Living History

He was born by lantern light in 1901 and lived to see television, computers, airplanes and rockets to the moon. He endured two world wars, the Depression and, in the end, a certain celebrity. Frank W. Buckles died Sunday on his West Virginia farm. Of the almost five million Americans who served in World War I, he was the last to go. When he died Sunday at age 110, only two survivors of the Great War were left, one in Australia and one in England.

Buckles lied his way into the Army at age 16, and after the war was over, he took typing and short hand and became a purser for a steamship line, traveling the world. World War II was harder on Buckles than World War I — he was a civilian working for a Manila shipping company when the Japanese took him prisoner. He spent three years and two months in captivity.

By 1953 Buckles and his wife had settled down on Gap View farm. The former doughboy drove a tractor past his 100th birthday, had a Facebook page and championed a refurbished World War I monument. He took seriously his responsibility as guardian of the past, but he liked to have fun, too. The secret to longevity, he once said, is, "When you think you're dying — don't."

Reading about Buckles reminds me that the past is all around us. It is in the stories told by our parents and grandparents; it is in quiet roadside monuments and the pages of books. Most of all it is alive within each of us. We may walk through a flat, featureless world, but our minds are full of mountains and valleys, the intricate passageways of all we have been and known. "The past is never dead," William Faulkner wrote. "It's not even past."