John Strong paged through a stack of papers to pull out his honorable discharge certificates from the Navy. Strong fought in World War II and was discharged when he was 21. He still recalls stories from those days in detail.
He remembered a time he was sent to South America during the war and got shot.
“I heard pop, pop, pop, pop,” he said and pointed to four places on his torso where he was hit by bullets. He said he got fixed up by the doctor and lived through it.
Strong also received the Medal of Honor for his time in the military.
He grew up in Michigan but eventually moved to Alaska because he heard about the great summers and fishing. Now his granddaughter cares for him at his house in Anchorage. His life is a quiet one and he loves reminiscing.
“I got married to an old girl that was a pilot, and we enjoyed it,” Strong said. “We had a good life together.”
Not many people make it to 100, like Strong. About .03% of people in the United States are that age or older, though experts expect that to increase. There are only about 60 centenarians in Alaska, according to Yasmin Radbod, program director for Alaska’s Commission on Aging. She’s interviewed several of them and said people always have such different stories about how they’ve lived their lives.
“But the beautiful common thread from what I've noticed is people who love other people, people who have hope and faith in one another and in the goodness of the world, and people who do not give up,” Radbod said.
Strong attributed his long life to healthy choices.
“I have taught, I don't know how many young fellas, how to fly and like I told [them], if you want to have a decent life all your life, I said, ‘Do not smoke, drink or anything like that,’" he said.
Dr. Gene Quinn said those healthy choices can contribute to a longer, healthier life, along with staying active, eating whole foods and avoiding drugs. Quinn, a cardiologist in Anchorage, said close friendships and family relationships are also important.
“Another one of the things that leads to longevity is social interaction,” he said. “A lot of the older patients, one of the things that's protective for them is having a lot of social interaction and being very social.”
He said Alaska’s close-knit community can lead to those healthy social connections.
Quinn said he sometimes hears from patients that they don’t want to live a long time, to justify bad habits, like smoking, excessive drinking or not staying active.
“But that's not really the way that it works, right?” Quinn said. “It just means that the last 10 years of your life you're sick, rather than what you'd prefer to do is if you're going to live a long life, you live that life very well.”
Radbod’s interviews are part of a project documenting stories from Alaska’s centenarians. She said these older Alaskans were instrumental in shaping the state we know today. And she said she’s heard from older Alaskans with such varied life stories and different thoughts on how they’ve stayed healthy into old age.
When Radbod talked to 103-year-old Esteline “Estie” Moe, Moe attributed her long life to growing up on a farm in Minnesota.
“Well, you have to milk cows in order to get that,” she said. “We lived on a farm, and there were four of us kids, and we always had to milk cows every morning and every night, and that made me grow up fast.”
And she said she’s also consumed milk throughout her life. She and her husband drove up from Minnesota to Alaska in 1947.
“It's been a very good life,” she said. “It's what you make of it, of course.”
Norma Alderfer will turn 102 in November and said she’s worked hard and played hard.
“Still like a good martini in the evening with cheese and crackers or hors d'oeuvres,” she said.
And she said her memory is good because she’s kept her mind active by reading and doing puzzles.
John Strong said he’s only been interviewed three times in his life.
“I didn't go around bragging much about what I did, but like I say, I should have been a millionaire and living in a big old mansion, but I stayed right out, lived in the dirt,” he said and laughed. “That's me.”
He said he loves having visitors over to talk, but it’s not so easy for him to get up and move around on his own.
Strong said he has a few more things he needs to accomplish, so he hopes to be around for at least three or four more years.
