‘A hoe and a garden’ secret to 103-year-old’s longevity

Woodrow Wilson Sowers celebrates his 103rd birthday on Monday.
What’s the secret to his longevity?
“A hoe and a garden,” said Sowers, with a chuckle. “Working in the barn and in the hayfield.”
Indeed, Sowers remains independent, cooking his own meals and doing his own laundry. Neighbors run errands for him and pick up his groceries.
He said he is bothered by arthritis in his knees, and his poor eyesight makes it difficult to read, but he’s had a pacemaker since 1989, and it hasn’t given him any trouble.
“It goes with the times, those pains,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me too much.”
Sowers was born on July 20, 1917, during the Spanish flu. He was the youngest of five children, and his parents, Ida and Tilden Sowers, named him after President Woodrow Wilson. His family owned a 215-acre farm in North Bethlehem Township, where they lived through the Great Depression.
Sowers has spent his life in Washington County, where he has watched the county, and the world, change.
Among the most significant changes, he said, was the evolution of transportation and machinery.
“Back then we didn’t have tractors, we had horses. And we didn’t have balers. Look at transportation now, with airplanes and all that stuff. I like the way it is now,” said Sowers.
A graduate of Trinity High School, Sowers began working in the coal mines when he was 20. After six years, he started to work in the steel mills, where he labored for 36 years until he retired.
He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, but a back injury prevented him from serving overseas. Instead, he guarded German prisoners at different locations in the United States, he said.
He and his wife, Betty, who were neighbors as children, were married on Dec. 22, 1936, and raised a son, Roy, who lives in California. He has a grandson, Robert, in San Diego. The couple worked together on their farm, raising cattle and tending to a vegetable garden they nurtured for decades. They sold strawberries, harvested corn, cucumbers, radishes, cantaloupes and more, and gave away the rest.
A friend and neighbor, Barb Novogradac, said she would see the couple outside splitting wood for their fireplace when Woodrow was 98 and Betty was 95.
Betty died in 2017, months shy of their 80th wedding anniversary.
“His work ethic is amazing. He must have been 83 when my husband and I moved here, and he and his wife worked me and my husband under the table,” she said. “They were super neighbors, they’ve helped everybody around here. We’ll never see that kind of generation again. He’s just very kind-hearted. And his memory is sharp. He still remembers dates and details.”
In his younger days, Sowers played baseball in local leagues (he didn’t play on the high school team because he didn’t have transportation to and from practices) and enjoyed deer and bear hunting.
Sowers stopped riding his lawnmower when he turned 101, but he still loves John Deere tractors.
He doesn’t watch television, other than some news, and has never used a computer.
And, Sowers said, while he enjoys the advancements he has seen over the past century, there are still aspects of the past that he favored.
“I like the convenience of today,” said Sowers, “but I liked the slow pace of the old days.”