Life as a senior took many things from Irv English — teeth, independence, a sense of home — but it never took away his positive spirit.

English's later years were marked by the same home-to-home hopscotching that had disrupted his adolescence. Yet all that moving around never seemed stanch his zeal to live and to forge meaningful connections with those around him.

Daughter Barbara English-Belanger, who helped care for him in his later years, recalled one of the last things her father told her before he died on Dec. 21 at age 91.

"I asked him, 'Do you have any wisdom for me, dad?' " she said. "He said, 'Tell everyone to go running into the good days.' Because to him, every day was a good day, even when bad things happen. It was a day worth living. That's how precious life was. You were supposed to experience all of it. It wasn't just going to all be roses, you know?"

Irving Hubbard English Jr., was born in Minneapolis in 1925 to two working parents. He attended the same church as his parents and grandparents, Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, and graduated from Washburn High School.

But in junior and senior high, he was raised by his mother, Lorraine Hanson, and had to follow her through a series of rental homes while she raised kids and kept working, Barbara said.

In World War II, English enlisted in the armed service that would come to be called the U.S. Air Force, operating radio equipment on B-17s and B-29s while stationed in the Philippines. His service overlapped that of his father, Lt. Col. Irving H. English Sr.

After the war, Irving English Jr., worked for Minneapolis' Metal-Matic Inc., which would employ him for the next 32 years, until his retirement in 1992. Early on he installed the company's first IBM computer and worked as data-processing manager. Later he became industrial relations manager, and was known for personally contacting employees' families to express condolences after tragedy struck on the job.

After English was married in 1953, his painful childhood experience of moving from home to home led to strong desire to raise his family in a stable atmosphere. He and his wife, Elizabeth Priglmeier, built a rambler in Brooklyn Park and raised four kids in the Osseo Area School District.

Divorce eventually claimed his marriage, and health and memory problems chipped away at his ability to live on his own. Thus began a series of living arrangements in senior homes and assisted-living facilities, many which ended badly, Barbara said.

One building didn't institute a system, voted on by residents, to put out reversible "I am OK" signs on apartment doors; soon after, English lay in his apartment with a brain injury for three days without anyone discovering him. At another facility, he had to have teeth pulled for lack of oral hygiene. A second serious head trauma happened at another facility. Bruises and injuries would appear without explanation; English couldn't remember what had happened.

With each transition, he would try to preserve as much independence as he could, living with family only briefly.

"I think that was his biggest ache in the world, just wanting to go home," Barbara said. "At one facility after the next brain injury, he said, 'I want to live in a place where people do family things. I want to be where I am loved.' "

Despite it all, he kept up his sunny outlook and always wore his name tag in the hopes of getting into a conversation in which he could be the active listener. "He was this calm, peaceful man. But he had this ability to express sheer joy. He was funny and he had no grudges against anybody," Barbara said.

English is survived by his sister and brother, four children, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Services were held Monday, on what would have been his 92nd birthday.