THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9412310037
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: SENTINELS OF THE CENTURY
From the horse and buggy to the lunar landing
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
AT 105, Hyman Rubin of Virginia Beach has outlived all of his friends but one: Jim Beam.
That's not to say the Beth Sholom nursing home resident has a drinking problem. It's just that a stiff drink - even in a nursing home-issued foam cup at 10 in the morning - takes the place of a good friend.
His blind eyes shut tight against the fluorescent light, Rubin raises the cup to his cracked lips slowly with swollen fingers. He sips the bourbon and ginger ale and politely asks the nurse for a little more ice.
Rubin's mouth is dry. His feet hurt, he can no longer walk. He is hard of hearing, has arthritis and is in the early stage of Alzheimer's.
Yet he looks surprisingly younger than you would expect of a man born in 1889. His pale skin is smooth and curiously unwrinkled. His sense of humor is intact.
``One of the nurses said I was an alcoholic yesterday,'' he says proudly, licking his lips.
``No you're not, Mr. Rubin, you just like your schnapps,'' says a nurse standing nearby.
Holding court in a wheelchair in the nursing home hallway, Rubin struggles with intermittent memory loss that has him trying to remember his favorite U.S. president.
``No, no, it wasn't Kennedy,'' he says irritably. ``I had no interest in him.''
FDR?
``No, no, not him,'' Rubin replies.
Eisenhower?
``Oh no, he was a cold-blooded man,'' Rubin says, smiling.
Woodrow Wilson.
``Certainly not, he was the dullest president we ever had.''
Then it comes to him.
``Teddy Roosevelt, it was Teddy Roosevelt,'' Rubin says, grinning. ``He was an honest man. He was on the ball. He told the truth.''
Rubin was born to a poor Latvian family, one of nine children. In 1906, when Teddy Roosevelt was president, Rubin left the poverty of Russia for the promise of America, saying goodbye to parents he would never see again.
``I wanted to pay them back for all they done for me,'' he says in his soft Russian accent. ``But I never had the chance.''
His first few years living on New York City's East Side were a nightmare. At the turn of the century New York teemed with immigrants and sweatshops. Rubin shared a cramped apartment with his eldest brother's family, who had emigrated first.
``I was a watchmaker by trade,'' Rubin says. ``That's probably why I'm blind now. I earned 11 cents an hour when I came here. As bad as it had been in Russia, it was worse in New York. We were so crowded. We slept on the fire escape.''
He falls silent. Lost in his memories, which come and go. The cup of bourbon is tilted in his lap; a nurse rights it in his hand.
``Are you taking it away from me?'' Rubin asks, alarmed.
``No, Hyman, it was spilling,'' she says.
He's back in the present.
``I've seen some horrible things, a fire in a factory where 150 women were burned alive. They couldn't jump. I watched it all.''
Rubin escaped New York after seeing an ad for apple pickers needed in Staunton, Va. He eventually settled in Norfolk, where he worked as a motorman on the city streetcars.
``Virginia seemed like heaven to me after New York,'' he says.
In 1926 Rubin married a woman named Sydell. This was not a match made in heaven - but it was a marriage that endured until Sydell died five years ago.
When asked what his wife was like, Rubin speaks with the frankness of a man who has lived a long time and has little to lose by telling the truth.
``Mean as hell,'' he says.
Later he admits that his wife was a good mother to their two children, both boys.
The sons were ``different, like night and day.
``One was full of brains, that was Julius,'' he says with pride. Julius Rubin is a retired nuclear physicist who lives in North Carolina.
The other son, Karl, was the athlete.
``He died, was killed in World War II,'' Rubin says, his sightless eyes leaking tears for the son he lost 50 years ago. ``He was a real gentle boy, a gentle boy. So gentle.''
While Rubin hesitates when trying to remember where he lived in Norfolk, he instantly recalls how much money he won in the 1961 Irish Sweepstakes.
``It was $56,000,'' he says. His son helped him invest the funds.
On his secret for living a long life, Rubin has just four words of advice: ``Stay away from women.''
He is laughing now, answering questions always asked of centenarians.
``And I don't eat rich food. I don't like to eat too much,'' says the man who dines several times a day on pickled herring.
Since his arrival at Beth Sholom two years ago, Rubin has had a stream of visitors. His son, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. And a very special niece: Ramona.
``Ahh, Ramona,'' he says, smiling, eyes still closed. ``Without Ramona life wouldn't be worth living.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
by CNB