Marge Jetton lived to 106

Linda Loma, CA is one of the four Blue Zones identified by Dan Buettner in his book, The Blue Zones. He found some very amazing folks during his travels and interviews. Marge possessed all of the seven secrets I had earlier found that were common to those who were experts in Living Long and Living Strong.

Buettner described Jetton as “the poster girl” for the Adventist lifestyle.

“She was an emblem,” Buettner said. “You could tell her story, and it kind of reflected what people should be doing to reach her age. She represented the promise of good living.”

So What Did Marge Jetton do to Reach this Honorable Old Age?

Marge had a pretty rigorous routine at 100 discovered by Dan Buettner, author of The Blue Zones.

She was up at 4:30, dressed, went over songs in her hymnal and read her Bible. She didn’t miss her bible reading because “He is my friend.” she said, “and without Him we are out of luck.” 

After bible reading she was off to the hallway to walk a mile. She had calculated that six hallway trips back and forth would give her the mile. She swung by the dining room on each trip for a glass of water. She always wanted to have six glasses of water early in the morning.

After her hallway walk, she came back to her room to put on her makeup, clean up her room and then go eat breakfast. She reveals that she has had no meat in 50 years.  She brings back from the dining room raw fruit and vegetables for salad for lunch.

After lunch she reflects on the Lord’s blessings and then goes to the workout room to ride 6 to 8 miles on the stationary bike every day except her Sabbath. If she misses a mile or so one day, she makes it up the next day. She then turns to her weight lifting (five pound dumbbells in the photo above.)

“I’m for anything that has to do with health”, she declares.

In the afternoon, she drives in her old Cadillac to do volunteer work taking old magazines to the elderly at the Linda Loma Senior Center, (who are actually much younger than her.) The state of California continues to renew her drivers’ license even at 100.

On Friday’s Marge drives to get her hair done at 8AM at the same place she has gone every Friday for 20 years.When the stylist told Dan Buettner that they were a bunch of old dinasaurs around there, Marge quickly snapped back: “You may be, but not me.”

Inconvenience?

One of the nine lessons learned by the study of the Blue Zones included terminology that I thought was rather appropriate: “They inconvenienced themselves” by taking extraordinary measure to develop certain habits. This made me think of my own life. What am I doing to inconvenience myself to achieve the goal of Living Long and Strong. Have you thought about this? I’d love to hear your comments to this post.