At 100 years old, Mildred Busat credits genetics for her longevity — specifically, the genes she inherited from her mother.
“Everybody in her family lived into their 90s, a couple in their 100s,” Busat said. “So, I guess that’s where I got it.”
Recently, Busat joined three other senior residents of The Palms at Ponte Vedra Assisted Living and Memory Care to reflect on their memories of the past century. Sitting around a table next to Busat were Geraldine Iwanowski, also 100; Harry Hansgen, 97; and Charles Thonus, 101.
They are members of a select group: those who lived through the end of the silent movie era, the stock market collapse of 1929, the Great Depression, World War II, the birth of rock and roll, the Cold War, mankind’s first steps on the moon, the first home computers, the rise of the internet and much, much more.
Busat was born in 1922 in Norfolk, Virginia, where she lived until she finished college. After getting married, she moved to New Jersey and then to Connecticut, where she lived for more than 40 years.
“I was a typical Southern girl,” she recalled. “I didn’t do anything unusual. I grew up like all the kids around, went to school and played in the street.” One activity she recalled was roller-skating on the paved street.
These days, people purchase and decorate their Christmas trees far in advance of the holiday. But that was not the case in the Busat household. Santa Claus would bring the tree during his visit on Christmas Eve, and neither Busat nor her younger sister got to see it until the next morning.
But that wasn’t the only way things have changed since those days.
“You got one or two nice toys,” she said. “We didn’t get a roomful.”
Iwanowski was born Sept. 11, 1922, at a family farm in Packwaukee, Wisconsin. Not quite 3 pounds at birth, she wasn’t expected to live but survived after being incubated in the warm radiance of a wood stove.
Graduating high school in 1940, she paid her way through Wisconsin State Teachers’ College. She taught for a while and then married and moved with her husband to Jacksonville in 1949. Here, she raised seven children.
She became a substitute teacher in 1970 and impacted the lives of countless young students over the next 40 years.
“I loved my work,” she said. “It was fun. I enjoyed every day. I taught first grade, and the kids were cute.”
In fact, her love of teaching was such that she never actually retired and could be found at the head of the classroom when she was 90.
Thonus was the youngest of 14 children born to a couple who had immigrated from Holland.
“I had some good, big, tough, older brothers to watch out for me as a kid and teach me things,” he recalled.
He became skilled at carpentry and, by the time he went off to fight in World War II, he was capable of building a house by himself.
Thonus was 20 years old when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and he went right away to enlist. But he wasn’t called up until the following July.
“They said they had no place to put me,” he said. “So many young guys wanted to go in.”
During his time in the armed services, he had a close call in the South Pacific.
“A bomb hit 20 feet away from me on the beach,” he said. The explosion damaged his hearing for the rest of his life.
He served in the U.S. Navy until December 1945.
He went on to work as a carpenter and did some farming on the side. He worked on just about every kind of project you can think of: office buildings, tunnels, highway overpasses, shopping centers, etc.
He quit working in construction after he turned 65.
Thonus said he’d never expected to see 100, though he credited plenty of time spent outdoors and clean living for his longevity.
“The young guys I hung around with growing up thought they’d never see the year 2000,” he said. “That was out of sight. No way would we ever see that. And here, that is 22 years ago!”
At 101, Thonus knows just where he stands on the issues, some of which go back to his youth and seeing how World War I veterans were treated.
In 1932, thousands of the veterans and their families gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand redemption of their service bonus certificates. Because the Great Depression put these veterans out of work, they needed the money, but the government would not redeem the certificates until 1945. The U.S. Army drove the protestors out. Another attempt the next year was also unsuccessful.
While Thonus didn’t refer specifically to these events, he did make say he never felt good about the way World War I veterans were treated.
“To this day, I feel bad about the World War I veterans, especially ones that were disabled or hurt in different ways,” he said. “Seeing them selling pencils on the street or newspapers or whatever. I think a lot more should have been done for those people. It hurts yet thinking about that.”
Hansgen was born in Albany, New York, and grew up in the area around New York City. He described it as a “typical, big city” but without all the crime we hear about today.
He recalled how, in those days, automobiles operated by stick shift and were not equipped with modern conveniences like air conditioning.
“In fact, my father’s cars never even had heaters,” he recalled. “You kept a rag in the car in the wintertime. You either left the windows open in the winter and froze or shut the windows and kept wiping the steam off the windows as you drove.”
The earliest U.S. president he remembers is Herbert Hoover.
“I remember the name, but I don’t remember much about him,” Hansgen said.
On Dec. 8, 1941, Hansgen was riding on a school bus when other students began discussing the latest news: the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
“It didn’t really register with me, how it was going to affect my life,” he said. It was news from a place far away.
Ultimately, Hansgen served aboard a Coast Guard troop transport during World War II, ferrying troops to Calcutta.
On one trip, he traveled by train to California and boarded a ship, which took him to India. When his work was finished there, the ship sailed west until it pulled into port in New York. The trip literally took him around the world.
After the war, he became a professional musician, playing saxophone, clarinet and flute with some of the biggest stars in the business. One of his biggest performances was the General Motors Motor Show in the 1950s at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.
“It was a very glamorous profession,” he said. “But you get tired of constantly traveling. You’re never at home.”
This was especially difficult when he was performing around the holidays.
So, he changed careers and went into the insurance business. Eventually, he moved to the Sunshine State, but he wasn’t done with music yet.
“When I came to Florida, I hadn’t played for about five years,” he recalled. “But there were very few musicians here then. As soon as word got out that I could read music, right away they got me playing.”
He performed during circuses and ice shows and other events.
One of the biggest historical events of the last century occurred in 1969: The Apollo 11 moon landing. Though many people living today have memories of that achievement, not all of them can say they were alive before the first liquid propellant rocket was launched in 1926.
The group recalled when they first heard that the landing was being planned.
“I thought it was a hoax,” admitted Thonus. “Really. I thought I was listening to a cock-and-bull story. I really didn’t believe it at first. I said, ‘Oh, come on!’”
Busat was a bit busy with life here on Earth to think about such things.
“I was busy raising five children,” she said, laughing. “I probably was thinking about it at the time, but it didn’t affect me.”
Hansgen said he wasn’t particularly surprised that such a thing was coming because he had read so much about it in the newspaper.
“One thing impressed me,” he said. “My mother and father had seen man fly for the first time, and here’s man landing on the moon — all in their lifetime!”
In fact, Hansgen says he is amazed at how fast technology has developed.
“I remember as a youngster listening to the radio where they were receiving a broadcast from Europe,” he said. “It was all static. I thought it was wonderful. And today, you turn on the television and they get television pictures just as clear from the local station as they do from overseas.”
Busat has adapted to this rapidly changing landscape.
“I’ve learned to use my iPad, which is good,” she said. “Something I never thought I’d do. And I do a pretty good job on it!”
