On 100th Day of School 100 year old man talks about last century

By Diana Sanders

Spe­cial to The Gazette

The 100th day of school was cel­e­brated by sec­ond graders at Ridge Ele­men­tary ear­lier this week.

Stu­dents dressed as they thought a 100-year-old per­son would look. The stu­dents were very cre­ative and many teach­ers also par­tic­i­pated. They ended their day-long fes­tiv­i­ties by host­ing a spe­cial guest, who spoke to the entire 2nd grade stu­dent body about being 100 years old.

Joe Amato, who will turn 100 on Sept. 18, vis­ited the school. The res­i­dent of the Belle­vue Care Cen­ter came with his daugh­ter, Georgia.

Amato shared sto­ries and the stu­dents were given an oppor­tu­nity to ask ques­tions. Amato said “hard work” was his secret to liv­ing to age 100. He also men­tioned fruits, veg­eta­bles, olive oil, gar­lic, and spaghetti, which is his favorite food.

Amato said he was raised with eight sib­lings. A large part of his upbring­ing was spent in the fam­ily gar­den. His fam­ily did lots of gar­den­ing and any land they had was used for plant­ing. They grew their own pro­duce and had a cow for milk, pigs for butcher­ing, and chick­ens for eggs. Joe did not have elec­tric­ity in their home until about sec­ond grade. They used can­dles and gas lights until then, he told the children.

As a child, he liked to swim, fish, and hunt for fun. He liked to go the library, but shared that he had too much work to do to spend very much time there.

There was no TV or tele­phones then. They had to make their own toys. A favorite game he played was called “Duckie on the Rock”.

Amato explained, “You would stack a cou­ple stones on top of each other and then throw a stone and try to knock down the ‘duckie’. The per­son that knocked off the most was the winner.”

School was very sim­i­lar as it is now, he told students.

But Amato pointed out there were no busses and he had a daily 2-mile walk to and from school. Another main dif­fer­ence was that the class­rooms had four grade lev­els in each room. If he would get into trou­ble it would result in him hav­ing to stay after school or get­ting extra homework.

The near-100-year-old man said he remem­bered Pres­i­dent Franklin Roo­sevelt being in office. He recalled that he got to meet him when he came to the depot in Shelby, Ohio in 1932. FDR was his favorite president.

Amato was in the Navy and fought in World War II in 1942. Dur­ing his absence, his father and sis­ter ran his store for him. Joe worked hard own­ing and oper­at­ing a gro­cery store where he worked seven days a week. He was the first per­son to intro­duce pizza to Shelby. He had a friend who he bought Ital­ian bread from that taught him the art of pizza mak­ing. He then made count­less piz­zas and sold them in his store.

A favorite story Amato shared with the chil­dren was “The Bub­ble Story.” He worked at the bub­ble gum fac­tory in Shelby when he was in sev­enth and eighth grade. He worked on the fourth floor where the gum­balls were made. His friends would stand out­side the win­dows, and Joe would throw gum­balls out to them. This went on until one day the com­pany super­in­ten­dent hap­pened to be stand­ing out­side the window.

When asked about the down­side of being 100 years old, Amato said that not being able to do for your­self what you would like to do was really tough. Due to back surgery, Joe relies on the assis­tance of a wheelchair.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Feb 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.