110 or Bust

By DEVIN WEEKS

Staff Writer

POST FALLS — One hundred seven years ago this beautiful spring day, baby boy Noble Brewer was born on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.

"Do you know, when I was born, there was no running water, no electricity and there was no market to go get something," he said Friday, comfy in a chair in his Garden Plaza apartment. "All there really was was saloons. Those were hard time days."

Brewer was born on a Saturday, just like today, only when he came into the world, William Howard Taft was president, the sinking of the RMS Titanic had just shaken the world and the state of Idaho was only 22 years old.

"I’m an old guy. When I was born, the railroads stopped at Oklahoma City. They did not go any further west," he said. “They’d come from New York to Pryor, Okla., and they stopped right there. They turned around there and went back. The end of the railroad, 1912."

Brewer, who graduated from a high school in Loveland, Colo., has lived through two World Wars and three depressions.

"The wars and the depressions, they’re the same," he said. "They’re bad."

He's lived to see the creation of sonar, hair dryers, machine guns, robots, insulin, television, radio telescopes, credit cards, Frisbees, computers, genetic engineering, various vaccines, contact lenses … the list goes on and on.

"I'm a walking history book," he said with a smile.

When the Great Depression got in the way of his schooling, Brewer decided to learn how to become a pilot. He even built his own plane early on and volunteered as a civilian pilot in World War II, when he was appointed as a lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army Air Force and flew with the Air Transport Command to get the first American plane into Alaska when the Aleutian Islands were occupied by the Japanese. He was never officially enlisted, but he is considered a veteran and a hero for his valor in the cockpit and for flying into a live war zone to move supplies and get dead and wounded soldiers home.

"I just like airplanes, that's all," he said.

He also worked for Western Airlines for 20 years and McDonnell Douglas for another 20, flying all around the world and living in cities in South America, Europe, Canada, Japan and more.

"I've been all over the world," he said.

Brewer is now a widower after his wife of 75 years, Wilma, died in 2013. The Press met up with them in 2012 to celebrate their three-quarter-century romance in an article titled "Lasting love." At the time, Noble was only 99.

"We kind of harmonized for all of these years," Noble said in that article, sharing how 75 years of marriage happens. "We have ups and downs, sickness and health. We went through the whole nine yards. Some way or another, it worked out. We're still at it."

Through it all, Noble has never lost his sense of humor, his impeccable manners or his irresistible darling sweetness.

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but a hug a day keeps the blues away," he said.

His legs might not work that well anymore, but he still loves to dance.

"He loves to waltz," said Garden Plaza activities assistant Janice White. "He must have been a wonderful dancer in his day. He just loves all the women around here, and we have pictures of him dancing with the girls. He'll just sit in his chair and he has the biggest beaming face when they're dancing."

"I've always been a little guy," he said. "I was too short to play basketball, I was too little to play football. Guess what? They put me in the marching band. So I've been a musician in high school, I played for the football games and I played with the pom-pom girls. I used to play the music for these girls. But that's a long history."

Noble's 107th birthday party celebration will be Sunday at Garden Plaza at 2 p.m. And you bet, there will be some dancing.

"I'll be around. I'm shooting for 110," he said, holding up 10 fingers with a twinkle in his blue eyes. "I got three years to go."