The Sunnyvale Sun

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103-year-old: flies when you're having fun

By Erin Hussey

Not only does Sunnyvale resident William Paiva live by himself, have close to perfect blood pressure and an anecdotal memory, but on Nov. 5 he celebrated his 103rd birthday.

"I do my own cooking and make my own bed," Paiva said. While he does have a housekeeper and gardener who come every other week, Paiva does his own laundry, folds his own clothes and does the dishes.

"You can go look in my closet," he said. "Everything is hung up." In addition to doing his general chores, Paiva enjoys fixing broken clocks.

"That clock was from Goodwill," he said, pointing to one of the eight clocks on the wall of his study. "It was all apart, but I like playing with puzzles, so I bought it. About four hours later I had it up and running." Paiva has restored about 40 clocks, ranging from small desktop types to large grandfather ones.

Before Paiva was working with clocks and cooking dishes such as sautéed Polish sausage over rice, shrimp salad and marinated pork chops, he was a meat cutter.

"I'm a butcher's butcher," he said. "I can do anything in a slaughter house. I can make sausages, ham, whatever you want."

As a young man, he worked in Hawaii with his family until the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 sent his wife and two children to Sunnyvale to live with his brother-in-law. One year later, after serving in civilian defense, Paiva sold his house, paid his taxes, turned his papers into the officials and then boarded a ship for the mainland. After 14 days and daily submarine drills where the passengers were not allowed to use any lights, Paiva docked in California.

"I came to Sunnyvale November the 14th, 1942," Paiva said. "I got to the house about 2:30 in the afternoon." He laughed as he explained that the first words he said to his wife was, "You got fat." She explained how the ice cream sodas down on Murphy Avenue were only 15 cents.

Within two days of his arrival in Sunnyvale, Paiva started working for a meat company.

"I worked for Swift, and any job they gave me I could do," he said. "But then Uncle Sam got after me because the war was still going on, and if I didn't work for a company that had contracts with the government, they would want me," Paiva said.

He then started looking for a government job and came across Swanson and Company, which happened to have a contract to supply the government forces with meat. He was hired and continued to work as a butcher until the '70s, when he retired.

At 103, Paiva surprisingly doesn't have too many health problems.

"When I worked at Swift, I worked in 39-degree weather, and that cold blast from the top caused calcium deposits in my shoulder," he said. "I can reach so-so, but sometimes when I am combing my hair I have to help this hand out."

Besides Paiva's stiff shoulder, he is in sound health and attributes part of his longevity to vitamins.

"Back in 1936, I used to belong to the National Guard, and Uncle Sam introduced vitamins to us and I got hooked," he said. "At one time I was taking 24." Today, Paiva takes cod liver oil, baby aspirin and calcium. He stopped taking zinc because he said he gets enough from the spinach and broccoli he eats.

"Zinc is good for your bladder," he said. "A lot of people have trouble with their bladder or prostate. I'm 103 and no trouble."

In addition to the births of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Paiva has lived to see three of his five younger siblings die.

"It's just between my sister [who is 86] and me on who goes first," he said with a smile. "I am the first born and the last Mohican."