Yardley Chittick, 107; was oldest patent lawyer in US
Once you have a century of living under your belt, Yardley Chittick found, the world begins to take notice.
At 102, he finally received a diploma from Barringer High School in Newark, where he failed French in 1917 or thereabouts. At 105, Mr. Chittick was interviewed on National Public Radio, and host Scott Simon anointed him "the oldest patent attorney in the United States. Anyone older needs to call us immediately." And at 107, Mr. Chittick became the first person to attend his 90th reunion at Phillips Academy in Andover.
"I'm an entirely undistinguished person in industry and intellectually," he told MIT Tech Talk in 2001. "All I've managed to do is stay alive longer than anybody."
Well, not quite. There also were a few brushes with history. He lived across the hall at Phillips Academy from a teenaged Humphrey Bogart - they didn't get along. And he later turned down a job offer from Thomas Edison, a decision that put Mr. Chittick on the road to launching a legal career in the early 1930s.
Mr. Chittick, who retired to New Hampshire about 30 years ago, died in Concord on Friday, several days after suffering injuries in a fall, according to his friend and lawyer, John Ransmeier. Mr. Chittick was 107 and had lived in the Pleasant View Retirement Community in Concord.
"I didn't plan this," Mr. Chittick said of his longevity in an interview with the Globe last month during ceremonies at Phillips Academy. "I was just lucky."
Nevertheless, Mr. Chittick made some choices along the way that he thought may have helped keep him going. Breezing past 100 years, he was still lifting weights and golfing - and walking from hole to hole.
"Anyone who rides in a cart isn't really golfing," he told the New Hampshire Business Review in 2005.
To a Concord Monitor reporter who watched him put on a pair of 12-pound ankle weights at Pleasant Valley's fitness center, Mr. Chittick noted: "They're supposed to be heavy." Then he moved on to chest presses and leg presses.
An athlete since high school, he kept working out as one decade gave way to the next.
"I don't have any particular secret," Mr. Chittick told the Monitor last November, a few weeks after he turned 107. "All of my life, I was a runner. Then, I played golf for 60 years."
He did, however, offer a few words of advice during the NPR interview about what to avoid: "No drugs. Absolutely no drugs and no smoking."
A drink to end the work day was another matter, though, as Mr. Chittick told the NPR host: "I'm a screwdriver drinker, and I have one every night at dinner."
Charles Yardley Chittick liked to say that being born in 1900 made it easy to keep track of his age. He told the Monitor that he began running during grade school years in Newark. The inspiration then was getting away from neighborhood toughs, rather than good health.
When Mr. Chittick failed French at Barringer High School, he was sent to Phillips Academy, courtesy of an uncle who had married into money. He graduated in 1918.
"One of the best things that happened to me was that my mother's brother became wealthy," he told the Globe last month. "Because he was wealthy, I got my education."
For a while, Bogart lived across the hall at Phillips Academy. No friendship blossomed.
"He didn't like me, and I didn't like him," Mr. Chittick told the Monitor in 2005.
He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1922. After graduating, Mr. Chittick was interviewed by Edison, who asked him to take a test of more than 100 questions that covered a variety of subjects and facts.
"I passed it and Mr. Edison offered me a job to work in his laboratory," Mr. Chittick told NPR.
He turned down the position and worked instead for a manufacturer that made small tools and golf clubs.
When the Depression began, Mr. Chittick thought the patent lawyers he had worked with on the company's products appeared to be in a safer place financially, so he went to George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., graduating in the early 1930s.
Practicing law until he was 85, he estimated that he had worked with about 100 inventors who sought patents.
Mr. Chittick's first marriage ended in divorce, and he retired to New Hampshire with his second wife, Ruth, in the 1970s. His son John died in 1992, and Ruth died in 1997.
"He was quite a remarkable fellow," Ransmeier said of Mr. Chittick. "Despite his age, he was engaged and had a good sense of humor - and he entertained people around him. He was a great raconteur and storyteller."
William Chittick, a tugboat captain in Portland, Maine, said his grandfather "was one of a kind, that's for sure. He was definitely a book-smart person, and he kept it going to the very end."
In addition to his grandson, Mr. Chittick leaves another son, Charles of Hingham; three other grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements will be announced. 