He’s a pool shark who drives to Brooklyn from New Jersey, talks politics and sports with his “crew” at the local deli, does his own laundry and bills and is on Facebook.
Oh, and Miguel Cruz turns 103 this summer.
God knows he’s no spring chicken, born the same year Brooklyn Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets announced he would build a new “steel and concrete” 31,000-seat stadium.
Cruz is even a marvel to the New York-Presbyterian cardiologists who recently replaced a narrowed valve to keep his ticker ticking.
“I didn’t believe his age at first,” said Dr. Susheel Kodali, who with Dr. Mathew Williams performed the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement.
“He is in better shape than many 70- and 80-year-olds we see.”
It’s a refrain the feisty Cruz hears a lot.
Other than having two cataracts removed when he was 86, and some arthritis in his back, Cruz, like most centenarians, is fascinating to aging researchers for how “medically boring” they are. No cancer, no Alzheimer’s, no diabetes or clogged arteries — the deadly risk factors of aging.
With the heart valve procedure behind him (his first visit to a cardiologist was at age 98), his 66-year-old daughter, Sonia Krauss, a teacher, cracked: “What could he possibly die from now?”
Miguel Angel Cruz was born in Quebradillas, Puerto Rico, on Aug. 19, 1911, according to his birth certificate. One of seven brothers and a sister, he arrived in New York by boat in 1936, a dapper man in a suit with a determination to go to college, make a better life and see the world.
He did it all, calling Brooklyn his home for more than 60 years and retiring from the New York City Housing Authority in 1979 after 25 years as a housing assistant.
He also drove a taxi, worked as a bookkeeper and as a Spanish interpreter for the city courts. A World War II vet, he and his late wife, Consuelo, married in 1946. The couple soon had a son, Pedro, now 67, and a daughter, Sonia, raised them in the Marcy Houses, and sent them to college.
He also put himself through Baruch College at night, graduating in 1955 with a degree in business administration.
Pedro Cruz remembers his dad as the guy “always fixing someone’s television set or taking them to the airport, or giving them advice on what to do with their taxes. He would help everybody.”
More than a half-century later, Cruz shows no signs of frailty, is up on the news, and is the life of the retirement party.
Holding court with his 70-year-old pals at the Bonhampton Deli in Edison, N.J., last week, the lifelong Daily News reader looked up from the paper, all stirred up about the disgraced Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. “Can you believe how racist that guy is?” he said, shaking his head.
“I have to like New Jersey now because my children are here and I need to live near them,” said Cruz. “But I’m a New Yorker! Greatest city in the world.”
Such is his feeling of Big Apple pride that unbeknownst to his kids, he has been known to rent a car from the local Enterprise office and drive to his old church in Brooklyn — Transfiguration Parish.
“When he told me he had rented a car and drove to Brooklyn in November and December, my mouth dropped,” said Krauss, a schoolteacher who lives a few minutes from her father. “I told him, ‘Dad, it’s not such a good idea for you to drive anymore — you could have a heart attack.'”
Cruz shot back: “So could you!”
According to longevity experts, people can live to the age of 80 if they do all the things their doctors tell them: Don’t smoke, exercise, eat healthy and drink in moderation.
But to live until 100 or more like Cruz — and live well — takes special longevity genes.
“I don’t think you can get to age 100 without extra help from biology and genetics,” said Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “We age at different rates. You see people who look ten years younger or older than their age. Those who are 100 years old, their aging is slowed the most.”
Barzilai, who has extensively studied more than 500 older people — from age 95 to 112 — said he would be interested in having Cruz be part of his research. So far, Barzilai has discovered five genes linked to longevity in his study of centenarians — with several drugs in the works to delay aging in the rest of us.
Cruz is looking forward to his family gathering at Lola’s Latin Bistro in Metuchen for his 103rd birthday. To stay in shape, he jogs up and down his apartment hallway and has a busy social life.
Last week, he beat his 77-year-old opponent in a game of 8-ball at the Edison Senior Center.
“He gets people 30 years younger off their chairs and tells them, ‘Don’t talk about your worries and woes, let’s go have a good time,'” said Judi Gillingham, the assistant director for aging for Edison Township. “He is a phenomenal man, not the norm for this age group.”
Cruz said he was a big scotch drinker and smoked a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes in his 20s and 30s.
“Now, I eat oatmeal and blueberries for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and chicken or fish with wine for dinner,” he said. “I love my glass of Merlot.”
Asked the secret to his long life, Cruz, a lifelong Giants football fan who loved to dance the salsa with his wife before she died in 2011, will tell you: “A loving family, good friends and always staying busy. Don’t sit around.”
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