Claude Williamson pushed his rollator into the kitchen at the Carriage House on a Wednesday afternoon to a round of applause. Grinning, the Wayland resident, wearing a fleece pinned with a badge that read “Older than Dirt,” had just one thing to say about his birthday: “I can’t believe that I’m that old.” The kitchen walls, which were decorated with cutouts of his face in a blue party hat, announced his age: 106.
The August 20 celebration drew a crowd of residents and staff from the Carriage House, along with Williamson’s children and grandchildren. Massachusetts State Rep. David Linsky also attended, presenting Williamson with a resolution from the Massachusetts House of Representatives congratulating him on his milestone birthday.
“This is really special,” Linsky said. “It’s not every day, obviously, that someone in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts turns 106, so I brought a resolution before the House of Representatives here in your honor.”
Williamson moved to Wayland in 1970, following service in the U.S. Army. He enlisted before Pearl Harbor was bombed. During World War II, he was stationed in North Africa, France, and Italy. He met his wife, Hazel, when he was an ROTC student at Ohio State University in 1941. She caught his eye because she wasn’t wearing “beau-catcher” clothes — flashy outfits popular at the time — but instead a simple cotton dress, according to Williamson. The pair corresponded while he was off at war, and married when he returned. After his military service ended, he settled in Wayland to work as an electrical engineer for Raytheon. They moved to Wayland 55 years ago, where they raised three children.
Before moving to the Carriage House, Williamson traveled the world, visiting all seven continents. His favorite, he said, was Antarctica.
The centenarian’s advice in achieving longevity was simple: get lucky. “Be very smart in choosing ancestors,” Williamson joked. “It’s genetic. It’s inside all of us, how long we may live. We do have the genes that we were born with, and some of those are the aging genes.”
And looking around at a room full of friends, family, and birthday cake, Williamson summed it up with gratitude: “I feel very lucky.”
