1916 was a very good year.
Jackie Gleason, Betty Grable, Dinah Shore, Gregory Peck, Glenn Ford, Olivia de Havilland and Walter Cronkite were all born in 1916.
So was Vero Beach’s Roberta Kirby.
Kirby just celebrated her 100th birthday, but this centenarian’s star quality still shines brightly at Vero’s Brennity senior living facility and at the offices of her cardiology and internal medicine specialist, Dr. Charles Celano.
Only a relative handful of Americans manage to live past the century mark but the number is increasing. A report by the Reuters news agency this year says “the number of Americans living beyond their 100th birthday has now surged by nearly 44 percent.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chimes in by citing better medical care as the key reason why the ranks of this country’s centenarians have climbed to well over 72,000 in recent years, and adds that more than 80 percent of today’s centenarians are women. U.S. News and World Report found there are more than 4,000 people 100 or older living in Florida.
Kirby, a Deerfield, Massachusetts, native, has her own ideas about why someone born the same year that Woodrow Wilson won his second term in the White House has remained healthy, bright and alert. “I think it’s a mixture of my Irish and German blood,” says Kirby with a gleam in her eye.
While the Italian-American Celano might not buy the Irish-German theory, he does agree that genetics play a key role in longevity.
“I was actually just looking at a statistic that says under [the age of] 90, 25 percent of longevity is impacted by genetics and 50 percent by environment . . . but once you get over 90, it’s driven a lot more by genetics.”
The soft-spoken Celano continues by adding, “The other thing that happens is every part of the body ages differently. The skin, the eyes, the lungs, the heart, the intestinal tract, they all kind of age a little differently in different people.”
However, there is currently no scientific way to predict the effects of someone’s genes on their longevity prospects.
“You see genetic testing advertised on television now so you can find out more about your ancestry,” says Celano, “[but] we’re not that good yet with predictions on longevity. I was just updating myself on that, too, and while there are studies going on trying to identify specific genes or markers for longevity, we’re just not there yet.”
Still, Celano has more experience with centenarians than most doctors. Two years ago he was caring for five patients 100 years old or older. Today he still cares for three, including Kirby, which he says is still “remarkable.”
Perhaps equally remarkable is the fact that Kirby isn’t really a Pollyanna-ish poster-child patient for modern medicine.
Her father had a tobacco farm up north when she was a child and she freely admits she smoked cigarettes for upwards of 35 years.
Then there’s her continuing fondness for the occasional shot of Canadian whiskey – something Celano has no problem with. “The fact that someone drinks an alcoholic beverage on a regular basis is not uncommon in people who live to this age,” he confides.
The most common trait Celano sees in his centenarian patients is activity. Not that they were or are gym rats he says, but rather that, “they were active, and outdoor active more than indoor active.”
Kirby certainly fits that bill. An avid swimmer and water-skier in her younger days and a math teacher for over 40 years, she still gets around pretty well with the help of her walker.
Kirby, who came to Florida in 1978, lost her first husband to a heart attack here in Vero. Eight years later, at the age of 75, she re-married after meeting another Massachusetts man and had another 24 years here with her second husband.
Asked about the biggest difference between going to see a doctor now versus her days in Deerfield, the quick-witted Kirby doesn’t miss a beat, promptly replying, “Well, he used to come to the house. We never went out to a doctor. The doctor always came to us and would sit on the bed and talk to you.”
While that’s a part of history that seems unlikely to repeat itself, with the number of centenarians more than doubling every decade since the 1950s, Celano may soon have more super-seniors to help care for here in Vero Beach.
And if those newly minted centenarians are anything like Kirby, their biggest problems may not even be medical.
Whether it’s because of good genes, good luck, an active, outdoor lifestyle or modern medical care, Kirby matter-of-factly states, “I never remember being deathly sick. I had colds. I had appendicitis. I even had to have my appendix out,” but in 100-plus years, one of her biggest consternations has come far more recently.
“Smartphones,” says Kirby with an impish smile, “are just beyond me. I taught math for 40 years, [but to use a smartphone] I need a teacher of my own.”
Dr. Charles Celano is with Indian River Medical Center. His office is at 3607 15th Avenue in Vero Beach. The phone is 772-562-8522.
