Posted on 03/23/2015 5:54:33 PM PDT by Signalman
CASPER, Wyo., March 23 (UPI) -- A 100-year-old Wyoming man who made his first automobile sale in 1949 said he has no plans to retire from the car dealership. Derrell Alexander, who started his career as a salesman when gas was 17 cents per gallon, celebrated his 100th birthday last week at Whites Mountain Chevrolet in Casper, where he still works six days a week.
Customers said they value Alexander for his honesty.
"Maybe I've missed sales because I didn't lie to him. But that's OK," Alexander told KCWY-TV.
He told the Casper Journal work is part of what keeps him in good health.
"As long as I can get out of the house," Alexander said. "You sit around the house and watch TV or something, and you don't last long."
He credited "the man upstairs" with giving him a long and happy life.
Brad Follensbee, the dealership's general manager, said Alexander is "an inspiration to us all as far as the drive he has."
"I think it's almost more of a habit for him, coming to work every day. I think it gives him purpose and drive to get up every morning and get ready and come to work and be here," Follensbee said.
and so?
That must be the story that I was trying to tell from memory.
My ex-wife’s grandfather was still stacking hay bales on a wagon at 94. Smoked a pack of Chesterfield Kings every day from when he was 12.
He got caught the next year by a bale coming from the baler, and it knocked him off the wagon and broke his hip. He was gone in less then 18 months.
God bless this man, and may he work for as long as the spirit moves him.
Boy my memory was terrible, but all I knew about the story was just a short newspaper article from many years ago, with her name from jonty30, I went to wikipedia, and it turns out that she died at 122, and is the longest living person with verified age.
“Both before and after Calment’s death, there have been several claims to have surpassed her age (see Incomplete longevity claims) but none of them has been proven and Calment therefore continues to hold the record for the oldest verified person ever.”
“In 1965, at age 90 and with no heirs, Calment signed a deal to sell her apartment to lawyer André-François Raffray, on a contingency contract. Raffray, then aged 47 years, agreed to pay her a monthly sum of 2,500 francs until she died. Raffray ended up paying Calment the equivalent of more than $180,000, which was more than double the apartment’s value. After Raffray’s death from cancer at the age of 77, in 1995, his widow continued the payments until Calment’s death.[2] During all these years, Calment used to say to them that she “competed with Methuselah”.”
Several relatives of mine have succumbed to ‘broken hips.’ I think it wasn’t so much the broken bones that killed them but the sedentary existence which constituted recovery. This resulted in serious muscle mass loss from which it is hard to recover at advanced ages.
Well played!
:)
Agreed...it was the lack of activity due to the injury. It wasn’t the injury itself. It healed slowly but he never recovered from the slowdown and he just kept slowing down.
Had he not broken his hip, and merely taken a tumble as he had in other activities before, he would have kept going for another 5 years.
Coffee is for CLOSERS!
I retired at 60. I don’t miss work one bit.
In 1987 I fenced our 40 acres, RR ties every 32 feet. I took our PU box trailer up to the quarry, and had the old man load it with 3/4 minus many times. We got to talking, and he was in his 90’s. He said in his youth, he use to cut cord wood, and sell it to the steamboats on the Willamette River, near the confluence of the Santiam River.
I retired at 60 myself.
Bought a 20 acre farm in my mid 30’s for a vacation place for the wife and kids.
Never got to go there to much while I was working.
Now I live here and find myself working 7 day weeks and about 12 to 14 hours a day on average.
LOVE IT.
I worry more about the man downstairs.
I like pie.
The science is much better these days I’m 68 and just had the second hip done. The issues are overall physical condition including bone density active rehab and avoiding infection and pneumonia
Much better outcomes than even ten years ago
NOT quite as old, but the guy we buy our firewood from is 87, and still chopping, stacking, loading tons of firewood six days a week. Sunday he rests.
He’s quite a guy. Hope to be in his condition with his attitude in a few years when I’m that age.
...
It’s good to work jobs that aren’t easily outsourced.
Hey, what else is there to do in Casper besides work?
;^)
Just kiddin’, Casperites!
Situations like yours remind me that God's been WAY better to me than I deserve. At 71 everything still works, outside of an occasionally cranky knee that I'll get looked at some day. I survived a heart attack in 2011 and will be on the rec b'ball court tonight chasing after those 40-50 year old kids!
The science has improved, though I had in mind several people - the youngest of which was 89. You’re a spring chicken compared to them.
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