News

By Ron Hayes

Every week or so, a gold, 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass pulls up to the Helping Hands food center on Northwest First Court, where the driver unloads a box of papayas gathered from the trees in his yard.
    The Oldsmobile Cutlass has 169,000 miles on the odometer, and it’s still going strong.
    Rick Reid, the driver, has 96 years on him, and he’s still going strong, too.
    Sit on his left side, please. The hearing’s fading in his right ear. Otherwise, this enviably lean and limber man is alert, articulate, opinionated and, best of all, a living lesson in how to reach 96.
    Keep busy.
    He starts each day with a swim in the ocean.
    “It varies with the sun, of course, but I like to get down there by 8 a.m.,” he says. “It’s the best exercise there is.”
    And he ends most nights pecking away at a Hewlett-Packard laptop.
    “I’m on my third computer,” he will tell you. “I seem to fill them up.”
    After the swim, he reads The Wall Street Journal, has some breakfast and tends those papayas.
    “I planted the first tree three years ago,” he says. “I counted 230 papayas the first year with a total weight of 1,000 pounds, and I gave about 90 percent of them to Helping Hands.”
    Now there are 23 trees in his yard on Wavecrest Court.
    Most Mondays, he volunteers at the Boca Raton Regional Hospital’s Debbie-Rand Thrift Shop, repairing donations.
    “If we get coffee makers or lamps or different kitchen items, he’ll fix them,” says Jo Ulferts, one of the shop’s managers. “He’s very patient and everyone likes him.”
    Enrique Reid was born on March 12, 1916, in Montevideo, Uruguay, the son of a mother from Ohio and a Scottish father from Valparaiso, Chile.
    He was a buck private in the U.S. Army Air Corps when he met Celia Zalduondo.
    “She wouldn’t marry me until I had a commission,” he remembers. “I was made a second lieutenant on Sept. 30, 1944, and we were married on Oct. 1.” They had two children, Juanin and Arthur, and were married 66 years at the time of her death in 2010.
    “The secret to a happy marriage shouldn’t be a secret,” he says. “My wife had a gift for seeing through situations and coming out with the right answer.”
    After the war, he earned a degree in political science and economics from the University of Southern California and began a career in international trade. The couple came to Boca Raton in 1986 after nearly 25 years in Mexico City.
    “I’d been at 7,500 feet in Mexico City,” he says with a laugh. “I wanted humidity.”
    Two years later, he bought that gold 1971 Cutlass.
    “I have strong feelings about the fact that cars with steel bumpers welded to the frame pay the same insurance premiums as cars without bumpers,” he says.
    He also has strong feelings about the prevalence of parking meters in Boca Raton, but his letters to City Hall have gone unanswered.
    “Most Americans no longer feel abused by having to pay for their parking,” he says.
    Ask him a question, you’ll get a straight answer.
    The secret to reaching 96?
    “Well, finances probably have a greater influence on it than a lot of things,” he says. “It allows you to sleep at night.”
    He eats simply, a lot of fruits and vegetables, and enjoys a glass of red wine with dinner, but stays away from liquor and carbonated beverages.
    “A short nap after lunch is nice,” he adds, “and if it doesn’t interfere with something good, have one after breakfast, too.”
    His television is on for the BBC News at 5:30 p.m. and PBS at 6. Otherwise, it’s usually off.
    And he works on his car. Rick Reid knows how to keep a car, and a life, running smoothly.
    “In 1946,” he says, “I bought a Chevy Fleetline for $1,266 cash, and I sold it 40 years later for $1,200.”
    He sighs. “I lost money on it.”
    Not long ago, he renewed his driver’s license for another six years.
    “I won’t be disappointed if I reach 100,” he says with a laugh. “But I’m not making any
plans.”