Secrets to long life: Simplicity, love, learning

Carroll Stewart never imagined he would live so long.

He’s never contemplated how he managed it, how he outlived his younger brothers, his daughter, his two wives, nearly every friend he’s known.

Life just goes on, and he goes along with it. It’s as simple as that.

“There’s no secret,” he says, with a look that says I have just asked a question about as intriguing as a ham sandwich. “I’ve never really thought much about it.”

He gets asked those questions these days because on Thursday he turns 104.

	Volunteer Albuquerque Senior Companion Program: www.cabq.gov/seniors/volunteer-opportunities/senior-companion-program

He’s still pretty sharp for a guy who was born three years before the Titanic hit the iceberg. He still drives, still gets around without the use of a wheelchair, walker or cane. He lives independently at the Encino Gardens in Southeast Albuquerque. He cooks his own food. His left eye droops a bit, his right ear bears a hearing aid.

He’s still going along.

He still works part time Monday through Friday at the St. Theresa Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center, where he helps out residents, many of them decades younger than he is. The volunteer position is through the city of Albuquerque’s Senior Companion Program.

He is the program’s oldest volunteer.

“I read to them, carry on conversations,” he says. “Whatever they would like me to do.”

To thank him for his work, the city’s Department of Senior Affairs is throwing Carroll a birthday party Thursday. His niece, Sandra Smallwood, is making him dinner. His son, Darrell Stewart, is flying in from Connecticut.

That’s fine, he says, though he’s not sure what all the fuss is about.

And he’s still not sure what he can offer me to explain how he’s managed to stay healthy so long.

But I am persistent.

And so we talk.

In this family portrait taken in the early 1940s, Carroll Stewart, upper right, is seen with wife Marge, his daughter Karyl Ann and son Daryl Dean. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)

Stewart ticks off the events in his long life like chapters in a history book. He was the oldest of three boys, his childhood spent mostly on his family’s farms in Kenmare, N.D., and Greensburg, Ind., where, he says, he ate too much meat, particularly the pork from the pigs his father slaughtered.

“I’m not much for meat anymore,” he says. “I was then. But I’ve been mostly vegetarian for a while.”

I make a mental note: No meat, long life.

In the 1920s with the farm faltering, Stewart’s dad tried his hand in the milling business, then the furniture business and then as a roustabout after he moved the family to Oklahoma, where oil wells were sprouting like dreams and fortunes were being made.

Stewart was a young man in the 1930s when the Great Depression shattered those dreams and the Dust Bowl parched the land.

“Best thing you could do in those days was go to school to learn something,” he says. “So I learned how to type and shorthand at a business school.”

Another mental note: Expand mind, live long.

Stewart later worked as a secretary for a refinery in Coffeyville, Kan., where he met his first wife, Margie, and raised their two children. When the United States entered World War II and then as the troops started marching home again in the 1940s, Stewart’s secretarial skills earned him a job with the Veterans Administration’s insurance division. The job moved him from Washington, D.C., to New York to Dallas.

Stewart tried on other jobs. For a time, he ran a bakery in Arlington, Texas, called the Donut King. He managed hotels in Gallup, Tucson and Albuquerque. After retirement, he lived for a time in Las Vegas, Nev. He found his way back to Albuquerque 10 years ago.

Another note: Variety, spice of long life.

He was married to Margie for 57 years; nine years to second wife, Anna. He was, he says, well-loved.

Note: Love, long life.

So, OK, he says, maybe he does know the secret to long life: his daily dose of organic apple cider vinegar (he prefers Bragg) in a glass of warm water with a spoonful of honey to cut the sharpness.

“I seem to crave vinegar,” he says.

And whole-grain bread he makes himself, soups, salads, fruits, nuts and dark chocolate.

And reading the Bible, going to church, maybe that as well, he says. Exercise? Maybe not that.

I duly note it all.

“But you know, my life is pretty simple,” he says.

And there it is. Simplicity.

In this complicated world, maybe just that, pure and simple, is the biggest secret of all.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal