I saw something on Facebook which eventually led me to this article on Alfred Date (1905-2016)
Be kind to everyone. Treat everyone like they're your own family. Don't judge others. Accept everyone for who they are regardless of what they do or look like.
CameraManny118
Gerontology Wiki Content Moderator and WSF Moderator
Yes … that’s correct.
Alfred Date is the only super centenarian I’ve ever met as he lived in Umina - about 60kms from where I live.
I was working on a commercial deal in that area and the Mayor and the CEO of the local Council were looking for some news worthy items. They asked me; so I told them that Australia’s oldest man was in their Local Government Area.
The upshot was that the 3 of us met Alfred and saw some of what he’d knitted.
Unfortunately it was only a couple of months before he passed and he had declined to the extent that after about 5-10 minutes he became so confused that his son had to take over.
To be fair, I regretted the visit in hindsight, because it wasn’t in Alfred’s or his sons interest at that stage - but had we done it a few months earlier I’m sure it would have been.
Alfred was a lovely charming man for the first 5 minutes though.
Even though his memory was failing him, I still think that Alfred enjoyed your visit, Chris, and thus I don't think that your visit was a mistake. His son was able to finish the conversation that you wanted to have with Alfred, which was great!
Nice comments thank you Futurist.
In the perfect world we’d have all got together 6 months earlier and I’ve no doubt Alfred (and the rest of us) would have got more out of it.
Yeah, that's certainly true, but it would have still been nice to visit him specifically while he was a SC!