I'm "only 65" but my father was born in 1899. Yes, he was 48 when I was born and my mother was 34.

My father narrowly escaped having to fight in both world wars.

During WW1, he received a draft notice telling him when and where to report. Then there was an influenza outbreak in the camp he was supposed to go to, so he received a second order canceling the first. Before they could figure out where to send him instead, the war ended, so he never had to serve.

He was drafted again in WW2 when he was over 40, and went through basic training. He said "it like to killed me" trying to keep up with the younger men. Then the army decided it had been a mistake to draft men that old, so it released the ones who had jobs in "essential industries." [I just looked it up: "On 5 December 1942 a presidential executive order changed the age range for the draft from 21-45 to 18-38."] My father had worked for a railroad, which was classified as an "essential industry." Apparently it didn't matter that he was only a window-washer in the office building in downtown St. Louis (or he may have been promoted to janitor by that point; I don't know when that happened). So he returned to his civilian job.

My father grew up on a farm in western Kentucky, and plowed with a mule. He remembered when the first motorcar passed through that area. It had been printed in the local newspaper that a car was going to drive down a certain road on a certain date and time, so the whole family turned out to watch it go by.

My father died in 1985, a few months short of his 86th birthday. My mother died in 2010 at age 96. I'm counting on those "good genes" to keep me going a while longer, although my lifestyle is working against it.