His name is Sherwin Callander, but you probably know him as “Chick Magnet.”
At 101 and a half – “I have to add that half!” he exclaims – he knows a thing or two about life.
“I always say cigarettes, whiskey and wild women, but I know that’s not true,” Callander said. “I don’t really know, other than living a life that you do to others the way you would like them to do to you, and everyone treats me wonderfully.”
Eighty years ago, Callander was stationed at Pearl Harbor.
“That was a long time ago, and my forgetfulness works well too. Some of them I remember; some of them I don’t,” he said.
What he remembers is seeing the Japanese flying overhead just before the attack.
“If they hadn’t been afraid to spoil their surprise, they would have blown us up, straight out of the water,” he said.
“It was a World War I ship. It couldn’t run. It couldn’t fight. We were just a sitting duck.”
Although it was stationed there, it was actually returning to port after a repair mission on nearby Midway Island.
“The place was practically destroyed.”
From there, Callander then fought in North Africa, Italy and Normandy, France on D-Day.
“I don’t really think about it. I think more about the present.”
When he’s not sharing stories and inspiring everyone he meets, Callander spends his days stirring up trouble at Tut Fann’s Veterans Home.
“I play on my computer. I get mad at it, I insult when it doesn’t do what I wanted to do,” he laughed.
See all of our Pearl Harbor coverage here.