112-year-old aloof from age hubbub

When I heard that a Mainer named Fred Hale Sr. had earned the distinction of becoming the oldest man in the country, I figured he would have been honored by his sudden celebrity.

I couldn’t ask the man himself, a native of Franklin County who left Maine three years ago to live in a nursing home outside of Syracuse, N.Y., not far from his son’s home. Hale Sr. is remarkably healthy for a man of 112, both mentally and physically, but his hearing is all but gone.

So I called his son Fred Hale Jr. and asked what his father thought about all the media attention he got Monday after attaining his stunning rank in the annals of gerontology. Hale Jr. said it certainly was a busy day for his father, who managed to charm the five TV and newspaper reporters who showed up at the nursing home to record the event.

But any interviewers who believed that Hale Sr. shared their sense of awe about his incredible age, or thought he might be proud of himself for having lived so long, went away disappointed.

“As far as my father is concerned, this is no big deal at all,” said Hale Jr., 81, a University of Maine alumnus who worked as an engineer for General Electric.

Hale Jr. said his father has never been the least bit interested in his own longevity. Aside from the teaspoon of bee pollen he takes with each meal, and an occasional sip of whiskey to get him going in the morning, he has no idea what has allowed him to live as long as he has.

“He has his bad days,” said Hale Jr., “when he wonders why he’s still around.”

Hearing that, I was reminded of a delightful woman from Levant who died in August 2001, when she was just two months shy of her 108th birthday. During our interview on her 107th birthday, Helen Higgins said that being one of the oldest people in the state was a preposterous notion, so far-fetched that it was hardly worth considering. In fact, she would often joke that her beloved family should just stand her up in a barrel by the side of the road, put a plastic bag over her head and let the trash men haul her away.

“She never thought of herself as extraordinary in any way whatsoever, regardless of all the incredible change she had witnessed in her amazingly long life,” her granddaughter told me when Higgins died.

And neither, it seems, does Fred Hale Sr.

“When he turned 110 and became a supercentenarian,” said his son, “I didn’t realize there was even a name for people of that age. So I got a little curious and went on the Internet and found the people who keep records of this kind of thing. When I told my father that he was the fourth-oldest man in the world, it still didn’t make any impression on him. He never thought age was anything to make a fuss over. I guess it has to do with the way he was brought up.”

Hale Sr. was born Dec. 1, 1890, into a farming family in New Sharon, near Farmington. As a boy, he worked on the farm and rode with the teamsters in winter, jumping off the wagon to clear a path for the horses in the heavy snow. At 19, he married Flora Mooers, a local woman with whom he raised five children. Hale Sr. later became a railway mail clerk, dropping off and picking up pouches of mail for each of the towns along a route that stretched from Boston to Bangor.

When he retired in 1957, he raised bees, chickens and a large vegetable garden at his home in South Portland. Flora died in 1979.

“He also kept busy with odd jobs over the years,” said his son. “He parked cars for a while, and worked at Scarborough Downs raceway as a ticket seller. He was always active, and loved going to high school basketball and football games.”

He visited Japan when he was 95, and toured Germany a year later. At 100, he shot a deer while on a hunting trip with his grandsons. When Hale Sr. was 107, the Guinness Book of Records recognized him as the world’s oldest licensed driver.

“That’s when my brother Norman and I decided he shouldn’t be driving anymore,” said Hale Jr. “So we talked to the insurance company, but the agent said Dad’s policy couldn’t be canceled because of age. So we got a doctor to talk to Dad and tell him it wasn’t safe to drive anymore.”

In 2000, Hale Sr. moved into an assisted-living center in Westbrook, where he continued to read the paper every day, played cards, and even attempted to learn the intricacies of the laptop computer that a family member gave him. With his friends all gone, Hale Sr. decided it was time to move to the Syracuse area to be near his son.

With the death on Monday of 113-year-old John McMorran, a Michigan native, Hale Sr. assumed the title of the nation’s oldest man. According to the California-based Gerontology Research Group, Hale Sr. is one of only 41 known supercentenarians in the world, and one of only 11 men age 110 or more. Through the magic of bee pollen, honey and good genes, he just might live long enough to become the oldest American, an honor now held by 113-year-old Mary Christian of San Pablo, Calif.

But if he does, and the press shows up to record this next historic milestone in his life, Hale Sr. will once again be the only person in the room who can’t imagine what all the fuss is about.

“He honestly doesn’t care about breaking records and the publicity,” said his son. “And the only thing the family cares about at this point is that he’s still physically and mentally fit at his age. That’s what makes this special. Without that, being the oldest man in America isn’t worth anything.”