100 years later, Houston man finally turns 25
Born on a leap day in 1920, centenarian attributes his long run to physical activity
Jim Cordell took 100 trips around the sun to get to his 25th birthday.
On this leap day, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews, great-nieces and greatgreat-nieces, friends and old colleagues will gather to celebrate a particularly unusual centenarian. Cordell was born Feb. 29, 1920. Consider
the rarity of leap-year birthdays relative to other birthdays. Consider 0.0173 percent of Americans live to 100; also consider the majority of those centenarians are women.
About 150 people from around the country plan to visit Cordell for his birthday. As one of the youngest centenarians, he sounds humbled.
“It amazes me that somebody would want to do this,
to travel here for this,” Cordell says. “Why? Why do you want to spend your time with this 100year-old guy? And I guess in some way or other, I just made some of these people feel good at some point. Maybe they liked what they saw in me or laughed at me or laughed with me.”
Cordell was born and raised in Gardner, Kan., just southwest of Kansas City. He was the eighth of nine kids, and his father spent 26 years as the town’s mayor.
“It was an elected position, so everybody knew him,” Cordell says. “And that meant everybody knew me as well.”
He earned a degree in petroleum engineering at the University of Kansas in 1942 and briefly worked for Humble Oil and Refining in Baytown. Cordell’s work made him exempt from the draft. Three of his brothers were already in the service, so he felt the call to join the Navy, which sent him to Cornell to study diesel engineering. After that, he was off to Little Creek, Va., for amphibious training.
His path led him to Landing Ship Medium 242 as an engineering officer. The ship set sail in December 1944 from San Diego to Pearl Harbor. Early the next year, Cordell’s ship would deliver Marines, tanks, ammunition and supplies to Eniwetok Marshall Island. LSM 242 was on the beach giving Cordell a clear view of Mount Suribachi when six Marines famously hoisted the American flag at Iwo Jima.
“Proud,” he says of the feeling witnessing live an image made iconic over the years. “Just a feeling of great pride in being an American.”
After the war, Cordell attended the University of Texas: “I decided to get some more free learning from the government.” He got a master’s degree in engineering. He married and had three children.
He went to work for Amoco, first in Oklahoma City, then Shreveport, La., then Jackson, Miss. The Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Co. hired him to do evaluations for loans in the oil and gas division, work that took him to Chicago in 1965 and then to Houston in 1975.
Every four years, he’d get a birthday.
“It’s a little different for sure,” he says.
He divorced and married again in 1983. His wife, Debbie, says, “I came along for his 16th birthday. We celebrate the big round numbers, too, 70, 80, even if it’s not a leap year.”
This celebration, though, she says “is more like planning a wedding.”
She runs through family members attending and those who have passed. There are some hardy genes in the Cordell tree: Cordell’s mother lived to 93. One of his sisters nearly reached 102, and one brother died at 99.
A great-niece created a poster with some of Cordell’s “life lessons” gleaned from conversations with him. The list touches on faith, family, friendship and fitness. His take on parenting: “With your children, remember that you were that age once, and curiosity is an indication of intelligence. Two is better than three if you can’t have four.” Travel: “Traveling helps you learn about things you don’t really know about, you just think you know.”
Cordell attributes some of his long run to physical activity. In college, at “135 pounds soaking wet,” he says, he wasn’t cut out for basketball or football, so he did track and field. After retirement, Cordell participated in the Senior Olympics.
“I always enjoyed doing athletic things,” he says. “Grade school, high school, college. But I also knew as I got older staying in shape was something I had to do.”
He first tried racewalking and the javelin at the Senior Olympics. He noticed there weren’t as many people competing in the high jump and pole vault.
“Then he started doing the pole vault so he could medal,” Debbie says. “In his 80s, there were just two at the local level: him and this other man who pole vaulted. The other guy was 6 inches shorter than Jim, so he had a leg up.”
Cordell playfully slaps her leg. “And I was better.”
A Houston Chronicle photo of Cordell rests above the TV in their den. In it, a spry Cordell hangs in the air above the bar, ageless in a way. He’s a twisting streamer of color, his red and white shoes well past the fiberglass lathe, his knees about to cross. Cordell’s upper torso is coiled to activate, pushing against the pole to hurtle the rest of him over the bar. The photo is fascinating as a moment in time: an instant when many actions work together for one fluid expression of progress. Life slowed down into little granular moments.
That photo was shot 20 years ago.
The downside to a century — even one marked by 75 percent fewer birthdays — is the slow fading of company. Cordell gets a little quieter when thinking about siblings and friends who have passed.
But he bends back, like a vaulter’s pole, to the idea of celebration as a guy with three children, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchilden deserves, as well as all the other family that will pass through. While at Costco recently, he and Debbie ran into one of his old employees whom he hadn’t seen since 1990. Now a contingent of old work friends will be gathering to celebrate his birthday.
The day will feature weblike family connections from near and far.
“These are people who can’t wait to celebrate. That said, I don’t think I’m throwing any more parties after this one,” Debbie says. “I told him for his 101st, and for his 26th, we’re doing something low-key and quiet.”