Gerontology: Secret of Long Life

How old can a man be? Consider Charlie Smith, who last week celebrated what he calculated to be his 125th birthday in Bartow, Fla. A spry ex-slave, Charlie runs a small cold-drink and candy shop and thrives on raw sausages, crackers, 7UP, and telling people how old he is. Naturally, he has his secrets of longevity: "I never drink no green [plain] milk—only chocolate. I don't eat no table food—cooked stuff is not too good for me."

Out of loyalty to his country, Smith arbitrarily celebrates his birthday on the Fourth of July. He says he was born in Liberia in 1842, the son of one Lindy Watkins. When he was only twelve, he was lured on board a slave ship commanded by a Captain Legree and taken to the U.S. He was sold, assumed his owner's name and was freed after the Civil War. Some of his story seems to check out: Watkins was a common name in Liberia in the 1840s, and slave-ship records actually list two slave-ship captains named Legree. Charlie also recalls a few words of what has been identified as a Liberian dialect.

Lengthy Gaps. Smith's claim to great age has more documentary support than most, but it is not enough. None of the "evidence" specifically mentions him, or proves he was born where and when he says he was. There is no sure biological way to check his age or anyone else's. His account of his life contains lengthy, vague gaps. And though his memory goes far back, some suggest that what he is remembering about events is what he was told years after they had happened—just like Bridey Murphy, whose claims of "reincarnation" created such a stir a decade ago.

Most people tend to understate their age until they near 90; then longevity suddenly becomes a source of greater pride than irretrievable youth. Age 95 is a point at which many oldsters decide to call themselves "centenarians."

After that, they seem to age 15 years in the ten-year interval between U.S. censuses. Chief Actuary Robert J. Myers of the Social Security Administration has analyzed the 1960 census report of 10,000 self-proclaimed centenarians in the U.S. and concludes that the true number was no more than 3,700.

Well-documented records of the longevity of Civil War veterans give Myers his most solid evidence of the true rate of attrition by age. Of 2,100,000 men in the Union Army in the 1860s, there were 430,000 drawing pensions in 1914, all of whom had given reasonably satisfactory proof of age. By 1945—at which date one of those 15-year-old drummer boys who enlisted in the last weeks of the war would have to be 95—there were only 210 Union veterans left. In 1954, only one survived, and he died at 110.