Call me either paranoid or pragmatic, but I just simply could not get on the bandwagon of celerating Dick Van Dyke’s centennial under now. You can blame a couple of game show personalities, a coach and perhaps a few of my ex-relatives for that.
We are a culture that tends to obsessed with big numbers, even those that aren’t preceded by dollar signs. When it comes to milestones, we typically begin to celebrate them as soon as it’s reasonably feasible to do so. Sports franchises have begun to correctly re-define team anniversaries based on the year they came into existence rather than their actual event –for example, 2025-26 is technically the 30th anniversary of the first season of the NBA’s Memphis (nee Vancouver) Grizzlies, but its celebration and the endless onslaught of retro merch took place last year. Heaven forbid anyone would want to waste any time in making a few extra bucks.
When it comes to our personal timeline markers, we often anticipate and make extensive plans around them. I just went through one where more than 18 months before my actual milestone birthday I began to be barraged with snail mail and electronic invites to free dinner seminars to help me choose a Medicaid plan. Budget-wary gonniff that I am, I took full advantage of them. I finally found one to my liking, only to learn in the wake of the machinations from this current administration my hospital of choice dropped my provider this year, sending me on a far less calorie-laden search for a quick replacement. I suppose I’m blessed that I even have it at all, and my increase will be a lot less than others’. But it’s a sobering reminder that once you hit a milestone the celebration of reaching it is often temporary.
When it comes to celebrating someone’s 100th birthday, this behavior is amplified even more. We admire and aspire to be such people while dusting under the rug the struggles to actually get there, let alone the ones that exist when they do. For decades the TODAY SHOW’s eccentic weatherman Willard Scott made such stories a regular feature, often punctuated with something poignant like “they still love to do needlepoint and crossword puzzles” or “they’re a proud veteran”. Rarely, if ever, would the story be about their growing number of doctors’ visits, and only in passing would there be any acknowledgment of outliving a spouse and/or a child. The celebration was as much for the benefit of Scott’s audience than the subjects themselves.
In recent years, I’ve been through both public and private experiences that have reinforced that while the temptation is to follow sports teams’ examples of including Year Zero, one does not have their 100th birthday until year 101 commences. Betty White’s countdown began years before, especially in the wake of her career renaissance becoming the oldest performer to host SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and prop up more than 100 episodes of the underappreciated HOT IN CLEVELAND. At roughly this time of year four years ago PEOPLE MAGAZINE devoted a cover story to her impending milestone in mid-January if only to get out ahead of the holiday cycle only to see it become as ill-timed a premature printing since the CHICAGO TRIBUNE declared on its back page “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN!” when she passed a mere 18 days short of the actual mark.
Betty wasn’t the only 99-year-old of prominence to disappoint. St. John’s University basketball coaching legend Lou Carnesseca missed out by 36 days when he passed in November 2024. Bob Barker fell roughly three and a half months shy in August 2023, prompting a flurry of memes of Gabriel blowing the PRICE IS RIGHT’s infamous horns when a pricing game is lost, undoubtedly coming from some who actually knew the man.
And in my own former family, I saw no more sobering evidence as my ex’s beloved grandmother approached her own centennial. When she turned 90 they had a big fancy celebration attended by dozens that she insisted she didn’t want but the family wanted to make an annual event. She grudgingly agreed to the next one being for the 100th. Her family began planning a party months before the actual day, figuring out logistics, catering, invite lists, etc. She was an indifatiguable woman whose mind was razor-sharp even as her body became more frail, something I saw first-hand as my ex and her brother were increasingly the only ones to spend actual time with her while the rest of the family went on with their lives save for the party planning. As her centennial approached, she has more and more remorse about consenting to the party, but she admitted her word was her bond, and if G-d somehow saw fit she’d show up.
Even when she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer a couple of months before the date the celebration remained on track. When her actual 100th birthday happened she was lying unresponsive in her bed, fading in and out of consciousness, while her unaware young great-granddaughters put a birthday tiara on her for a photo op and her clueless daughter loudly argued in the kitchen with the deli who sent over the original large order for sandwiches that she insisted she had revised once she realized any celebration would be far smaller than originally planned. She was, as usual, mistaken about such details, but at least we all ate free until New Year’s. Grandma indeed kept her word, but she got out of Dodge as quickly as possible once the mishagoss died down. She passed a few hours the day after her “photo op”.
So with a track record like this, I hope you’ll understand that I’ve held off of my own acknowledgement of Van Dyke until today. PEOPLE MAGAZINE again couldn’t help themselves when they devoted another cover to him just before Thanksgiving; the thin defense was he was also promoting his latest book, 100 Rules For Living to 100: An Optimist’s Guide to a Happy Life. It provided the perfect timing for other media outlets to celebrate his extraordinary career; the nameless staff at UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL did an excellent job rattling off his memorable roles. THE LOS ANGELES TIMES’ Robert Lloyd devoted a piece yesterday that marveled at his continued output even in more recent years:
Dick Van Dyke turns 100 on Saturday, an event so eagerly anticipated that for him not to do so would seem cosmically wrong. It may be generationally vain of me to imagine that the beauties of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Mary Poppins” are known and loved by those after their time, but as they remain available to watch and are still shared by parents with their children, it seems likely. Although Van Dyke’s professional schedule isn’t what it was — a canceled public appearance in June made headlines, sending waves of concern throughout the nation — he has remained visible over the last decade in interviews and social media posts, often dancing or exercising, and the odd acting job. In 2023, he appeared on “The Masked Singer” as “The Gnome” and guested for a four-episode run on “Days of Our Lives” as a man with amnesia. (It won him — another — Emmy.) He marked his 99th birthday by appearing in a Coldplay video, shot at his Malibu home, dancing to “All My Love” as Chris Martin sings at the piano. (They went on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” together.)
PEOPLE’s cover story via Liz McNeil was a bit more personal and reflective:
Ask Dick Van Dyke what surprises him most about his upcoming centennial birthday on Dec. 13, and he simply says, “The fact that I made it.”
“I feel really good for 100,” he tells PEOPLE for a story in this week’s print issue, while sitting with his wife Arlene Silver, 54, at their Malibu home. “Sometimes I have more energy than others — but I never wake up in a bad mood.” …(T)he legendary entertainer admits to being a bit hard of hearing and a tad wobbly, as he walks barefoot through his memorabilia-filled Malibu home with a cane. But the twinkly humor and lanky charm that endeared him to multiple generations are ever-present: Between telling jokes, tinkering at the piano and singing old favorites such “Puttin’ On the Ritz” and “Big Spender,” he quips, “I feel like I’m about 13.”
Real-world numbers support Van Dyke’s reason for such optimism. In January 2024 the PEW RESEARCH CENTER’s Katherine Schaeffer supplied this bubbly update on how busy Scott would be today and going forward had he himself lived that long:
The number of Americans ages 100 and older is projected to more than quadruple over the next three decades, from an estimated 101,000 in 2024 to about 422,000 in 2054, according to projections from the U.S. Census Bureau. Centenarians currently make up just 0.03% of the overall U.S. population, and they are expected to reach 0.1% in 2054. The number of centenarians in the United States has steadily ticked up since 1950, when the Census Bureau estimates there were just 2,300 Americans ages 100 and older. In the last three decades alone, the U.S. centenarian population has nearly tripled.
That 0.1% threshold will happen at about the time my own countdown to centennial could begin, G-d willing. Even typing those words give me trepidation; I’m nowhere near in the kind of shape or quality of life that Van Dyke is fortunate enough to find himself in. At least he’s capable of giving interviews and being photographed liberally; by the time his peers George Burns and Bob Hope reached their 100ths they had deteriorated markedly and were out of the public limelight for several years; neither made it to 101. I take my own inspiration from someone I knew and revered, Norman Lear, whose own centennial prompted a flurry of celebrations. I’ve mused quite a bit about how he impacted me and so many others, both in celebration and in mourning. But even Mr. Lear didn’t make 102.
I often joke, admittedly with more than a touch of morbid irony, that I need to live as long as possible since I’m a Mets fan and I yearn to see at least one more title before I go. The events of this week where they lost stars Edwin Diaz and Pete Alonso to free agency make that wish all that more necessary. After all, in a couple of weeks it will be the 40th anniversary of their last world’s championship, and that inevitable commemoration might likely be the highlight of an otherwise forgettable summer. Schaeffer’s data dump at least makes such wish something close to plausible.
I’m therefore magnetically drawn to the conclusions Van Dyke himself offered in his book which McNeil related :
“The end of my life is so much closer.” …”When you expire, you expire,” he tells PEOPLE. “I don’t have any fear of dearth (sic) for some reason. I can’t explain that but I don’t. I’ve had such a wonderfully full and exciting life. That I can’t complain.”
I’ll keep those words close to my heart and probably echo them if I’m capable of uttering them when the time actually comes. Feel free to at least think about having a party for me should I be so blessed. But for G-d’s sake, spare me the tiara and the caterer.
Until next time…