Back in the early 70’s I had the opportunity to spend some time with a centarian. He was quite lucid and had all his faculties. He was born in the 1870’s and could tell some really neat stories. He seemed to have all the time in the world and I could sit and listen to him for hours.
I remember when Rush Limbaugh interviewed his grandpa, Rush Limbaugh, Sr., on the occasion of his 100th. He was like the guy you describe. He was still a practicing attorney at the time of his death at 104.
Edna almost froze to death when she was 100! An amazing story.
EXCERPT:
A widow since her husband, Earl, died in 1938 of a heart attack, Parker lived alone in their farmhouse until age 100, when she moved into her son Clifford’s home. She cheated death a few months later.
One winter night, Clifford and his wife returned home from a high school basketball game to find her missing. Don, their son, says he discovered his grandmother in the snowy darkness near the farm’s apple orchard. He scooped up her rigid body and rushed back to the house.
“She was stiff as a 2-by-4. We really thought that was the end of her,” he said.
But Parker recovered fully, suffering only frostbitten fingertips.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89771009
(Another article I read goes into more detail on the paramedics arriving and Edna being rushed to the hospital. I’ll try to find it in the morning and post it.)