By Jay Cook
William “Austin” Clark, a Middletown resident since 1967, reached a rather remarkable milestone earlier last week, celebrating his 105 birthday on August 5.
“There was nothing special, I eat plain food. When my wife was alive, I ate whatever she fed me. If I complained, I was told, ‘don’t eat it,” Clark said with a good-natured smirk.
One of his favorite meals is his daily serving of bacon. He eats it every morning and he makes sure it is crispy.
Clark, who most assuredly still has his sense of humor, was continuously cracking jokes, one after the other. In regards to being a new “media darling,” Clark joked, “It feels lousy. I felt a whole lot better when I was 22!”
While growing up, Clark recalled living on Emma Street in Elizabeth, New Jersey. One of his most vivid memories as a youth was spending afternoons in Jefferson Park, with his group of about nine or ten young men playing either baseball or football.
As a young man, he had a fantastic taste in cars, and it shows through what he drove around in the 1920’s. “The first car that I owned was a Model A Ford, my father gave me that,” he said.
Remarkably enough, Clark also is a former smoker, and he remembered a time when he was able to buy two packs of cigarettes for only a quarter. During his son’s high school years, he frequently smoked, up until one day, when he quit right on the spot. “One day, my son asked me for a cigarette. I said ‘No, I don’t want you to smoke, it’s a bad habit.’ He said ‘Why not, you’re smoking?’ So I quit right there,” Clark recalled.
Through his adult life, Clark worked with Western Electric for 42 years installing central offices. He joined the company when he was a young man, a fresh 18 year-old. Though he did work with Western Electric for just over four decades, he spent some time unemployed when the Great Depression rolled around. “When the Depression came, I got laid of f for about three years, four years, and was rehired in ’37,” Clark said.
In the course of his tenure, he had the ability to travel the country installing these telephone systems. “I traveled as far as Hollywood, and I didn’t care for it either. When I was there, it wasn’t a real nice town. They had this problem with the air, it just was always blue,” he recalled.
While his trips to Hollywood were less than spectacular, one of Clark’s favorite cities that he worked in was Detroit. He raved about the city as a whole, talking about the environment and all that there was to do after his day as a supervisor for Western Electric.
Clark was never one to have a favorite movie, but he recalled actors such as Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe, both who were predominantly famous throughout the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Clark also never had a favorite musical group growing up, saying that they “didn’t impress me.”
Nowadays, Clark lives in Middletown with his granddaughter Karen Carroll and her husband Mike Carroll. Mike, who is Clark’s “right hand man,” bought the house from Clark and his late wife Mildred in 1993.
Instead of going to a nursing home, Carroll thought it would be best to keep Clark and his wife, who passed in April of 2009, as close to home as possible. In 1993, the Clark’s moved into an attached apartment, keeping them on the property they had lived on since 1967. “Now, the house is a mother-daughter,” Carroll mentioned.
As Clark’s doctor has deemed that he needs a bit more assistance these days, he has endless care. “All between private health aides, a company called Assisting Hands and with family, we provide him 24-hour support,” Carroll said.
Also helping him out Samra Kanter, a social worker with Gentiva Hospice, who has been with Austin for a little over a year. “Hospice is an add-on service. It’s more about symptom management, not about aggressively curing,” Kanter said.
Clark, who sat comfortably perched up in his recliner, says despite his age, he does feel very good. “Well, you know, sitting here I feel normal, like I used to feel. But when I get up, I feel 140,” he remarked.
Clark also spoke candidly about the one major change he has seen in the world throughout his lifetime. “Right now, it seems to me that it’s much harder to get a job. When I grew up you didn’t need a college degree to get a job. Sure, it was great if you got one, but you didn’t need it. But now, what do you need a college degree to dig a ditch? That’s what it seems like,” Clark said.
Despite the fact that he is 105, Clark is a young 105. He is very lucid in conversation, has a great memory and has a fantastic sense of humor. He also still has a remarkably firm handshake, something he surely prides himself on.
