Word: dunbars
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Married. Dixie Dunbar, 36, onetime Broadway dancing star (Yokel Boy) whose legs have more recently been seen dancing beneath the pack of Old Golds on TV commercials; and Robert M. Herndon, motion-picture executive; both for the second time; in Manhattan...
...their emotional makeup, Dr. Dunbar reported: "Centenarians show little tendency toward elation or depression, but they are optimists according to the definition, 'one who believes the future to be still uncertain' . . . They show little need to dominate. They are willing to live and let live. They have many friends and a good sense of humor, and they spend little time prating about 'the good old days.' They are receptive to change . . . and often talk as though they expect to be around for many years...
Underlying this relaxed and healthy emotional attitude, Dr. Dunbar saw one factor as most important: "Centenarians have contrived to avoid or navigate the dangerous age range from 50 to 70"-which she compared to adolescence because of the severity of the changes in the individual's body and in his relationship to the outside world. "The individual beginning his second half-century of living is concerned about the possibility of losing himself sexually and vocationally." Centenarians, having "navigated" this period successfully, keep not only an interest in sex but also their potency...
...Wonder of Apple Pie. The one feature that Dr. Dunbar observed in the lives of all centenarians was that they had kept busy. A banker who turned over his business at the age of 100 to his son immediately became active as an organizer of boys' clubs. A woman of 113 was putting several great-grandchildren in succession through college with earnings from needlework. Reasoned Dr. Dunbar: "Retirement and enforced education in leisure defeat their own goal. Those who remain healthy after age 65 wish to work, and they stay healthy because they work...
...breakfast every morning. But most would agree with the 103-year-old man in McHenry, Ill. who said: "If you want to live long, never lose your temper." What do they eventually die of? Not, as a rule, from the diseases of old age. It seems to Dr. Dunbar that most of them "decide when they will die, and usually each dies about the date he has set. Perhaps this is because consciously they are in better control of their psychosomatic machinery than the average human being...