ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 27, 1996 TAG: 9606270022
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
John Nutter turns 102 today. His legs aren't so good anymore, so he doesn't get out of his home near Vinton too much.
But if you pull up a seat next to his big stuffed chair, and ask the questions loud enough for him to hear, he'll take you on quite a journey.
It's a trip that goes back more than a century.
He saw the first car chug into Blacksburg.
He fought German U-boats in World War I and bandits in Haiti as a U.S. Marine.
He's held just about every job you can imagine: He was a streetcar conductor in Roanoke, ran a sawmill, worked for the Norfolk and Western Railway and the Radford Army Ammunition Plant during their heydays, owned three grocery stores around Montgomery County, even drove a "huckster truck."
"I couldn't tell you how many jobs that I had," he said recently. "My mother and daddy separated when I was 4 years old, and I've been making it on my own ever since. I know what work is."
It was when he was 4, he recalls, that he did his first real work: carrying sticks of firewood - two and three at a time - that his granddaddy had split. "They was bragging on me," he recalls with a smile.
It's with the same sort of pride that he recalls his days as a Marine. His home near Stewartsville in Bedford County is stocked with Marine Corps memorabilia, including a framed letter that just came from the commandant of the corps, wishing him a "Happy 102nd Birthday."
Nutter is the nation's oldest living Marine receiving federal veterans' benefits, according to Fred Fralin of the Virginia Department of Veterans Affairs. There are a handful of Marines still alive who are older, Fralin says, but they're not drawing veterans' pensions.
Nutter, who was born and raised in Montgomery County, says he was running a barbershop in 1917 when he decided to enlist.
He served on a battleship, the USS South Carolina, which was part of convoys that ferried U.S. soldiers across submarine-infested waters to Europe. "I think I crossed the ocean six times."
There were pitched battles with enemy U-boats: "They was under water and we was shooting at the periscope."
After Americans helped win World War I, he was sent to Haiti: "I was down there fighting bandits. I was there for six months. I heard the bullets whiz."
When he was discharged two days before Christmas 1919, he took several honors with him, including the World War I Victory and Haitian Campaign medals. His discharge paper gave him "excellent" marks for character, military efficiency, obedience and sobriety.
After the Marines, he went to work as a streetcar conductor in Roanoke, but it wasn't long before he moved on to other endeavors.
He was working as a pipefitter for Norfolk and Western around 1940, making 80 cents an hour, when he took a job at the Radford arsenal for $1.50 an hour. "That was the first big money I ever made. I thought I was rich."
He smoked two packs of Camels a day for many years.
But "it was awful easy for me to quit smokin' and drinkin' too. I was walking the floor and I said: 'I believe I can lead a Christian life if I quit smoking.' Something said: 'Throw that thing down.' And I threw that cigarette down in 1944 and I haven't smoked since."
Nutter outlived two wives and two of his four children. Today he lives alone in a country home surrounded by apple trees. Three caretakers take turns coming in and helping him out.
It wasn't so long ago that he was completely independent.
"They said when he was 90-some he was out doing his fruit trees," says Peggy Scott, one of his caretakers. "They said the ladder fell and threw him back and he got up and went on back to work."
Fralin said that even a couple years ago, Nutter "was out and about his yard doing things, as best he could with his limited eyesight."
But he's been less able recently.
"I fell two or three months ago," Nutter says. "My legs give out on me. I can't walk to do much good."
He uses a walker or a wheelchair. He listens to his TV a few hours a day. "The news and a preacher," he says, are all he pays attention to.
Because he can't get out much, Scott says, "he loves people to come talk to him - somebody to come see him. You knock on that door, he just says, 'Come on in.'"
If you do, and he's feeling well, he'll ease back in his chair. Then he'll pour out the memories of a century gone by.
Like his recollection of that first car in Blacksburg, circa 1902: "It didn't have a muffler on it and you could hear it coming from a mile or more away. We used to climb up on the fence and watch. I was 8 years old. I always thought that was a wonderful thing."
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PHILIP HOLMAN/Staff. John Nutter is the nation's oldestby CNBliving Marine receiving
federal veterans' benefits. color.