5:30am Reporting by Greggory Moore | When Wilburn “Bill” Wheeler was born, the beginning of World War I was three years away. When he attended Gonzaga University, Bing Crosby was one of his classmates.

If you can list factoids like these on your curriculum vitae, your life has been long indeed, and Villa Redondo Care Home wanted to properly commemorate its eldest resident’s reaching triple-digits. That meant cake, balloons, and proclamations from Governor Jerry Brown and L.A. County Supervisor Don Knabe.

Bill seemed to enjoy the attention, though he doesn’t talk much these days. Then again, he was never the most talkative fellow. “He was very quiet, reserved,” says daughter Gwen Travis. “But he liked to talk once you got him started.”

During those talkative times he might have told you that in 1932 he married Emma, the woman who would remain his wife for over 75 years. At the time gainful employment tough to come by in Spokane, Washington — this was the Great Depression, after all — so the newlyweds worked their way down the coast, doing odd jobs and often sleeping on the beach. 

By the 1940s the couple had settled in Los Angeles, and Bill was working for Northrop Aircraft Incorporated — a new company in those days — as a research development engineer. It was a job he kept until his retirement in the mid 1970s.

For the next two decades Bill and Emma summered in Oregon and went to Europe every year. “They loved to travel,” Gwen recalls. 

While at home, Bill enjoyed collecting stamps and arrowheads, and was a season-ticketholder to USC football games. “They used to march into the stadium behind the USC band,” Gwen recalls.

Bill came to Villa Redondo two years ago, shortly after Emma’s passing. “He’s a blessing to our community,” says Ada Murdock, Villa Redondo’s director of client services. “And who turns 100? Not many people. So we wanted to do something special.”

Cake was had, songs were sung. A man has born witness to a century. Another day has come and gone in the lives of each of us, lives we live day by day, moment by moment, for however long we’re here.