a cement factory in Texas, the Black Hand (Mafia) threatened to “take” family members.
To escape the pressures of extortion, his family moved to southern California.
In the 1920s, he rode trains with hobos. While working in Yellowstone Park, he got to shake President Hoover’s hand. He opened a flower business when he was 40 and retired from it three times, finally retiring at the age of 89.
On his 105th birthday, he had a couple of glasses of red wine and danced with the girls, his doctor and “the blonde nurse.”


mark08

112 year 111 day-old – African American man – the 16th oldest living person in the world,
and the oldest living man in the USA.
The oldest living World War I combat veteran – he earned the Victory Medal, the Occupational Medal, as well as the Legion of Honor – France’s highest honor given to surviving members of U.S. Armed Forces who fought on French soil during World War I.
He returned home to farming, married, had seven children, and served as the superintendent of his Sunday School class for 75 years.
He never smoked or drank alcohol; and he takes no medicine, not even aspirin.
He drove until the age of 106, when his children decided to hide his car keys from him.