- yesterday
Jack Weber, a World War II veteran, has lived through the Great Depression, global conflict, personal loss, and a century of change — and he’s still thriving. In this inspiring interview, he shares the habits, mindset, and values that have helped him live a long, healthy, and meaningful life.
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00:00My attitude is, don't let the old man in. In fact, I had a shirt that says that,
00:06don't let the old man in. I refuse to think old. My name is Jack Weber. I'm a
00:13hundred and one in sound mind and sound body. I feel like I'm the luckiest man
00:20on the face of the earth. I think to some extent my good health at this stage is
00:25from the fact that I never, never smoked. And I've never been doing drinking to
00:34any excess. I eat a healthy breakfast. I don't eat meat to excess, but I do have
00:41chicken which I like very much. I like the outdoors. I'm not an indoor person. In
00:50fact, even now, when the sun is shining and it's not too cold out, I will put on
00:57a coat and I'll sit out on the patio in the sunshine. And also on a mental stage,
01:05if you think young, more than likely you're going to act young. Those are the
01:11factors that I think get me to where I am today.
01:14So what does it mean to think young? I don't complain. I will not bother other
01:20people with my, with my problem. I refuse to think I can't do this or I can't do
01:26that. I know my limitations. A short time go, was it this year or last year? I fell
01:34on the patio. That is what's got me now walking with a cane because I'm determined
01:39not to fall again. I'm still in good enough health that I can still enjoy my
01:46rounds of golf.
01:47Nice shot, Jack!
01:49I have a whole series of exercises that I can do indoors. One, two. I do have a little weight to
01:59make my hands to keep my biceps healthy. We have a bike here. I go on and I try to stay
02:11on that bike for 15 to 20 minutes and to keep my legs in healthy form. The other
02:19exercises I'm doing are stretching exercises where I have my cane and I raise it up. One, two.
02:27Stretching those muscles. Stretching those muscles. Hopefully that's keeping me limber and healthy.
02:37Four, five. And when this weather opens up and the pool opens up here, I'll be in that swimming
02:48pool. I don't swim anymore, but I do water walking.
02:54Sixteen!
02:56At the shallow end, water comes up to my chest and I go in the pool with my arms free as if I'm walking,
03:09but with the water, it's resistance to your legs. I try to do 40 laps.
03:16Nineteen!
03:16Do I have some aches and pains? Sure I do, but I don't talk about them and I don't let them run my life.
03:26I can feel it in my body that the muscles are not what they were. My walking is limited. There was a time I
03:36could walk for miles, but those days are over. I don't push myself to do something I don't think
03:43I can do. That is, I think, important because you physically could hurt yourself doing something like
03:50that. Good job. I do take medications to help me sleep, which is important to me. And without those
04:02medications, I'd be tossing and turning all night long. If you don't make life difficult for whoever
04:08is around you, you'll get along in life.
04:10And do you feel like you are a hundred years old?
04:14At times I do. At times I do. I'm not going to deny that. There are times that, especially when I
04:23have to stumble to remember something that I should have known all the time. And I often have to ask
04:31when I wake up, what day of the week is this? But most of the things I can remember,
04:37and especially things that are, I think, important to me.
04:46The most challenging thing about being a hundred is that sometimes time hangs heavy on your hands.
04:54There's enough things in the day to do because I don't have a full-time job. I try to combat that by
05:03not getting up at nine o'clock in the morning like I did when I opened my office at nine o'clock. I try
05:10to stay up later at night than I used to. I used to go to turn out the lights at 10 o'clock at night.
05:17Now I try to go closer to 1130. But life goes on.
05:23Nothing came easy to me in life. Nothing came easy. I had to fight for everything that I
05:32had going back to a childhood. My childhood was during the Great Depression. And I remember
05:39so many of my friends, their fathers were out of work. But my dad always had a job. My mother was a
05:46sports person. She got day passes to a facility in the Bronx called Castle Hill Bathing Park. And it
05:54was there that I really spent the summers in my childhood, playing tennis, playing handball,
06:03and meeting girls, which was a big part of my life too at that time. But it was a happy childhood.
06:11The neighborhood was Jewish neighborhood and an Italian neighborhood. And we decided that we were
06:19going to have a baseball team. And we called ourselves the Juniors. The sweatshirts had a big
06:26J on it. And I remember the Italians would always say, here come the Jews, here come the Jews.
06:33It wasn't insulting, I don't think, but it was the way the things were at that time.
06:40But there was never, fortunately, any gang wars that might have been going on in other neighborhoods.
06:49And how did the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe affect your childhood?
06:56Being of the Jewish faith, we knew what Hitler was doing to the Jewish people in Germany.
07:03The extermination of Jewish people. I was worried that the time could come where England could fall.
07:13He could think that he could conquer the United States as well.
07:18Unfortunately, those things never happened.
07:19And on Pearl Harbor Day, I enlisted in the Navy.
07:26The people of the United States will not stand idly by.
07:31I originally went to the Air Force office, but my eyes were not good enough for that. So I went across
07:38the street to the Navy. Ended up with a program that I changed my life.
07:44When I volunteered, the recruiting office found out that I was in college. And they said,
07:51you stay in school and when you graduate, you'll be an officer in the Navy.
07:57I originally was a pre-med student. And the commanding officer said,
08:02Jack, there's an immediate opening in dental school in Cleveland, Ohio.
08:07Are you interested? And I, without hesitation, said yes.
08:14I'll always remember on VJ Day, everybody was celebrating. If you were in uniform,
08:21you could be sure you were going to get swarmed by ladies hugging you, which I enjoyed very much.
08:30If it was up to me, I would have continued my career in the Navy.
08:34But my wife, Betty, and I didn't blame her. I was gone for several months and she had a baby at home.
08:44And when I said I couldn't get this Navy career, she said, no, she says, I want you to leave a normal
08:51life, not a Navy life where I know that right now you're going to be in Washington. But in two years,
08:59they're going to tell you again, you got to go out to sea. And she says, I couldn't live through that
09:06again. It was just a terrible experience having a new baby in the house. She was very persuasive
09:14and I didn't blame her. And so I went back to my commanding officer and thanked him very much for the
09:21offer. But I'm going to decline. And that started my career as a dentist.
09:33Yes, I do remember. I was in a class in anatomy and I'm looking around the room for a likely partner.
09:41And this lovely co-ed came up to me and said, would you like to be my lab partner?
09:48My mother didn't raise a stupid kid, you know, so I jumped at the chance. She was a lovely lady.
09:54That became a turning point in my life. She went from a lab partner to my college sweetheart. And my wife
10:02and mother of my five children, grandmother of my 11 grandchildren, I think at that time,
10:08that changed my life. We had a very successful and healthy marriage for many, many years.
10:15She was a battler. She was a fighter. She made a life of her own as well.
10:21And needless to say, with the five kids, that's enough to keep anybody busy.
10:31Well, my wife passed away just 20 years ago this year, in 2004. She developed breast cancer and she
10:42fought it for 10 years. But it finally traveled to her lungs
10:49and then there was no cure for that. So she passed on much too soon in life, much too early.
11:01She should be here with me sitting right here right now.
11:05How does that feel to lose the love of your life?
11:09It's not easy. It is not easy at all. It's been 20 years. But my kids said to me, Dad, you got to get back
11:20into life again. You got too many good years ahead of you, too many things that you want to do. So I did follow
11:27their advice. Although I think about her most every day, I have gone on with my life.
11:35It must be hard to outlive the people you love, whether it's your wife or friends.
11:43Yeah. To tell you the truth, I don't have any of my good friends that are still alive.
11:52They're all gone. All five of my best friends have all passed away. So I'm the last man standing.
12:05I know that life goes on. And that's the only answer I can give you. Life goes on. And if you
12:13spend your life grieving about something, you're not doing service to yourself or to your family.
12:19I would say because of the home that has been opened up to me here with my daughter and her
12:27husband and her son, who was here a good bit of the time, it's not lonely. You were babies.
12:36It's not like I'm sitting in a house by myself or in a facility with strangers. It makes all the
12:44difference when you have a loving family with you. Wow. What has changed most in a hundred years?
12:55I would say the internet. It used to be that if you wanted to know the answer to something,
13:03you'd have to go to the library and do a great deal of research to find out about something.
13:09Today, with a snap of your fingers, the internet has that answer for you.
13:14Amazing how much garbage gets on your computer.
13:18There are some things that I don't approve of. And that's the younger people today,
13:24including some of my grandchildren, live on that computer. They walk around with it in their hands
13:32all day long, looking at different things, maybe chatting with all their other friends on that
13:39computer. And I don't think that's healthy. There was a time that people talked to each other. And
13:47people now are just not conversing with each other as much as they used to. I used to come home from work
13:53and we'd sit around the dining room table and I'd ask the kids, what's happening in your school today?
14:01What's doing? And I'd get an answer from them. I don't think that's happening anymore today.
14:08It's just not the way that things are. And so the whole ability to converse is disappearing.
14:17What excites me about the future? I think more than anything else,
14:25even though today's politics bothers me, there's no question in my mind about that. I know that it's
14:31only a four-year term and life goes on. I do have great confidence in the younger generation that
14:39they're going to do the right thing. What do you think the younger generation can learn from you?
14:43That there's no easy road in life. Nothing comes easy. You can't just assume that this is going to
14:53happen and that's going to happen. You've got to fight for it. I never gave up. If I had something
14:59that I wanted to do, I was persistent in getting it done. I've had hardships, some more than others,
15:07but you can't give up. You've got to fight. You've got to stay with it.
15:15There are not so many centenarians in America. Most of them are actually women. How does it feel to be
15:22part of such a rare group of centenarians? I tell you, as I sit here with you today, I don't feel like
15:31my days are numbered. I feel that I have good years in front of me yet. Let the party begin.
15:39So I'm not saying I'm ready to turn it in. Funny thing I say that because my mother was 99 when she
15:49passed away. I came in to visit her one day in the nursing home and she said, Jack, I want to let
15:56you know something. I'm not enjoying life anymore. She says, I'm just not enjoying it. I'm not doing
16:02the things I wanted to do. I can't be active. You know me. I was always active. She says,
16:07what's the sense of me hanging around? I said, Mom, are you sure? She says, yes. I made up my mind
16:15and I don't want you to try to talk me out of it. So what she did was stop eating and she passed away
16:24shortly thereafter. She said, I've led a good life, but I am not enjoying myself anymore. But that don't
16:31apply to me. I'm enjoying life. So I'm not going to stop eating.
16:41And after 100 years, what do you believe is the meaning of life?
16:47You can't get anywhere in life until you start doing things for other people.
16:54If I have a purpose, it's to help my family. They all need help. I guarantee you that they all need
17:02help in one capacity or another. I've been very fortunate. My investments have been very successful.
17:10So financially, I'm very stable. And I want to use that funds to help
17:17help any of my kids who need help on investments, money. The stock market goes up and down. But in the
17:27long run, over many years, the stock market always goes up. And so if you're not in day-to-day trading
17:36in stocks and you're in for the long haul, and even if you want to start small, make an investment.
17:44Don't go to the bank and put it in a savings account that gives you two percent interest.
17:49Put it in a good solid stock. And a mutual fund is probably your best bet.
17:55So as my kids have gotten older, I've preached that to them. And hopefully that has helped them.
18:06The kids had been after me for many years to write my memoir. And during the pandemic,
18:16I had nothing to do. So I couldn't argue with them because I had been putting it off for a long time.
18:24I started writing those stories. I never thought it was going to turn into the book that it is now.
18:32I made a gift of that book to every member of my family. Even the little ones who couldn't even
18:41read the book if they had to. Their parents took it from them and said, I'm going to put it in a safe
18:47place. And when they can read, they're going to read your book.
18:54That handsome guy. And so that makes me feel good that the lessons in life are in that book.
19:04What is the best thing about being 100?
19:07I feel that if I can be an inspiration to somebody, that makes it all worthwhile.
19:16I become very good friends with the golf professional at the course.
19:21Here is our legend, he calls me. He's a legend of this golf course. Most times,
19:27people I'm playing with find out one way or another my age, and they'll all say the same thing.
19:34Or do I envy you? You are my idol. That's the best thing about being 100. To be somebody's idol.
19:44To be envied in that regard makes me walk home with my chest jumped out.
19:50I feel like a million dollars.
19:58Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I gotta take a bow.
20:05I got an audience here. I gotta take a bow.
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