Will you live to be 100?

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Marion Brant golfs with his buddies every Wednesday, works out four times a week on a "step machine," plays in a 12-member kazoo band and builds prototypes for his own inventions.

Come Nov. 20, Brant turns 102.

The retired Procter & Gamble engineer still lives on his own in a College Hill retirement community, never misses an issue of Popular Mechanics and stays "interested in everything." He sometimes uses a cane to walk and eyeglasses to read, but otherwise he could pass for a man decades younger.

• Video: Marion Brant at 101

• Timeline: A century ago

• Calculate your own life expectancy

Brant belongs to an age group the United Nations calls the fastest-growing in the world, people 100 years old and older. New Census estimates out last week showed the United States had 80,711 centenarians in July 2007 - more than any other country.

In 2000, Ohio was home to 1,910 people 100 or older; Kentucky had 676. Almost 300 lived in the seven counties of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, and the numbers keep growing. By 2050, the worldwide count of the oldest of the old is projected to jump 400 percent.

The numbers are unprecedented - prompting renewed scientific and social study that's shattering longstanding beliefs about aging.

Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122, forced recalculations of the "maximum" human life-span. Medical technology is reversing traditional notions that old people are poor candidates for major surgery and other costly treatment.

Nearly two-thirds of centenarians are not afflicted with major diseases, the new research finds. And dementia is not inevitable.

Some investigators are even studying "super-centenarians" (110 or older) like Clifton resident Elsa Everly, who turned 110 on April 11. They know that good genes help some people stay quick-witted and nimble well past 100, and researchers have long sought the Methuselah gene. But new study emphasizes more the importance of physical and mental activity and healthy lifestyle choices.

Everly lived on her own until she was 104. Now she lives in the Scarlet Oaks retirement community.

She escaped major illnesses by shunning chocolate and "those crummy hamburgers." Her favorite foods were Frisch's fish sandwiches and vegetable soup.

And her secrets to long life? "I never smoked, never drank or had kids."

SMART DECISIONS

Like many centenarians, Marion Brant stayed slender, adaptable and self-reliant most of his life. He grew up on a farm north of Lebanon, rode a horse and buggy to his two-room school house, and loved to construct mini-machines with his Erector Set.

He matches up nicely with Harvard University studies. Researchers there reported in February that men who kept their weight down, exercised regularly and didn't smoke in their early senior years were much more likely to live to exceptional old age.

Brant's father lived to 95½; his mother to 85.

As a 101-year-old male, Brant is doubly exceptional. Female centenarians vastly outnumber males. In 2000, women 100 years or older outnumbered the men almost 4.5 to 1 in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.

Brant, 38 years retired from Procter, has defied the odds in another way. "I've been retired now longer than I worked there," he says.

That phenomenon also rattles U.S. policy-makers. Over the next five years, the 77 mllion-strong baby boom generation will begin its massive shift to retirement.

A retired elder at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Finneytown, Brant values his faith and staying active and interested. He invented a device to tee up a golf ball, and his first thought upon waking each day is typically unflappable: "Well, here's another one."

Regrets? "I probably wasn't a very good husband," he says. Yet he looked after his ailing wife, Thurza, until her death in 1999. They were married 64 years.

"I was a workaholic. 'Selfish' is the best word for it," Brant says. "If I had it to do over again, I would have been more considerate."

His daughter, Sue Wagner of Finneytown, attributes his long life to good genes, education, faith, moderate living and smart decisions.

Major surgery helped, too.

"About four years ago, he decided to have surgery to clear a 95 percent blockage in his carotid artery, and it was a total success," his daughter says.

SPUNKY SENIORS

Betty LaRosa Berger, 104, of Groesbeck is another example of the new centenarian lifestyle.

Born in Messina, Sicily, she arrived in Cincinnati in 1908, and at age 5 stood on a crate outside her dad's West End grocery store and sold produce. She married in 1926. Betty and her ironworker husband, Charles, "never went anywhere unless together" until his death in 1999.

At age 97, Betty Berger applied for and got a job with Honey Baked Ham. In the years before that, she worked long hours at many jobs to augment her husband's limited income.

During the Depression, she cooked on a grate in their bedroom, made and sold wood-fiber geraniums, roses and poppies for 69 cents each. To get jobs, she asked employers to let her work one week: If they weren't satisfied, they didn't need to pay her.

In 1962, when she found out she had high blood pressure, she took to walking three miles three times a week from her Northside home to the Mount Airy water tower and back. She's aunt to local pizza icon Buddy LaRosa, and although from the "poor side" of the family, it pleases her to see the family name on restaurants and products.

She's grateful to the Council on Aging for Meals on Wheels, and housekeeping help allows her to live on her own in a retirement village rental unit. When Berger saw neighbors at risk crossing congested Colerain Avenue, she lobbied officials in Columbus to install a traffic light.

"I don't feel old," she says. "I never looked back. I always tried to go forward. I have no regrets."

Her walls are decorated with plaques of the Ten Commandments and inspirational maxims such as "Don't Quit."

"That's me," she says. "Don't quit."

Berger has faced down heart attacks, chronic bronchitis, macular degeneration and, at 100, gall bladder surgery.

SECRETS OF LONG LIFE

Major medical intervention is a central issue for the oldest of the old.

Antibiotics and heart drugs are credited with adding decades to human life expectancies. But medical professionals also are more inclined today to aggressively treat old people's ailments rather than write them off as not worth the risk or cost.

Dr. Tom Ivey has performed surgery on patients as old as 98 at The Christ Hospital. One patient who had surgery at age 82 is now 92 and runs around like a 50-year-old, Ivey says. When he was a young resident more than 30 years ago, cardiac surgeons didn't see patients over age 70.

The risks of surgery still increase with age. But today, a person's mental health also is a big factor in deciding to operate, Ivey says.

"The costs are astronomical," he says. "You've got to pick the right patient."

Cincinnati neurosurgeon Dr. John Tew operates on patients in their 80s and 90s "all the time." He credits public health improvements for keeping people healthy longer.

"The biggest factor," Tew says, "is living your life like you will live to 100, staying thin and very active."

Researchers also are finding that many centenarians maintain a positive outlook on life that trumps the slights directed against them every day.

Miami University professor Lisa Groger with the Scripps Gerontology Center detects such biases in everything from age jokes in birthday cards to the mindless treatment of elders as children.

Groger and graduate assistant Jessie Leek interviewed 16 centenarians throughout Ohio for a soon-to-be published Scripps study. Their most surprising finding: Almost every one of the super-old was good-humored and resourceful.

But a positive outlook can be taken to extremes, too. Researchers with the Stanford Center on Longevity coined the term "positivity effect" for an outlook that causes old people to miss the negatives associated with potentially harmful situations, such as a bad insurance policy, flawed remodeling contract or flim-flam investment pitch.

Some studies have found that very old people score poorly on performance tests if fed negative messages about aging first. But other researchers report a different reason for low test scores: The test questions no longer mean much to the old people; they have moved on to a different or wiser set of values.

Staffers at one woman's retirement home considered her incompetent to be interviewed by Groger's researchers. But the woman told a "perfectly wonderful story, full of humor and evidence of her adaptive skills," Groger says.

Another interviewee, Lucy Ewbank, renewed her driver's license at 100 and asked for and got treated to a birthday performance by two male strippers.

The wife of former New York Jets coach Weeb Ewbank also liked to wear a button declaring her life-long achievement:

"I've survived damn near everything."

MEET MORE OF OUR OLDEST CITIZENS

An estimated 300 men and women are 100 years old or older in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Meet more of our oldest citizens and hear their secrets to long life.

• Della Jones: A teacher and a learner lives with love, not regret

• Lillian Gill: Finding wisdom in active mind, upbeat attitude

• Ethel Jewett McCreary: She stayed active, worked hard, ate right

• Video: Ethel McCreary at 100

GET MORE INFORMATION

• Graph: Our lifespan is growing (JPG)

• Graph: Projected increase in centenarians (JPG)

• Graph: How age groups likely will expand, 2007-2050 (JPG)

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