Secret to longevity starts with Myrtle

PETER BUFFA

How old are you? Big whoop. You’re still a kid compared to Myrtle.

That’s Myrtle White, currently residing at the Seaside Villas

residential care facility in Costa Mesa. People do a lot of huffing

and puffing about “major” birthdays -- 40, 60, 80 years old.

But those don’t impress Myrtle. Been there, done that.

You see, Myrtle White turned 101 years old this week. Anyone still

want to brag about their age? I didn’t think so. I’ll give you the

“big five-oh.” Try the “big one-double-oh.”

Sure, the flesh is weak and the muscles are weaker by the time you

earn that third digit. Myrtle’s eyes and ears don’t work too well,

but on Tuesday, there was a major rager for Myrtle’s 101st at the

Seaside Villas, and she looked great in her red velvet dress and

white pearls.

It’s a long way from Costa Mesa to Detroit Lakes, Minn., where

Myrtle was born. She grew up on a South Dakota farm, along with her

four brothers and sisters, taught school for a few years, then got

married and had two children, four grandchildren, five great

grandchildren, six great-great grandchildren by the time she was

done, and she ain’t done yet.

I have been fascinated for quite some time with centenarians.

We Baby Boomers get all the sociological press, but centenarians

are the fastest growing age group in the U.S., mostly due to advances

in health care. But they are still a rare breed. It must be a

remarkable thing to be one hundred, let alone a hundred and counting.

We all start out thinking we’re going to live forever. That doesn’t

last long.

About the time people stop asking to see some ID, reality sets in.

But who ever thinks they’ll live to be one hundred? Nobody, that’s

who.

I think the people who were born in or around 1900 and lived to

see 2000 are an even more select group. You’re never supposed to say

never, but I can’t imagine any group of people will ever see as much

change in one lifetime again as the 20th century babies. They were

born into a horse-and-buggy world that was not all that different

from 1800, and 100 years later, they are still here, in a world where

people can make a sheep from scratch, sift through all the knowledge

on earth from their family room, or touch the moon.

If you were born in 1900, you’d also have a very special talent.

While everyone else was doing the math to calculate how old they were

when something big happened, you’d know the answer instantly. You

were 12 when the Titanic sunk, 17 when World War I started, 29 when

the stock market crashed, 41 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, 46 when

the war was over, 63 when JFK was assassinated, 69 when the Eagle

landed, 74 during Watergate, 89 when the Berlin Wall came down and,

most importantly, 98, 99 and 100 when the Yankees beat the Padres,

the Braves and the Mets for three World Series in a row. Can the rest

of us do that? We cannot.

But let’s get to the good part, the bottom line, the big question

that everybody wants to know, and everyone who makes it to 100 is

asked time and time again. I’m sure Myrtle heard it more than once at

her birthday bash. Ready? Altogether now -- “What’s the secret?”

Most of you expect me to say that there is no secret. “It’s just

common sense,” is what you’re waiting to hear.

“Eat well, exercise, don’t smoke, don’t drink, in fact, don’t do

anything, blah, blah and so on.”

Well it might interest to you to know, you young whippersnapper,

that there is, in fact, a secret to beating the odds at that big

actuarial table in the sky. There have been a number of extensive

studies of centenarians in the last 10 years, mostly a result of the

dramatic increase in the 100-plus club in the 1990 census.

Another motivator was the national coverage of the Delaney sisters

of Mt. Vernon, N.Y. Bessie and Sadie Delaney were two

African-American women who lived together their entire lives and

published their autobiography -- “Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters

First 100 Years” -- in 1992, at the ages of 101 and 103. Sadie, born in 1889, and Bessie, born in 1891, grew up with their eight brothers

and sisters in Raleigh, N.C. Their father was an Episcopal minister,

the vice president of St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, and a

former slave. As over-achievers go, the Delaney sisters were chips

off the old block. Sadie had a long career as a teacher -- the first

black person to teach high school science in New York City -- and

Bessie became a prominent dentist, the second black woman to be

licensed as a dentist in New York state. With all the buzz over the

Delaney sisters, a lot of people with clipboards and really thick

glasses became fascinated with who makes the century mark and who

doesn’t and why.

You know what they found? No common theme whatsoever, except one.

Centenarians come from every walk of life and every social, ethnic

and economic background. Some come from families with a history of

longevity, others come from families that rarely live past sixty.

Some led the hardest of hard knock lives, and others lives of the

great privilege.

But the one and only thing that popped up again and again in every

study was a common personality trait. Almost everyone in the 100-plus

club is even-tempered, slow to excite and above all, remarkably stoic

about whatever hand life dealt them. They don’t get too high in the

good times or too low in the bad. That certainly seems to be the case

with Myrtle White, according to two of the Seaside Villas staff, Mila

Lacson and Joy Grospe.

“She’s very patient,” said Lacson. “That’s probably how she got to

be 101.”

“Her fuse is very long,” Grospe added.

So there you have it. With everything we know today about science

and medicine and technology, the secret to living to 100 years old is to have a long fuse, and don’t get your panties in a wad. Life is so

strange. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].