Been There, Done That...
102 Year Old Queens Man
Discusses The Centuries He Has Seen

As the world prepares to greet the year 2000 with grand celebrations and wild noise making, Charles Prutzman’s goal is simply "just to be there."

And as New Year’s life-changing resolutions are made in preparation for being broken, Prutzman’s advice about life is simple. Being married and having children is good (it was for him) but don’t work too hard (which he did do). You can drink some, and smoke for a few years. But most importantly, live and don’t worry about the years passing. He doesn’t, and he turned 102 years old last month.

Celebrating the new year has "become old hat to me," Prutzman told the Tribune during a recent interview at his stately Forest Hills Gardens home, where he has lived and entertained guests since 1942. He said "I often wonder myself," what has kept him alive all these years, but he maintains that when the doctors ask him he replies honestly, "Nobody knows."

The independent 102 year-old, who is as sharp as those less than half his age, explained that he had an occasional drink, smoked for ten years, but always kept active through sports like baseball, basketball and bowling.

"I’ve been a slow eater and always the last done at any table," Prutzman explained "but otherwise, I have lived the life of a typical suburbanite," he said.

Prutzman and his wife, Marie, had two children (daughter Betsy is now 71), and he now has six grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

"You can’t believe the changes," the central Queens centenarian said of the advances he has witnessed in his lifetime as he talked of an era before phones and electricity were commonplace, roads were paved and television and radio were yet to be in their infancy.

"With electricity, things are much easier," Prutzman said recalling a time when kerosene lamps lit his boyhood home and using the "outhouse" was a fact of everyday life.

"There were hardships but you didn’t know any better."

As for inventions like the automobile and the airplane, Prutzman said forget it.

He said he can still remember the first time he saw a horse drawn trolley car at a parade held in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt’s return from a trip to Africa.

Although he currently lives in Queens in the midst of the 21st Century, Prutzman says his story begins years before the American Revolution.

The first Prutzman ancestors arrived in America on a ship named "Winter Galley" in 1738 and settled in Palmerton, Pennsylvania — which at the time was considered the "furthermost settle-ment in Indian territory. "

During the French and Indian War, Native Americans swept into the Pennsylvania Dutch town of Palmerton leaving a trail of destruction behind.

Some of Prutzman’s relatives were killed in a melee that took place there and some of the settlers were taken captive by Indians and removed to Canada.

One of the captured Prutzmans managed to escape from his Canadian imprisonment, making his way down the St. Lawrence River into Philadelphia and finally back to Palmerton where he settled and started the family which Charles is a descendant of.

Charles Prutzman was born in 1897 in Palmerton, PA, one of six boys.

In turn of the century Palmerton there were no high schools, he explained.

Each day to get to school the young Prutzman had to walk two miles to the town railroad station to catch a train four miles to the next town, then walk two miles into town just to get to school.

Prutzman said he arrived at school each day by 8 a.m. and had to wait there until the school opened at 9 a.m.

Following each school day, which normally let out at 3 p.m., Prutzman had to wait until 5 p.m. to take the train back to the town where he lived and after walking two miles arrived home usually around 6 p.m.

"Even in winter time," he explained.

Following high school – at a time when few people in his hometown sought higher education— Prutzman enrolled at Pennsylvania State College (now known as Penn State University) and in 1918 he was able to finish school in 3 and-a-half-years with 25 percent of his masters degree completed.

After finishing college, Prutzman joined the Army during World War I much to the chagrin of his father who told him that he would refuse to pay for law school for him when he returned.

Prutzman went anyway.

Explaining that he never made it as far as "over there," Prutzman spent most of his stint in the armed forces training to become an officer and in 1919 at age 21, Prutzman was discharged as one of the youngest commissioned members of the U.S. Army.

Following his military service Prutzman entered into law school at Yale and paid his own way through school.

There he was a top student and worked on the school’s law journal.

Six articles he wrote for the journal were signed with his initials, the only time that has happened in the history of the Yale Law Journal, he explained.

In the early 1920’s after graduating from Yale, Prutzman found himself in New York City.

"I planned to only stay a year but I’m still here," he said.

After passing the bar exam in both New York and Pennsylvania, Prutzman began to practice law with the firm of Chadbourne, Hunt, Jaeckel and Brown.

In 1939 after practicing law for almost 20 years, he left the law firm to take on the job of vice president and general counsel of the Universal Pictures company.

In 1942 after signing on with Universal, the Prutzman family found themselves playing host to some of the most well known show business stars of the day on a regular basis.

Screen notables such as Ginger Rogers, Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Montgomery were regular guests in Prutzman’s Forest Hills home.

"W.C. Fields was the toughest to work with, he was never sober," Prutzman said.

"Abbot and Costello were buddies of mine," Prutzman explained adding that he played a big part in giving them their start in the movies.

Prutzman retired from Universal in 1950 and travelled extensively around the country and around the world following his retirement.

"I have been to all fifty states," Prutzman said.

Although he was involved in movie productions, Prutzman rarely watches television or movies anymore.

"I prefer the radio," he said.

"I don’t hear as well as I used to and my eyesight is getting poor, but I manage," Prutzman said.

It seems that he manages quite well since he is still highly involved in alumni affairs at his alma mater Penn State and is currently the President of the Board of Trustees of the Kew Forest School.

"I have tried to resign two times," he said explaining that other members of the board won’t let him.

Entering into the new millennium, Prutzman said he plans to take things day to day.

"I am ambitious but I can’t plan, hell I don’t even buy a green banana anymore," Prutzman added.

But plans often change Prutzman contended citing his arrival in New York in 1922.

"I planned to stay only a year, but I’ve been here ever since."