Editors note: Due to technical issues yesterday that prevented our articles from being viewed by most of our audience I have made the decision to republish them today.
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. In which case, there are some individuals who are surely titans among us.
Yamaguchi Tsutomu was visiting Hiroshima on business when the city was hit by the atomic bomb. Wounded, he nonetheless returned home and went back to work three days later at the Mitsubishi plant…in Nagasaki. Tsutomu lived to the ripe age of 93.
In the U.S., another man has lived through everything from the Spanish flu to the Pacific War – and now he can add the Xi Plague to the notches on his belt.
A veteran of World War II who survived the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 has also recovered from the coronavirus.
William “Bill” Lapschies celebrated his 104th birthday on Wednesday, which came 25 days after he first showed symptoms of the flu-like coronavirus, the disease which causes COVID-19[…]
“Pretty good. I made it.” Lapschies said when asked how he felt, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Good for a few more.”
To be strictly accurate, it appears that Lapschies lived through the Spanish flu epidemic without catching it. Still, given that the Spanish flu was particularly deadly to the under fives (added to everything else that made surviving beyond five years such a crapshoot in the 1900s) Lapschies deserves some credit for his luck.
The Great Depression and the WWII Aleutians campaign were no cake-walks, either.
Lapschies’ son-in-law, Jim Brown, noted that besides the Spanish flu epidemic which killed more 50 million worldwide and more than a half million in the United States, his centenarian father-in-law has lived through the Great Depression and was stationed in the Aleutian Islands during WWII.
“Bill’s pretty resilient,” Jim Brown said[…]
Lapschies has two grandchildren, six great grandchildren and five great great grandchildren.
“We were like shocked that he was kind of sitting in his wheelchair waving at us through the window and we were like, ‘He’s going make it,’” Carolee Brown said.
“We hope that this will inspire some of the other people that are going through this. And we’re really excited and looking forward to 105.”
At this rate, he’ll outlive Keith Richards.
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