A CENTURY OF LIFE
Longtime Danbury resident, activist celebrates 100th birthday
“This is somebody who does not let bad times rule his life.
He has a positive attitude about everything he sees. The glass is always half full.” —Andrea Mosbacher, Calvin Dow’s daughter
Calvin Dow has always been active — playing tennis, downhill skiing. But that alone isn’t what made him live to 100. Dow, a longtime Danbury resident originally from Vermont, is marking a century of life on Monday. And when city natives ask him how they can reach the same point, he tells them.
“And I say to them, ‘Join our group of concerned citizens of Danbury as community and political activists and pursue all of these projects.’ And so they say to me, ‘Oh gee, Mr. Dow. That sounds like a lot of work. Let me think about that,’ ” he said, laughing.
He said he’s tried to loop in “some young people to carry on” the work that’s come to define his 40 years since he retired. That’s included projects such as restoring a rose garden for veterans at Rogers Park, which he said is “sadly neglected,” and relocating a Danbury Library butterfly garden.
So, Dow said his physical activity coupled with his mental activity from “crusades for city projects” have worked together to help him become a centenarian.
“Those are the two main focuses that keep me alive,” he said.
Robert Garavel, a friend of Dow’s, said they got acquainted through “weekly peace vigils” that have occurred for about 15 years in downtown Danbury.
“Calvin would come down every week faithfully, even in the coldest weather, because we really didn’t cancel the vigils
unless the weather was really severe,” Garavel said. “Calvin would come down and he would brave the weather and use his walker and sit in his chair and participate in our vigils in all kinds of weather. And I thought that was absolutely remarkable. And that’s where the friendship began.”
Since Dow had been recovering from a recent surgery, they’ve been talking on the phone every night, Garavel said, discussing poetry and philosophy. They’re inclined toward works from the 1800s — “Emerson, Dickinson, Longfellow, Thoreau,” he said.
As far as Dow turning 100 goes, Garavel acknowledges the number is numerically significant, but he also knows that his friend will be the same person he is at “99 and 360 days” as he will once he hits three digits.
“I think it’s wonderful, but I don’t really tend to like sit around and dwell on it,” he said.
Andrea Mosbacher, one of Dow’s children, said she’s “completely delighted” by the milestone, but it didn’t come as a surprise. At least a decade ago, she said her father penned an obituary for himself.
“He wrote his own obituary and he said, ‘my contract is taking me until I’m 100 years old. I have a contract until then,’ ” she said. “So, I knew all along, all these years, that he would make it to 100.”
She thought the key reason he’s lived so long is because he has a “sense of equanimity that I have never seen in anyone else.” She’s seen it demonstrated through some trying times in his life, such as having a sibling diagnosed with Alzheimer’s to getting a “very bad virus” and taking “heavy duty antibiotics” that resulted in him losing his sense of taste for two years.
“This is somebody who does not let bad times rule his life. He has a positive attitude about everything he sees. The glass is always half full. He has a great sense of humor and perspective on life. And my feeling is that that has what has gotten him to be a 100 years old,” Mosbacher said.
In his younger days, Dow volunteered to serve in the Vermont National Guard during World War II. He headed to Florida to train, but after Pearl Harbor he wound up in the U.S. Army, later going to China, Burma and India, he said.
“I gave five of the best years of my life to my country,” he said. “And I never regretted that.”
That war was “was the big thing for the century,” he said — but then CO
VID-19 came along. “Right now, the virus has taken over and it’s become the biggest thing to face us globally in this century of
100 years that I lived,” he said.
After the war, he “got married, had four children, moved to Danbury.” He moved to the city in 1953 with his wife, in search of “better job opportunities.” It looked like a “beautiful city” and wasn’t far from New York, where his wife was born.
Dow recalled Danbury’s earlier days. When he got there in 1953, there wasn’t an interstate yet, he said, and in 1955, a huge flood rushed through the city.
He appreciates being able to see how technology has evolved over the years — such as the novelty of looking things up on his smartphone related to topics discussed at a group he’s been a part of the senior center — and has tossed his dictionary.
To mark the occasion, there’s a “little affair” planned to celebrate his first 100 years of life, Dow said.
And as far as the future goes, he knows what he wants.
“To continue on with all of my projects,” he said.