LAPLACE — Carey F. Simoneaux joked this week that his father, Felix Simoneaux Jr., was fond of chewing his food.

“What he would tell everybody was he lived a clean life,” Carey said. “He didn’t smoke or drink and he chewed his food well. He emphasized chewing his food. I tell you he used to chew his food.”

Whatever Mr. Felix did sure must have worked, because the LaPlace resident lived to 110 years old before passing away Tuesday night at his home, surrounded by family.

Family members said Mr. Felix was in good health throughout most of his extraordinary life, only recently suffering a stroke that sapped some of his strengths, but not his determination.

“He did have a clear head the whole time,” Carey said. “Towards the end there, he had a little stroke and we couldn’t understand everything he was saying. One time with me I was giving him some water from a sponge, and he started saying something and I couldn’t understand. I said, ‘Daddy, I can’t understand.’ He said ‘P. L. E. N. T. Y. water.’ That is what he would do. He would get frustrated if we couldn’t understand his speech and would spell out the words.”

Family and friends celebrated and honored Mr. Felix during a Funeral Mass Friday at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in LaPlace.

He was buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery in Reserve, next to his wife of more than 69 years, Myrtle Champagne, who died May 22, 2004.

There was a lot to celebrate with Mr. Felix, who, at 110 years old, was the oldest man in the United States of America. His 111th birthday would have been May 26.

Robert Young, head of research for the Gerontology Research Group, told L’OBSERVATEUR it is believed Mr. Felix took on the title of oldest living American male Jan. 18 following the death of California’s Andrew Hatch, who was 111.

Young said the Research Group uses census and records research to track aging trends in the United States and beyond.

According to Young, 90 percent of people 110 years old or older in the world are female. He said the oldest female in the United States is 116. According to Young, there are more than 150 people worldwide who are 110 years old and over.

“Our goal is to find out how long people live based on documented evidence,” Young said. “The GRG was founded in 1990. The original purpose of the GRG was to slow and ultimately reverse the human aging process using scientific methods. In order to figure out if treatments are working, we have to first figure how long people are living now before we can see if new treatments are going to make people live longer or not.”

Long life

Mr. Felix saw LaPlace grow from a rural area strewn with fields to the bustling suburban center it is today. He even saw his childhood home get swallowed up by the federal project that is the Bonnet Carre Spillway.

Mr. Felix settled in LaPlace in 1930 after the government bought up the land along the line dividing St. John the Baptist Parish and St. Charles Parish.

“We were still doing farming mostly,” he told L’OBSERVATEUR in 2010. “There were very few jobs you could get.”

Back then, Mr. Felix explained, there were few houses along Main Street.

The rest of the area was open fields.

Mr. Felix attended school until he was 13. When he was in the third grade, his father began pulling him out to help with the work that had to be done.

Frustrated, Mr. Felix stopped attending regular schooling, but that did not stop him from learning.

While working one of the temporary jobs he held in his younger days, a job in Reserve, the carpenter quit, and Mr. Felix was thrust into what would become his lifelong vocation.

Mr. Felix eventually taught himself so well he was promoted to foreman. While he was still learning, he worked for $1.25 a day.

He continued to work as a carpenter until retiring at age 70. He also began growing tomatoes, turnips, carrots, mustard greens, shallots and musk melons.

Loved cards

Carey said his dad always mentioned one vice — playing cards.

“He used to play with a lot of the older guys and get together at Cliff’s Bar and they would play in a back room over there,” Carey said. “He loved his cards. He did that all of his life.”

Kelly Bailey, one of Mr. Felix’s granddaughters, said she visited him during Easter, adding he was of sound mind up until the end.

“He actually predicted how many days he had left because he knew how he felt,” she said. “He was a little hard of hearing so I would have to talk loud. I never had a problem with that because I always talk too loud to everybody who hears normal.”

Kelly said she appreciated that her grandfather was a kind man.

“I went over there, and was just talking, ‘I’m a bus driver. I clean houses,’” she said of one of their last conversations. “We talked about other things after that, but he said to me, finally, ‘Kelly, you’re doing good. You’re doing alright.’ I said, ‘what do you mean, papaw, I’m doing good? I don’t feel like I’m doing good.’ He said, ‘You’re still driving a bus, huh?’

“He followed that whole conversation, followed it later and told me I’m doing good because I’m still able to drive a big bus. I was sort of amazed with that. He was able to hear, react and say something about it.”

History

Mr. Felix loved to dance and met his wife, Myrtle, at a dance in Luling. Less than one year later, the couple married Dec. 6, 1934. They had six children: Loretta Simoneaux, who died from an ear infection and lived only 13 months; Myrtle Simoneaux Robichaux; Audrey Mae Simoneaux Terrio; Myra Simoneaux; Carey Simoneaux; and Maurice Simoneaux.

In the 1940s, Felix Simoneaux built the house he lived in until his passing on Hammond Highway in LaPlace at a cost of $700. He cut his own cypress, and two young men helped him. One was J.D. Perilloux III, his neighbor.

Family members described Mr. Felix as a religious man who attended church services at a chapel in Montz and St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in LaPlace.

According to family, he was recently honored with a plaque, commemorative pin and documents in recognition of being the oldest living member of Carpenter’s Union No. 1846, having served for more than 75 years.

During WWII he worked for Higgins Ship Builders, building PT boats and landing drop ramp boats — the largest landing crafts used in the Normandy Invasion.