Jim Coleman turns 100 on January 16th. He will definitely spend the morning like he does every day, sending devotional texts to his friends.
“I’m up to 23,” said the Lurin man this week as he sat at his kitchen table. “We send it every day.”
Coleman grew up in Central and remembers details about his childhood and life vividly and clearly.
“When I grew up, we didn’t have a radio, much less air conditioning or television,” he said. “A lot of people our age grew up with kerosene lanterns, but we had electricity. The electricity we had was one light bulb hanging from the ceiling in each room. But there was no toilet until I was 18.”
Introducing a 10-inch box fan into his family’s home is something he fondly remembers.
“We thought we died and went to heaven,” Coleman says with a laugh, looking around his house and discovering that most of the things in the house—microwaves, air conditioners, refrigerators, televisions—were all born there. Invented from.
“I got a radio in 1937 so I could listen to LSU football games on WWL,” he said. “I became a fan…I am still a fan.”
Coleman enlisted in the Air Force (now the Air Force) in 1943 at the age of 20.
“Most of my time was spent in the South Pacific,” he said. “I was discharged in 1945.”
After working there, Coleman met and married his wife of 74 years, Georgia. Like him, she grew up in Central.
“We had a good life together,” he said, adding that the couple raised a son and a daughter. I have been a true believer Christian for a long time, and God has blessed me in so many, many ways. .”
Career changes moved Coleman across the United States until a job at Union Carbide moved him to the Parish of St. Charles in the 1960s.
“Things here are terrible, but the people are wonderful,” he said of Louisiana.
Coleman lives alone in the Lurin house that he and Georgia built. He said he misses his wife very much since she died three years ago, but his five grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren are now at LSU. Like the Tigers, it keeps his spirits high.
“I bought a new 75″ TV this week. I was going to buy a 100″ for my age, but I didn’t,” he laughs. “I watch LSU and a lot of football.”
Council on Aging provides meals five days a week and house cleaning once a week.
“I’m going to stay here,” he said, laughing from the kitchen table.
