Senior citizen: On Dec. 24, South Valley man celebrates 100 years of a life well lived

Roy Narimatsu worked at Gilroy’s Orchard Supply store for 25 years

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By Marty Cheek

When Roy Narimatsu was born Dec. 24, 1921, Warren G. Harding was the American President and Lillian Gish was starring in the hit silent film “Orphans of the Sky.” The longtime Morgan Hill resident will celebrate his 100th birthday Christmas Eve in a far different world.

The centurion’s philosophy in living his life may have helped shape his longevity. “You take things as they come and make the best of it. That’s the only thing you can do,” he said.

Another word of wisdom is who we are is based on what choices we make. “Make the right decisions because your life is the sum of your decisions,” he recommends. “Who you are is based on the choices you made through life. I find that to be true.”

Narimatsu grew up on a truck farm the northern Berryessa district of San Jose, then a city of about 40,000. His mother Momi and his father, Kiichi, raised a family of three boys and two girls by growing strawberries and raspberries. “I was just a little farm kid,” he recalls.

As a child, he attended “Japanese school” after the regular school day. There he learned the Japanese language and about Japanese culture. His parents were very involved in the local Japanese community and wanted him and his siblings to appreciate his heritage.

The young man was a junior studying engineering at San Jose State when the American naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was attacked by Japan Dec. 7, 1941. His family soon evacuated to the town of Garland, Utah, sensing the Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast would soon see their lives and livelihoods disrupted by the government.

The Narimatsus were lucky they were not sent to an internment camp during World War II. Roy finished his engineering schooling at the University of Denver, the only campus that would accept Japanese-American citizens at that time, he said. He graduated with his degree in 1943 and traveled to New York City where he found a job at a hearing aid manufacturer.

When the war ended in 1945, he started a journey traveling cross country back to San Jose. When the train stopped for a four-hour layover in Cleveland, Ohio, he took a short tour of the city. He found himself impressed by what he saw. The young man took his belongings off the train and made Cleveland his home.

“There were no skyscrapers, it was all flat land,” he said. “I liked the town and I stayed there for seven years . . . After seven years, I said, ‘I’m going to head home.’ I came back to California, to San Jose. My folks were still farming.”

Narimatsu started looking for a job. He found one at Westinghouse in San Jose and stayed there for a month. During that time he got a letter from NASA offering him work as an electrical engineer at the Ames Research Center based in Mountain View. Excited about working at the research facility, he took the job and was employed there for 31 years, developing on power systems for electric motors.

During that time in 1955, he took his mother to a San Jose doctor. While sitting in the waiting room, he noticed a pretty nurse named Mary walking back and forth while doing her job in the doctor’s office. Impressed with her, he went to her home and asked her out.

“She was going around with some local guy,” Roy recalled. “I think she saw me and she thought, ‘This guy looks a little different.’ I spent a lot of time back East.”

“I just knew I’d like to get married to him,” Mary said. “He was different. He was more sophisticated than West Coast guys and I knew I wanted to marry  him.”

“We got married about three months after we met,” Roy said.

The marriage produced one son and three daughters. The family lived in San Jose and saw the rise of Silicon Valley during the decades. After retiring from NASA, Roy worked for IBM for five years.

In 1982 after their children were grown, Roy and Mary moved to Morgan Hill. The couple soon joined the Buddhist Community Center. There, Roy served on the service group, putting his electrical knowledge to fix lights, electric outlets and make other handyman repairs for many years.

“A center like this requires maintenance,” he said. “There was always a group of people who did maintenance from time to time. So I joined the maintenance group.”

To stay active, Roy found a part-time job at the Orchard Supply Hardware store in Gilroy. The company saw him as Asian and assumed the stereotype that he was an expert about plants and flowers — so they put him in the nursery department, Mary said. Roy read books to understand plants and help customers.

“I knew about raspberries and strawberries and nothing else,” he said.

“Finally he landed in what he wanted to do, which was the electrical department,” Mary said. “He was in his element.”

He enjoyed helping OSH customer so much that he stayed there for 25 years. He worked at the Gilroy store until he was 97 years old when the company closed the site.

“I liked the place so much and they liked me,” he said. “On weekends, they would have a free hot dog stand in the parking lot. All my friends would come and we’d eat hot dogs. The manager wanted them to go into the store and buy stuff. Half of the guys would have hot dogs and go home. I had a good time at Orchard Supply.”

Roy has stayed physically active in his retirement. For many years, he enjoyed skiing, heading to the mountain snow with friends and family for a day on the slopes. He gave up the sport two years ago at the age of 98 when his son saw it was getting dangerous for him because of the recklessness of snowboarders who might accidentally collide into him.

He also picked up the sport of roller-blading and found fun rolling along the Coyote Creek Trail that connects Morgan Hill to San Jose. He now spends relaxing time on his bike on the trail, peddling up to eight miles a day to keep himself lean and fit.

Approaching the three digit mark, Roy finds himself physically healthy and mentally sharp. He wakes up with no aches or pains. Asked how he got to live to 100, he says humbly, “I really don’t know.”

His friend Brian Shiroyama wrote a letter to Roy congratulating him on a long live well lived. In it, he said: “We understand that your uncompromising diligence to physical fitness supported by your wonderful family played a key role in achieving this milestone accomplishment. In addition, however, we have had the pleasure of witnessing your positive attitude and always helpful demeanor that became the foundation which also shaped your life of longevity. We all share in your happiness.”