allDAY : John Rutherford

Centenarian couple recall 'Dutch' Reagan, Johnny Carson

Ian Sager — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

Will Clark got to know Ronald Reagan in the 1930s when they rode horses together each Sunday for the Army Cavalry Reserve at Fort Des Moines in Iowa.

"We were good friends, but he was a very poor horseman," Will, 104, said recently of our 40th president.

Will was a dentist in Des Moines at the time, and "Dutch" Reagan was a popular radio personality on WHO.

"He was a gay young blade around town," Will remembers. "He had a convertible car, and he was a very attractive man, always a friendly sort of fellow."

Will's wife Lois, 101, also has fond memories of Reagan.

"We'd have breakfast on a Sunday morning, early, early, and he was always there, at Fort Des Moines, entertaining us all," she said. "I remember one morning he had some food and he happened to stumble just a bit and dropped it down my back."

Will said Reagan had a flair for the dramatic, even then.

"We loved the guy, but he was always 'on,'" Will told the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in 2001. "He was always the actor type, and he got a little boring at times with it. He was always talking, you know, on and on and on. He never stopped."

When Reagan left Des Moines for Hollywood in 1936, his friends threw a farewell dinner for him at the Des Moines Cavalry Club.

"I always remember something he said at the dinner," Will told me. "He'd played football in college, and the coach told him one time, 'Twenty-five years from now you will not remember another student in this school, but you'll always remember everybody on this team.' And Reagan said, 'That's the way I feel about you guys.'"

Years later, in 1975, Will saw Reagan at the Republican Club in Tucson, Ariz.

"He was nice and friendly, you know, but he didn't have a clue who I was," Will said.

Besides knowing Reagan, Lois Clark can boast of bouncing Johnny Carson on her knee. That was back in 1926 in Corning, Iowa, Lois's hometown. She was about 18 years old and the future "Tonight Show" host was just a baby.

"He was a good baby," Lois said. "His mother used to bring him down to the electric plant office where his father was my manager. I really enjoyed seeing him. He was very likable."

Carson's family moved to Norfolk, Nebr., soon afterward, and Lois never saw him again.

Carson died in 2005 at the age of 79. Reagan died in 2004 at age 93. Will and Lois, with 205 cumulative years between them, just celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary in Tucson.

AP photo of Ronald Reagan, circa 1932, in Des Moines. Family photos of Will Clark in Army Cavalry Reserve, circa 1936 and Lois Clark at age 19, in 1926.

Will and Lois were among the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's TODAY show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

Centenarians reflect on shock of Pearl Harbor

Ian Sager — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:43:00 GMT

By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

Dec. 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy, is a day most Americans living at the time will never forget. That was the day, of course, that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, plunging the United States into World War II.

Will Clark heard the news on his car radio in Des Moines, Iowa. Dick Day was dressing for church in Providence, R.I. Elizabeth Teal was home in Johnstown, Colo., and Yoshiko Akizuki was fixing dinner in Guadalupe, California.

Like the other centenarians, Will (right) was shocked by the news on his radio.

"This guy was talking about corn, pigs and horses," Will recalls, "and all of a sudden he said, 'The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor!' Well, my father-in-law and I sat there for a few moments, and pretty soon he looked at me and I looked at him.

"'What'd he say?' 'The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.' But then the guy went on talking about pigs and horses and stuff, and I couldn't believe it. In about five minutes, why, everything broke loose and they started talking about the attack on Pearl Harbor."

More than 2,400 Americans were killed and the U.S. Pacific Fleet was crippled in the attack. Within weeks, the late Dr. J.C. Lockhart of Peoria, Ill., was on the first relief convoy to reach Hawaii.

"Did get out to Pearl Harbor and was tremendously shocked at seeing so much more damage than had been reported," he wrote a friend at the time. "Honolulu was sick. Martial law, and all stores closed at 4:30, all restaurants at 5:00. No lights were ever turned on. The sentries are so quick on the trigger that no one even walks out at night, much less drives."

Conditions had changed considerably by the time Dick Day was posted to Pearl Harbor in 1943 by the Navy.

"I didn't see much evidence of the attack," he told me. "Most everything had been pretty well cleaned up. Honolulu was just like any other city."

Except blackouts were still in effect.

"There could be no lights showing at night," Dick said. "Everything had to be dark. Automobile headlights only had a one-inch square light. Even that was painted purple. When you put the lights on, you went around to see if you had light because it didn't show on anything. We'd look at the stars and see the outline of the buildings around Pearl Harbor to find our way around."

Blackouts were also the order of the day in Johnstown, Colo., where Elizabeth Teal was a civil defense volunteer, preparing for an enemy attack on Colorado.

"We were prepared for it, yeah," she said. "That's what civil defense was for, if we were attacked. Everything was uncertain at that time. They could have had enemies here in our own state, you know, our own country, just like in 9/11."

Actually, there were enemy forces in the area, but they were behind barbed wire.

"We had German prisoners of war here," Elizabeth said. "Right across the street from me. That big hotel. It was empty. That's where they kept the prisoners. They built a fence about eight feet tall around there so they couldn't escape. They marched them out to the fields, to the farmers' fields, to work in the sugar beet fields for us."

Yoshiko Akizuki knows all too well what it's like to be a prisoner. An American citizen born in this country in 1908, Yoshiko and her family spent the war years in a hot and dusty internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Gila, Ariz.

"We were citizens," her daughter Bernice said. "We had done nothing wrong. They just took us all. They took innocent people and threw us in camp without reason. It was definitely unjust."

Yoshiko worked in the camp's mess hall. Her husband Tsutomu worked in the fields. Bernice and her brother Ed went to school. Yoshiko gave birth to a second son, Gary, while in the camp.

"We just did our daily thing enclosed in a camp," Bernice said. "We made do with what we had. Day after day it was the same thing because there was nothing else to do."

Yoshiko and her family returned home to California after the war. Now 100 years old, she lives in Cupertino, Calif. Will Clark, 104, resides in Tucson, Ariz., with his wife, Lois, 101. Dick Day, 100, is in Grand Forks, N.D., and Elizabeth Teal, also 100, hasn't budged from Johnstown, Colo.

Family photos of Will Clark in the Army during World War II, Dick Day in the Navy during the war, Elizabeth Teal in 1943 and Yoshiko Akizuki with daughter Bernice and son Ed in 1933.

Will, Dick, Elizabeth and Yoshiko were four of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's TODAY show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

Centenarians on lessons of Great Depression

Ian Sager — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:52:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Mickey Weiner supplemented his teaching salary at Irvington High School in New Jersey by repossessing cars for a local bank and working as a lifeguard, a waiter and a bartender.

"In general, everyone had a tough time because of the Depression years," Weiner, who just turned 100, said recently. "There was a lot of unemployment, and people who had jobs were lucky. I had a job, and I was pretty well taken care of. I had a new Ford I bought. It cost a little over $500."

Gas cost 12 cents a gallon back then, which was a good thing, because Weiner's salary was cut in 1932 from $1,800 to $1,200 a year. That didn't stop him from continuing at Irvington High for the next 42 years, retiring in 1974 as principal. He and his wife Ginny live in relative comfort because of investments he made over the years in the stock market.

"I've gotten myself a house and a lot that's worth about $1 million, and it's more than I earned teaching, and that's because of the stock market," he said.

Weiner believes today's tough times will turn around in a couple of years.

"It's a bad year," he said, "but it'll come back, that's the thing. Right now it's not too good. I think eventually it'll turn around and become better."

Another centenarian, 100-year-old Herbert Winckelmann of Staunton, Va., is also generally optimistic about the future.

"I believe our government has learned from what has happened, and I don't believe that it could ever again be the same as the Great Depression," he said.

Winckelmann was born and raised in Germany, which descended into Depression long before the rest of the world because of its loss in World War I.

"My dad, uncle, grandmother and other relatives were all small millionaires," he said. "The paper money and bonds became worth nothing. My father had an import and export business to Africa and lost his business. We lost everything. We had to start up from nothing."

A third centenarian, 100-year-old Mitchell McNair of Los Angeles, lived through the Great Depression in the small Arkansas town of Fordyce, where the Rock Island and St. Louis Southwestern railroads crossed in the southern part of the state.

"It affected me pretty bad," he said. "I was working at a saw mill, and the thing shut down, and I went looking for a job, and there wasn't no jobs. So it was a sad time. They passed out some black flour for us, see, and we got a sack of that black flour. I don't know what they did with the good flour."

How did he survive?

"The best I could, just like all the rest of them," he said. "Get what you could. Oh, I worked on the farms and what have you. There wasn't no jobs. I never lived through nothing like that before, and I hope I won't have to again."

McNair, who moved to California in 1939 and later owned several gas stations, said it's hard to compare the Great Depression with what's happening today.

"I don't see it being quite as bad," he said. "I hope not. I don't think it will be, but, 'course, we can't tell. We just don't know what's coming."

Photos: Mickey Weiner as a lifeguard in 1930; Herbert Winckelmann with younger brother Fritz in 1919, and Mitchell McNair in 2008 (family photos).

Willard Scott featured all three centenarians on NBC's TODAY show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

Three centenarians recall World War II medical service

Ian Sager — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:19:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

Centenarian L. F. Beasley sold his car when he went off to serve in World War II because he expected to be gone for 10 years and didn't want to come home to Tennessee to a 10-year-old car.

Dr. Beasley, 100, who now lives in Franklin, Ky., ended up spending four years in the medical unit of the 80th Infantry Division, including several nights in a French family's home in 1945.

"The people I was staying with couldn't speak English, and I couldn't speak French, so we didn't have a whole lot of fun together," he said recently.

The only German that Dr. Beasley ever tried to shoot was a German Shepherd dog that threatened to attack him.

"I thought I'd kill that dog, but my gun [a .25 caliber pistol] wouldn't fire," he said. That's the only time I ever tried to fire it, and it wouldn't fire. I had a driver, and he and I jumped in the car and left."

Dr. Beasley's mother was seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1945, and he was "rushed" home by the Red Cross.

"I came home on what I thought was a cattle boat," he said. "It took us 10 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean. When we went over to Europe, we went over on the Queen Mary and landed in four days.

"By the time I got home, she was much improved. When I got to New York, first thing I did was call home and found out she had left the hospital."

Since Dr. Beasley was already home, he was allowed to muster out of the military ahead of his unit. After the war, his son John asked him if he'd like to go back to Europe as a tourist.

"He said, no," John said. "He said he'd seen all of that, and he might enjoy it if he hadn't been there during the war."

Another World War II veteran who had no interest in returning to Europe was Dr. Leo Greenberg, 100, of Chicago, who served in England, France and Germany during the war. He wrote home in 1945 describing the often acrimonious relations among the Allies.

"Americans criticize the English strongly and even more of them dislike and distrust the French," he wrote, "but then the majority don't like or trust each other too much so what else can you expect.

"I, incidentally, do not care for the French mind. I really did not have enough experience with them to draw such a conclusion, but somehow the conclusion sticks to me."

Several other interesting observations made by Dr. Greenberg after he landed on Normandy's Utah Beach in August 1944, two months after D-Day:

"Recent figures show the Krauts laid more than 1,000,000 mines. You can step on one anywhere. Wandering is a dangerous business."
"A lot of personnel had foxholes. I never had one during the entire war. Too lazy to dig one."
"After a couple of days we moved to Flages near Nemours-arrived there 26 Aug. Nemours is where we saw the French gals with the shaved heads." (Many French women who fraternized with the Germans had their heads shaved after France was liberated.)

A third centenarian, Dr. J. Gordon Spendlove, 100, of Lakewood, Colo., (where he lives with his wife, Elizabeth, also 100) worked with German prisoners of war at Moore General Hospital outside of Asheville, N.C., during the war.

"Some of them were very intelligent people," Dr. Spendlove remembers. "They were doctors, laboratory technicians, that type of thing, who were doing excellent work in the hospitals. Some of them did highly skilled work, and later they became citizens of the United States."

Dr. Spendlove said the hard-core Nazis were kept at Camp Sutton near Charlotte, N.C.

"If the German prisoners got sick, sometimes the German staff sergeants would beat the heck out of them after they saw the doctors, because they considered that showing weakness in the face of the enemy," he said.

Dr. Spendlove said the Italian prisoners at Camp Sutton were a different matter.

"The Italian prisoners of war were very friendly," he said. "They'd rather sing Italian songs."

Dr. Spendlove's son Gordon remembers seeing Italian officers eating dinner at Camp Sutton's Officers' Club.

"I asked my dad about it, and he said not for me to worry because they were very cooperative," Gordon said. "They didn't try to escape. They didn't try to do anything else that a prisoner of war is suppose to do with his captors.

"So they were allowed privileges like coming to the Officers' Club, and that's a real interesting twist that I don't think many people know about."

Photos: Dr. L. F. Beasley , Dr. Leo Greenberg and Dr. J. Gordon Spendlove in the military (family photos).

Drs. Beasley, Greenberg and Spendlove were three of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's TODAY show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

Centenarians share enlightening encounters with Edison

Ian Sager — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:54:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, apparently was more at ease in a laboratory than he was mingling among his employees.

Mary Fackino, 104, often saw Edison at the alkaline battery plant he owned in West Orange, N.J., but she was never able to meet him.

"I'd see him in the hallways, but he never stopped," she said recently. "He'd walk by with his head down. He was quiet. I never talked to him. He never spoke to the people in the hallway."

Mary's mother, however, knew Edison's wife.

"My mother couldn't speak English, and she wanted to learn, and Edison's wife wanted to learn how to speak Italian," she said. "But it didn't last long. It didn't work out."

Mary had gone to work for Edison in 1917 at the age of 13. Edison was not only a famous inventor, holding 1,093 patents, the most issued to any individual, but he was also an industrial leader, creating companies such as his battery plant for the manufacture and sale of his inventions.

"I had to go to work," Mary said. "My mother needed help when my father died young. I didn't even graduate grammar [school]."

One of her fingers and a thumb still ache from working on a power press at Edison's battery plant. After three years, she switched to the plant's in-house magazine, the Storage Battery News.

"I was a reporter when they took me off the factory work," she said. "The guys thought I was too good to be in a factory like that."

As a reporter, she covered the plant's Assembly and Test Department. Edison died in 1931, but Mary continued working at his plant until 1944.

"I volunteered to help in World War II," she said. "I used to write the boys, and they would write to me, and I used to send them packages. I used to knit sweaters, too. When they came back, they used to meet me. Quite a few later passed away or were killed."

Mary celebrated her 104th birthday on Oct. 8 in Mooresville, N.C., where she now lives.

Another centenarian who crossed paths with Edison was Nancy Roberg, who was on the front porch of her home in Caspian, Mich., in April 1924 when a large black car pulled up. A man rolled down the window and asked directions to the Berkshire iron mine.

"She was tickled when she recognized the man was Henry Ford, and in the car with him were Harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison, who were touring different Ford properties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan," her daughter Mary Ann said.

Ford, Firestone and Edison were three of the most famous industrialists of their time, or of any time, for that matter. They were riding around with no police escort, not even a chauffeur. Just three (rich) friends out for a ride.

Nancy was 15 when they stopped by. She's now 100, having passed the century mark on Oct. 12 in Crystal Falls, Mich.

Photos: Mary Fackino, circa 1944 (family photo); Nancy Roberg, early 1930s (family photo); Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone, undated (AP photo).

Mary and Nancy were two of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's TODAY show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details

Centenarians reflect on elections past

Ian Sager — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:01:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

Centenarian LaGrand Nielsen, who was Dwight Eisenhower's dentist in the Army, remembers the nation's 34th president as a good man with a great set of teeth.

"I met Ike in 1939 at Fort Ord, Calif., and that's where I got to know him pretty well," LaGrand, 101, of Sandy, Utah, said recently. "Checked his teeth a couple of times and cleaned them. Had a beautiful set of teeth. Wonderful fellow. Wonderful officer. He was a lieutenant colonel when I met him, but he ended up a 5-star general."

LaGrand saw Ike again in Washington, D.C., during World War II. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie invited LaGrand and his wife Beatrice to their quarters in Bethesda, Md.

"We spent the afternoon visiting for a couple of hours and had lunch, and we just had a wonderful visit," LaGrand said. "We talked about life and military life and what it had done for him, and I was a career man then myself. I was a captain, maybe a major at the time, and he was a general.

"Mamie and my wife got along real well," LaGrand said. "Mamie was very humble and sweet."

LaGrand last saw Eisenhower after the war when Ike talked to LaGrand's Boy Scout troop on Governors Island in New York City.

"He said the one thing he missed in his life when he was growing up, and he was raised in Kansas, you know, was that he was never in the Boy Scout program," LaGrand said. "He had nothing but praise for the Boy Scouts."

LaGrand had nothing but praise for Ike, whom he supported for president in 1952 and 1956.

"He was just one of the boys," LaGrand said. "He was just one of us. He was very humble, very courteous. He didn't say one negative word about anybody, and I admired that, and he had a good set of teeth."

Louise Ashton, 102, of Albany, Ga., a lifelong Democrat, also liked Ike.

"The only time I was really, really threatening to vote Republican was when Eisenhower ran," Louise said. "I thought he was a very smart man, and I appreciated what he had done for our country."

But Ike didn't get her vote, because he wasn't a Democat. I asked Louise how long she'd been voting the straight Democratic ticket.

"Well, let's see, since around 1924," she said.

Why did you always vote Democratic?

"Because my daddy did," she said with a laugh. "I thought he was a very smart man."

Why did he vote Democratic?

"Well, now, that I really don't know," she said. "But I know we all followed in his footsteps, and he lived to be 102."

So you did what your dad told you to do?

"Right, right," she said. "That's the way it used to be. It isn't that way anymore."

With her father no longer around to guide her, Louise isn't sure how she's going to vote this year.

"I've got my absentee ballot on my desk, and I am still pondering and listening and reading and trying to determine who is the best person to vote for," she said. "I didn't know I was going to live this long to make this big a decision."

One centenarian with no such doubts is John "Cas" Casparis, 100, of Austin, Texas. He's voted for Democrats all of his life, except once, in 1928, when Democrat Al Smith and Republican Herbert Hoover were running against each other for president.

"I voted against Al Smith, the Democrat, because living up there in Johnson City, Texas, in those small towns, you get prejudice, and I'm a Protestant, and Al Smith was a Catholic, and I voted a prejudice vote that I'll never live down," Cas said. "I'll regret that until I die."

So how are you voting this year?

"I'll pull one lever," he said. "The Democrat, yes, sir."

Photos: Dentist LaGrand Nielsen at Fort Ord, Calif., circa 1939 (family photo); Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and wife Mamie smile at each other, 1945 (AP Photo); Louise Ashton, 102, in 2008 (family photo).

LaGrand, Louise and Cas were three of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's TODAY show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

Three centenarians recount brushes with fame

Ian Sager — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:23:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

Tennis great Arthur Ashe once gave centenarian Margaret Dell a black eye, but she doesn't hold a grudge against him.

It happened back in 1973. Ashe, the first black man to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, was competing in a major tennis tournament in Washington, D.C.

"I was sitting in a box way up high, and he served, and the ball came crashing in and hit me in the eye," Margaret remembers. "I was alright, but I did have a black eye.

"Arthur was awfully upset. He came over to see what had happened, and I said, 'Well, you hit me straight in the eye, and it looks like I'm going to have a lawsuit,' and he said, 'Call my lawyer,' and, of course, his lawyer was my son, so we had a lot of fun over that."

Margaret's son, Donald, was Ashe's friend and lawyer for 25 years.

"Oh, Arthur was just a great, great person," Margaret said. "He was a lot of fun to be with."

Ashe died in 1993 of AIDS. His widow Jeanne attended Margaret's 100th birthday celebration on July 14.

Another famous African-American, Rosa Parks, was considered the mother of the civil rights movement for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955.

Mrs. Parks was also related to centenarian Myria Dade of Floydada, Texas. She was Myria's late husband's aunt.

"Aunt Rosie did not give up her seat to that white man, and he should have known better," Myria said recently. "She told everybody, 'Don't ever give up your seat.'"

Myria said she's proud to be Mrs. Parks' relative.

"Aunt Rosie was interested in anybody that needed help," Myria said. "She was ready for it, and she tried to help everybody that she could."

Rosa Parks died in 2005. Myria turned 102 on Sept. 18.

Another centenarian who rubbed shoulders with the famous was 104-year-old Lloyd Harvey, who first met "Buffalo Bill" Cody, the famous cowboy and Wild West showman, around 1914 in Republican City, Neb. Buffalo Bill was about to perform at a local auditorium when he recognized Lloyd's uncle, who worked on Cody's ranch.

"Buffalo Bill came over, and he just really grasped my hand and shook it and patted me on the shoulder and roughed up my hair and talked to me at length," Lloyd, who was 10 at the time, remembers.

"Then he took me by the hand and said, 'You're going to have the best seat in the house,' and he took us down to the very front row to some special seats for his performance. That, of course, was an occasion I could never forget."

Years later, Lloyd visited Buffalo Bill's grave on top of Lookout Mountain near Denver.

"It was a cold, wintery day," Lloyd said, "and yet there were a lot of people looking at his grave, and the friend that took us said, 'This man here shook hands with Buffalo Bill,' and, golly, it really caused a stir, and then everybody surrounded me, and everybody had to shake my hand because I had shaken hands with Buffalo Bill."

Lloyd keeps a picture of Buffalo Bill on his wall and a bookcase filled with about 50 books on the famed showman.

"When we have company," Lloyd's daughter said, "the conversation in no time flat is, 'Would you like to come up to my room and see my bedroom?' And he'll take them upstairs and show them Buffalo Bill's picture and then come back down and have some coffee and start visiting, and he'll go into all his stories about Buffalo Bill."

Photos: Arthur Ashe at Wimbledon, 1969 (AP Photo); Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after arrest in 1955 (AP Photo); Lloyd Harvey as young man (Family photo)

Myria and Lloyd were two of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

Three centenarians recall meeting the president

Jen Brown — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:39:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

Grace Wolford, who turned 100 years old on Aug. 15, still remembers visiting the White House in 1925 and shaking hands with President Calvin Coolidge.

"Our senior class went to Washington," she said recently. "We only had 33 in our class. They didn't all go. We had to pay our own way and everything. We left on a Friday and came back Sunday, on the train, the B & O."

Grace said she and her classmates from Ferndale High School in Pennsylvania had no trouble getting into the White House.

"Things weren't like they are today," she said. "At that time it wasn't a big deal, but today it would be. The president was sitting there in the lobby or someplace, and we all got to shake hands with him, any of us that wanted to."

Did Coolidge say anything to her?

"Well, I don't remember," Grace said. "It was so long ago. It was in 1925. I don't think we were there very long. We only had a couple of days in Washington, and there were other things we wanted to do."

Wasn't she excited about meeting the president?

"Sure I was," she said. "You'd be, too. Anybody would be excited to meet the president."

Someone who saw a lot of the president in the early 1960s was 100-year-old Ena Bernard, who worked for Robert and Ethel Kennedy for 44 years. She often saw Robert's older brother, John Kennedy, the nation's 35th president.

Ena Bernard in May 2008

"He was nice, polite," Ena remembers. "I did not sit down and talk to him. Just, 'Hello, how are you doing? How is everything going?' And I'd say, 'Oh, fine, it's a beautiful day,' and like that."

She also saw the first lady, Jackie Kennedy.

"She was like me," Ena said. "She never liked to get in a big conversation, or anything like that. She would give me a smile, and she'd ask, 'Are you feeling all right?'"

Ena, who lives today with her daughter in Sunrise, Fla., said she never cared about politics and focused instead on caring for Robert and Ethel Kennedy's 11 children.

"I'm not a politician," she said. "I don't understand anything about politics. It goes through one ear and comes out the other."

One centenarian who kept her ear close to the ground was 100-year-old Del Plested, who covered President Dwight Eisenhower's Colorado vacations in 1954 and 1955. Del was Denver bureau chief for Fairchild Publications at the time.

Del Plested working as a reporter in the 1950s.

She said Ike was off golfing and fishing most of the time, but she'd see him at occasional news conferences.

"He looked very good," Del said. "He looked more vibrant and well than in his pictures. His eyes twinkled, and his smile was very warm, and he joked with reporters, and I thought, 'Boy, this is great.' I was very impressed.

"I turned to one of the reporters after he was gone and said he just looked like he would be so easy to get along with and so friendly, and he said, 'Listen, don't get any ideas, because Eisenhower can be very, very tough when he gets mad. Remember, he's an Army man, a five-star general.'"

Still, Del believes none of today's politicians measure up to Ike.

"They just don't have the standing, you know," she said. "We're such a great country. It just seems like we should have more outstanding people to choose from."

What do you think? Send us your opinion in the message section below.

Grace, Ena and Del were three of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

Two WWII POWs recall two very different experiences

Jen Brown — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:46:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Ben Trimboli, who turned 100 years old on March 15, was one of the first American soldiers into Normandy, crash-landing in a glider.

Family photo

Ben Trimboli in the Army circa 1943.

"We had more casualties landing with gliders," the former Army private said in a recording of his World War II experiences. "Those fields were all full of stumps and wires and everything. I unbuckled [just before impact] because I knew we were making a nosedive, and I landed on top of the pilot and copilot, who were dead. Getting out of the glider, the Germans were shooting at us, and we were firing back."

Ben and his fellow members of the 82nd Airborne Division fought the Germans foxhole to foxhole, field to field for three days, until June 9, when Ben's luck ran out.

"I got hit with a hand grenade," he said. "I saw my leg go up in the air, and there was all of this shrapnel behind my knee. The Germans came over and told the guys that could walk - they all gave up - to pick up the wounded and take them to the back."

Ben and the other wounded G.I.'s were put in a shelter along with wounded German soldiers.

"French girls were feeding them, and we were all the way in the back, so they came over and said, 'Oh, there are Americanos, Americanos.' They wanted to feed us first, but we told them, 'No, we're the prisoners, feed the other German soldiers that are wounded.' So they fed them, and after they got through eating, they came over and gave us the same bowl and poured soup in that bowl, and we had to eat it there, too."

Ben was a prisoner of war from June 9 until June 28, 1944, when he was freed by American forces. All in all, he said, the Germans weren't all that bad.

"They treated us all right," he told me recently. "They helped all of us wounded soldiers."

War in a concentration camp
Michael Stoney's treatment by the Germans was much harsher. A captain in the Polish army, Stoney, who turned 100 on Aug. 8, was captured soon after World War II broke out on Sept. 1, 1939.

Michael Stoney on his 100th birthday, Aug. 8, 2008

"They put me in a concentration camp," Michael said in a recent interview. "I was Polish and they probably thought that I might be spying for Poland or England."

Michael once told his daughter-in-law that "1,000 went in, but only seven came out."

"It was very bad, you see," he told me, "because there was hunger, hard work - very hard work - and all the imaginable persecution which happened."

I asked him how he managed to survive.

"I was forced to work in the field, agriculture field," he said. "I worked very hard, very hard, and they acknowledged that. They treated me as a good laborer."

Fortunately, both Ben's and Michael's stories have happy endings.

Ben's leg mended, and he returned home in February 1945 to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he married and raised two children. A retired bricklayer, he lives today in Potomac, Md.

Michael lived in England after the war, then emigrated to America. He married, raised a family and worked as a masseur at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. He now lives in Lake Placid, Fla., with Jenny, his wife of 52 years.

Ben and Michael were two of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.

Centenarian remembers Dr. King's 'I have a dream' speech

Jen Brown — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:04:00 GMT

From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington

Della Jones, 105, remembers well Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, delivered 45 years ago today from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

"Oh, I thought it was wonderful," Della said of the historic 1963 speech. "I think we all should have a dream for our lives and work towards that dream."

AP file

In this Aug. 28, 1963, file photo the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledges the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial for his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington, D.C.

Della's dream was to be a teacher, and she taught for 36 1/2 years, first in Kentucky's black schools and eventually in its integrated schools.

"I just kept persevering, and I always had good results for doing so," she said in a recent interview.

Della began her teaching career in 1924 in a segregated rural school in southeastern Kentucky, crying herself to sleep at night because she was away from her home near Cincinnati for the first time. She was 19 years old.

"It was such a secluded place," she told the Grant County News. "But I made a commitment and was determined to finish up the year."

Della kept her commitment but stopped teaching in 1929 to marry Bradley Jones, then resumed teaching years later. When she decided to get her college degree, she cleaned dorms for 17 straight summers to pay her way through Kentucky State University.

She received her degree at the age of 53, and Dr. King gave the commencement address at her college graduation. He was 29 at the time, already a famous civil rights leader.

"It was a beautiful day in June of 1957, and everybody felt rejoiced," Della remembers. "Dr. King told the graduates to continue doing the best they knew how and to accomplish these things by persevering, and I always remembered that, and I tried hard to improve on whatever I was doing."

Della's biggest thrill that day was meeting Dr. King and shaking his hand. He congratulated her on her degree, but she doesn't remember what she said in response.

"I was just so thrilled to even be in his presence," she said.

Della taught grade school and high school during her long teaching career and finished up as a high school librarian.

"I loved biographies," she said, "to see how people progressed and improved their lives, and I always tried to do the same thing."

Her husband died in 1969, and their adopted daughter passed away in 1972. Della retired in 1974 and lives alone in the same house in Williamstown, Ky., that she's been in for 85 years, despite being a double amputee and confined to a wheelchair.

"So I'm here," she said, "an old lady at 105 doing what she can by herself."

Well, not exactly. She's surrounded by devoted friends and family, including the local sheriff, who lives down the street and looks in on her regularly. They all got together for Della's birthday on July 7.

"I had a marvelous birthday," she said. "It was a joy, it was just a joyful time. I've enjoyed life, and I've always looked for the best and gotten the best that I could out of it."

A wonderful life for a wonderful lady.

Della was one of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.