The world’s oldest World War II veteran turns 110 today, and the Texas resident is celebrating in his usual style: cigars and whiskey.
“I feel good,” Richard Overton told NBC News. “A little old, but I’m getting around like everybody else.”
Born May 11, 1906, Overton is the oldest living World War II veteran. He fought as a corporal in an all-black 1887th Engineer Aviation Battalion against the Japanese in the South Pacific between 1942 and 1942, with stints in Hawaii, Guam and Iwo Jima, The Austin American-Statesman reports.
After returning home from the war, Overton bought a home for $4,000 in East Austin, the same home he lives in today. Neighbors are throwing him a birthday bash, but he’ll essentially spend the big day doing what he always does: puffing on his cigars and visiting with friends, and probably a nip of whiskey.
Overton said he’s expecting a large crowd of well-wishers, as has been the case in recent years.
“I’ll let them look at me and shake my hand,” the supercentenarian said. “I imagine there will be quite a few.”
Overton told Cigar Aficionado last spring that wakes up to a little whiskey in his coffee each morning to jump start his day, which often begins around 3 a.m., and enjoys about a dozen Tampa Sweet bargain cigars throughout the day.
“I don’t inhale them,” Overton said. “It’s the good taste.”
“Cigars are my friend,” he added. “They keep me company.”
The whiskey is to keep him loose and help him sleep at night, though he’s cut down some lately.
“Sometimes I’ll get up and put a little whiskey in my coffee,” he told the American-Statesman. “And at night when I go to bed, I put two tablespoons in my 7 Up. It makes you sleep soundly.”
In a profile for the news site in January, Overton let a reporter in on what he believes to be the reason for his extraordinarily long life.
“God give it to me,” he said. “They tried to kill me in the Army, but God wouldn’t let ‘em. I stayed for nearly five years and I didn’t get a scratch on me.”
Overton discussed his time at war with USA Today in 2013.
“War’s nothing to be into,” the former sharpshooter said. “You don’t want to go into the war if you don’t have to. But I had to go. I enjoyed it after I’d went and came back, but I didn’t enjoy it when I was over there. I had to do things I didn’t want to do.”
In recent years, Overton has met with the Austin mayor, and the nation’s first black president – something he didn’t expect to see in his lifetime, he said.
The veteran’s home his lined with pictures with presidents and governors and other important people, and he’s received an honorary degree from a local community college. His table fills with letters and pictures from folks from around the world who are amazed and inspired by his life, the American-Statesman reports.
But Overton seems to simply be happy to be alive, though he thinks someone else deserves the credit.
“You have to ask God about that,” he told The Washington Post in 2014. “He brought me here and he’s taking care of me, and nothing I can do about it.”
“To think I’d be older than every solider in the Union? You believe that? I didn’t ever think that,” he told KTBC last year. “This is a long trip and it ain’t through yet.”
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