When Captain Arthur Wardwell, presided over his 100th birthday party in July, 2007, in his hometown of Chittenden, Vermont, the inevitable question arose… “What is your secret for longevity?” He gazed contemplatively at the floor. Then a slow smile crept across his face as he focused his dark eyes on those of the inquirerer. His answer came out slowly but clearly… “I just keep on keepin’ on. I guess it’s the person, not the age, that matters.”

That person who evolved over a century was formed out of amazing contrasts and is still going strong.

Captain Arthur Wardwell shaking hands with Admiral Jonathan Bailey, the current Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps. Photo courtesy of Paul Chernoff

Last September, while stopping by Wardwell’s farm for a visit, I followed the chopping sounds that emanated from within his huge weathered barn. There I found my 101-year-old neighbor attacking a sizable pile of wood with an ax. He deftly split a log into several pieces of firewood, sized just right to fit into the Home Comfort wood-burning range his parents had installed in the farmhouse back in 1918. Art still uses the stove for heat during the fall and spring months. Bending down, he selected a choice piece of firewood and handed it to me saying, “I always carry an arm load into the house when I leave the barn.” Taking the hint, I loaded up and, together, we headed to the house where he had begun his life in 1907.

Bright sunlight streamed in through large living room windows and lit up the colors in the hand-braided rug Art had made in his retirement. He leaned back in his chair, stretched his long legs out and stories began to spill out of his encyclopedic memory.

“This house was built in 1825 by my great-great uncle, Timothy Hibbard. Uncle Timothy’s son was a Civil War veteran who went west with the gold rush. In 1902, my grandmother sold 500 acres of the farm to the power company for development of the Chittenden Reservoir.

“The remaining farm where my brother, Maurice, sister Frances and I were raised included many buildings besides this house and the barn back then. They housed eight milking cows, a few pigs, chickens, a couple of workhorses and two drivers. Hay from the meadows fed and bedded the livestock.”

“Our family was pretty self-sufficient. We had apples in our orchard and plenty of maple trees to tap. I remember getting all wet and muddy gathering wild, edible marsh marigolds. We grew blueberries and most of our vegetables, including potatoes, our main staple. Oh, my! We ate those things two or three times every day! I traveled to Rutland with father once a week with a wagon full of potatoes, apples, butter and wood, returning with flour, salt codfish and other supplies.”

“We hunted with Father to put venison on the table and Maurice and I trapped raccoons, squirrels and muskrats. We visited our traps every day in order to be legal but we got good pay for pelts. Often we’d bring home fish from the reservoir and Leffert’s Pond.”

“One of our hay fields was sold and flooded when the pond was created,” he related. “The land owner was a rich New York City guy. He’d come up with a chauffeur in one of his fancy cars. He surrounded his two-story cabin with a deer park and diverted water below his stone bridge dam for a fishpond. When we were teenagers, Maurice and I used to visit with the caretaker, Ed Powell.”

Art erupted with a chuckle before continuing his story. “Ed made home brew which kept him warm through the cold winters. He’d offer some to us but, of course, we never took him up on it….”

After musing a bit on that memory, Art moved back earlier in his youth remembering carefree days on the farm.

“Summer was spent mostly outdoors with Maurice and Frances. We hiked up over Blue Ridge Mountain, swingin’ on birches along the way. Some days we’d just stay home and play with our Collie dog, Muggins, the barn cats and the calves. We had fun in the winter, sledding and skiing on homemade skis, using a long spruce pole for a brake. We could do a lot of things with a piece of wood, a saw and a hammer.”

As a child, Art was home-schooled by his mother, Clara, through first grade. She was a good teacher and he such a bright student that when he entered second grade in the local 2-room school, he was quickly promoted to 3rd grade.

“I went on to high school in Pittsford,” Art recalled, “and boarded with a family. Father took me home and back on weekends by horse and buggy.”

He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1930 at the top of his class with a degree in engineering. The farm did not produce enough cash for a college education so Art put the work ethics he had learned on the farm to good use and supplemented a state scholarship and some loans by working on the UVM campus.

“I earned 30 cents an hour sweeping the gymnasium floors and setting up chairs for special events,” he recalled. “They had a lot going on so I kept busy and saved up my pay.”

Wardwell always wanted to travel and travel he did! After college, he joined the United States Coastal and Geodetic Survey Team, an arm of the Department of Commerce now known as NOAA, and went to sea as a Junior Officer leaving his young wife, Evelyn and their baby daughter, Lynn, behind in Norfolk, VA. He was transferred to the U.S. Navy in 1941 at the start of World War II, serving in the Aleutian Islands and other parts of the Pacific Ocean region.

After the war, Captain Wardwell was transferred back to the USC & GS and he traveled around the world as the first Captain of NOAA’s first and then largest oceanographic research vessel. He retired in 1967 at age 60 but stayed on with the NOAA team until 1968 to complete the worldwide survey.

“Evelyn and I lived in Florida for twenty-five years before moving into a retirement community in 1993,” he said. Art left Florida after Evelyn died in 1998 and now winters in Virginia, returning to Vermont every May. He retains his love of farm life so his pacemaker is challenged as he busies himself maintaining the house, barn, farm machinery and meadows.

He still drives his car and only in recent years has he accepted rides for long trips, such as back and forth from Virginia as well as to the 2006 meeting of Vermont’s 251 Club and to his UVM class reunions. In 2007, his college reunion was celebrated along with another class and, to his delight; he was asked to make a speech as the only living member of the Class of 1930. That same year, Art was honored by the USC & GS at their 200th anniversary celebration, which coincided, with his 100th birthday.

Captain Arthur Wardwell cut a tall, handsome figure at his birthday party as he towered over many of those who came to help him celebrate. He offered a firm handshake and bright smile to as many friends, neighbors and former colleagues he could greet. Congratulatory letters were acknowledged from Gov. James Douglas and Pres. George W. Bush as well as the retired U.S. Navy Vice-Admiral, now the current head of NOAA. Naval officers, farmers, ham operators, neighbors and relatives all honored him and shared stories about their connections with Art. Howard Coffin, a well-known historian and a cousin of Art’s, remarked, “I have been so impressed by this remarkable man! Resolute and strong, he has not been a spectator who missed the show but rather has lived as a big player in life.”

As our autumn afternoon visit came to an end, Art informed me that he would travel the following week with his daughter, Lynn and her husband, Paul, to Nantucket Island before heading south for the winter. Without a doubt, the travel bug was still very much alive in Captain Wardwell’s soul as he gave me a strong hug, smiled brightly and promised to “see you next spring!”

Donna Martin lives in Chittenden.