BOARD A SLEEK bus in Queens and if you are extremely fortunate you would sit next to a well-dressed man.
He looks no older than 85 years and as the bus travels along 108th Street in Corona and crisscrosses Rego Park and Foreign Hills, you would soon strike up a conversation with this passenger who has a ready smile.
It is then you would learn his name is Robert Mortimer Taitt.
You may also learn that he is 100 years old.
If you ask the well-spoken man about himself, he would tell you about life in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens, dating back to the World War I, and how his late Bajan parents, Robert Henry Taitt, of Tent Bay, a policeman before coming to New York in 1914, and his mother, Ethel Taitt, a nurse in the Caribbean country who had arrived a year before her husband, worked hard, battled tough economic times in Manhattan and later switched to the Bronx where he grew up.
“I was never hungry,” he would tell you.
Just as important, he said: “I call myself a Barbadian-American; how else would you put it? Those Bajans are smart.”
During the conversation, you would hear a shocker: the articulate and humble man who walks without a cane, worships at one of Harlem’s oldest churches, belongs to a fraternal lodge, uses the public bus service to travel around the city – he no longer uses the subway has good eyesight and a positive outlook on life.
He will be celebrating his 101st birthday on Saturday, making him one America’s longest living men. Considering his age, his memory can be described as excellent but a slight deficiency is his hearing, a problem he has had for decades.
Taitt is a member of a rare group of Americans. In a population of about 300 million, only 70 000 are centenarians.
Ask the man who was born in New York City, has visited Barbados regularly to meet relatives; served in a racially segregated unit in the US Army during the World War II, how come he has lived so long and he would give a straightforward answer.
“Hey, the Lord upstairs,” is his quick answer.
“I never did anything unusual. I never was a smoker. I lived an ordinary life, and I am thankful for it.” He eats two meals a day, breakfast and dinner and remains active.
Taitt is thankful for his relatives in New York, especially his grand-daughter, Tanya Taitt, with whom he shares an apartment and looks after him with care. He is also proud of his relatives in Barbados and in New York, one of whom Jesse Hamilton, a great-nephew, is a Brooklyn member of the New York State Senate, the legislature’s upper chamber.
“I ask the Lord to never let me be a burden to her, (Tanya),” he told the SUNDAY SUN a few days ago.
“I am thankful for that. I got my mind. I can walk. What else can you ask for?”
But Sandra Taitt-Eaddy, a history and English teacher in Connecticut who is the family’s historian, attributes something else for his longevity.
“He comes from a family of long-livers,” said the cousin. “Apart from the excellent way he has lived his life, it may be in the genes.”
A sister, Millicent Trotman, was 107 when she died sometime ago in Barbados. Another sister, Kathleen Carter, passed away at 99 in the US within 24 hours of Millicent’s death. The centenarian also has a daughter who is 82. His wife, who was from Bermuda, died in her 90s.
The Taitt family has its roots in Foster Hall Plantation but thanks to emigration they can be found in the US, Canada, Panama and the UK.
Tony Best is the NATION’s North American Correspondent. Email: Bestra@aol.com