AUSTIN, TEXAS – Richard Overton was right where he wanted to be.
He was sitting in a lawn chair on the front porch of the Austin home he built nearly 70 years ago, working on his fifth Tampa Sweet cigar on a 91-degree, sunny day. The smooth tunes of the Isley Brothers flowed from a portable speaker. Birds were chirping in the late-afternoon breeze.
"I'm feeling pretty good today," Overton said, emphasizing that any day spent on his porch smoking cigars is a pretty good day for the 111-year-old.
The house on Richard Overton Avenue — yup — is where you'll find the nation's oldest veteran 10 hours every day when the weather is nice. His friends call it his "stage." It's where Overton sits and thinks about life, his starting in 1906, the same year as the first wireless radio broadcast and a year before the paper towel was invented.
A soldier in the Army, he arrived by ship at Pearl Harbor in his segregated unit as black smoke filled the sky moments after the Japanese bombing. After returning from the war, he spent the bulk of his career working at furniture stores, then at the Texas Department of Treasury. He was a marksman, with a keen eye for hunting rabbits.
"But now, I just sit out here and rest," he said, releasing a plume of smoke.
Overton starts his mornings as early as 3 a.m., drinking two to four cups of coffee. He'll walk around his house to increase blood flow to his limbs, then smoke his first of 12 daily cigars. If he can, he'll fall back asleep. Every day, he's eager for the sun and the neighborhood to rise.
The supercentenarian has been married twice. He never had kids. He's outlived most of his relatives. He has a first cousin who lives down the street, and third cousins who stop by daily.
