Bradford resident Jim Piscitelli knows the secret of life.

So it would seem, anyway.

Piscitelli will be turning 100 on Saturday. How has he lived so
long?

To begin with, he eats a good breakfast every day. “Grapefruit
is my favorite,” he said. Breakfast includes cereal, scrambled
eggs, toast, sausage and bacon. And he does his own cooking,
too.

Every morning after his bath he exercises his arms with a rope
pulley that is on the back of his door. While he sits in his chair
in the evening he exercises his legs. He reads the newspaper from
cover to cover. He volunteers.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I believe everything
that’s going on,” he suggested.

Piscitelli will mark his 100th birthday with a party at the
Bradford Club on Saturday, featuring dancing and refreshments.

To those who know Piscitelli, it’s really no surprise that he is
still full of vigor.

Longevity seems to be a Piscitelli family trait, as the family
became involved in the Long Life Family Study in 2006.

The project, a collaborative study conducted by five
universities, was sponsored by the National Institute on Aging of
the National Institutes of Health. The universities studied
long-living people from around the world to determine what helped
them live so long. In order to be a part of the study, an
individual had to be 79-years-old and have at least one sibling who
lived to be that age.

A team from the University of Pittsburgh interviewed Piscitelli
and analyzed his physical condition. Almost 40 members of
Piscitelli’s family participated in the study.

Daughter Barbara Piscitelli said that her father and his
siblings are “all very healthy and alert” and do not have health
issues that haunt many elderly people, such as heart disease or
diabetes. Barbara said her father is quite fun, too — she plays
cards with him all the time, particularly the game Shanghai.

“It’s been a pleasant life,” Piscitelli said, looking back on
his life’s accomplishments.

Piscitelli is especially excited about his upcoming birthday
celebration, noting “all my family’s going to be here.” He has
family and friends coming from across the country to celebrate with
him.

And he has a large family — currently totaling more than 300
living family members.

It’s impossible to give an exact number, said Barbara
Piscitelli, because the number keeps changing.

Piscitelli has also been very active in the community, including
doing a great deal of volunteer work.

He has lent a hand to Bradford Regional Medical Center, has
served as a referee for high school football, volunteered at the
hospice, and taught umpire and culinary classes at the Federal
Correctional Institution-McKean. Piscitelli is also a current
member of the Exchange Club, a Master of the Fourth Degree at the
Knights of Columbus in the Erie Diocese, a member of the Area
Transportation Authority board, the oldest member of the LaStella
Lodge and a member of the Lewis Run Mutual Aid Society.

One accomplishment that he is particularly proud of was becoming
a professional baseball umpire.

On Feb. 7, 1948, Piscitelli and his wife, Faye, took off for
Florida in their new Pontiac Sedan. It was 17 degrees below zero
the day they left, he said. He spent five weeks in West Palm Beach
being trained to umpire by other professional baseball umpires. He
went on to work for the PONY League for many years, which worked
well for him because there were many night games and he did not
have to miss his other job.

“My days in umpiring were quite fascinating,” he said.

Born in Bradford in 1910, Piscitelli was delivered by a midwife,
as were all of his siblings except the youngest. His parents moved
to the United States in the early part of the twentieth century as
part of a large Italian migration. His parents settled in Lewis
Run, which Barbara Piscitelli said was like a “Little Italy.” His
father worked for the Hanley Brick Co. His mother raised eleven
children, six of which are still alive today. Piscitelli’s youngest
living sibling is 82.

He married Faye, his wife of 67 years, on May 6, 1939.

“She was a beautiful woman,” Piscitelli. She had a beauty shop
in front of their house on Interstate Parkway. She died in 2006 of
congestive heart failure.

In addition to Barbara, he has two other daughters, Diane Warren
and Susan Stephenson. His son, Robert, died in infancy in 1947.

He graduated from grade school at the age of 14. It was the last
education he had. He had planned on signing up to take high school
classes, but his father got him a job at the Hanley Brick Co.
instead.

After that, he worked for the Cyclone Brush Co. One day he cut
his thumb, and he was told that his arm would need to be amputated.
Instead, his boss took him to see a person in Salamanca, N.Y., who
kept telling him that his arm was healing. Eventually it did heal,
and he did not need to have his arm amputated.

In 1928 , at the age of 18, he was hired to work for a
contractor who was building a section of Route 219 beginning in
Lewis Run. He started as a laborer making 35 cents an hour, and
ended as a supervisor making $125 a month. He worked there for two
years.

He continued doing highway construction for various companies
throughout the 1930s.

Then Piscitelli began working for Dresser Manufacturing Co. He
worked there for 31 years. He retired from Dresser in 1972.

“I haven’t had a day off since,” he joked.