Posted on 09/01/2006 5:25:12 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
LOS ANGELES (AP) - George Johnson, considered California's oldest living person at 112 and the state's last surviving First World War veteran, had experts shaking their heads over his junk food diet.
"He had terrible, bad habits. He had a diet largely of sausages and waffles," Dr. Stephen Coles, founder of the Gerontology Research Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Friday.
The 5-foot-7, 140-pound Johnson died of pneumonia Wednesday at his Richmond home in Northern California.
"A lot of people think or imagine that your good habits and bad habits contribute to your longevity," Coles said. "But we often find it is in the genes rather than lifestyle."
Johnson, who was blind and living alone until his 110th birthday when a caregiver began helping him, built his own house by hand in 1935. He got around using a walker in recent years.
Johnson was the only living Californian considered a "super centenarian," a designation for those ages 110 or older, Coles said. His group is now in the process of validating a Los Angeles candidate who claims to be 112 years old.
Coles participated in an autopsy Thursday that was designed to study Johnson's health.
"All of his organs were extremely youthful. They could have been the organs of someone who was 50 or 60, not 112. Clearly his genes had some secrets," Coles said.
"Everything in his body that we looked at was clean as a whistle, except for his lungs with the pneumonia," Coles said. "He had no heart disease, he had no cancer, no diabetes and no Alzheimer's.
"This is a mysterious case that someone could be so healthy from a pathology point of view and that there is no obvious cause of death."
The family was in favour of an autopsy. Relatives said Johnson wanted them to allow it if it would help science.
Born May 1, 1894, Johnson's father managed the Baltimore and Ohio Railway station in Philadelphia.
Johnson was working in 1917 as a mail sorter for the U.S. Post Office when he was drafted into the army. The war ended a year later, and he never served in combat.
Two years later, he and his wife moved to Northern California.
"It was a great adventure in those days. We were young and wanted the experience," Johnson said in a March interview with the Contra Costa Times.
The couple settled in Fresno, Calif., and remained there until 1935, when they bought property in Richmond. They used lumber salvaged from dismantled buildings to build their house.
During Second World War, Johnson worked at the Kaiser shipyard in Richmond and later managed the heating plant at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland.
He remained in good health and continued driving until he was 102, when his vision began to fail.
Johnson's wife died in 1992 at the age of 92. The couple had no children.
Probably right. If his wife were a cigar-smoker, it wasn't even 2nd-hand. Those people don't even inhale - they just make everyone else firsthand smokers.
Tsk tsk. If not for a lifetime of risky behavior like that, he should've made 120, easily.
Sausage and waffles? Well, there's a good chance I'll live a long time...
My grandpa lived into his 90's, and he ate raw eggs and drank Stroh's Bohemian beer.
Yes and I bet at least once a week your mother cut up a chicken and did not have to call in a HAZMAT team to spray down the cutting board and knife.
Shame he didn't have children to pass on those genes... wife lived to 92...
That's interesting, because the oldest living man also has no children...
Hehe; forgot about that!
"That's interesting, because the oldest living man also has no children..."
Maybe these old boys avoided fluoridation?
(tip of the hat to "Dr. Strangelove")
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating
water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices,
soup, sugar, milk...ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six,
Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh?
It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into
our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly
without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/quotes
Yes, I agree. When I see kids out on their bicycles, dressed and padded and helmeted as if they were going into major combat, I just sigh and wish they could go back a few decades to the time when a kid just hopped on his/her bike and headed down to the vagrant-free library with a bag of books hanging from the handlebar...
Ah welcome to my world. Smalltown, USA. We still leave our doors unlocked, car keys in the ignition, and neighbors help neighbors. It's a culture shock to go into a bigger city now.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he smoked occasionally and took a belt of whiskey on a regular basis. But the lamestream media would never report that if he did.
I bet he walked every day too and stayed away from most other processed junk foods like Doritos, Cheez-Its and Little Debbie Snack Cakes.
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