After spending more than eight decades fixing clocks, Roy Evans has learned at least four things about living a long life. “I’m 98-and-a-half,” Roy says, smiling during a break from repairing a complicated timepiece. “And proud of it!” First, if you want your body to keep ticking, you must maintain it. “You get rid of alcohol. You get rid of tobacco,” Roy says. “And the big thing is you got to have a belly laugh every day. Otherwise, you’re in trouble.” Second—like winding a watch—keep engaging your mind. For Roy, timepieces are puzzles. “You just solve the puzzle one step at a time,” Roy says before breaking into a big smile when asked how it feels when the watch is fixed. Number three: Like the components of a clock work together, cultivate connections. “This gear matching with this gear,” Roy stretches out his fingers on both hands and joins them together. “It’s like a love affair.” Although time ran out on three marriages, the love between Roy and his kids is non-stop. “Both of them phone every morning or every afternoon,” Roy smiles. To appreciate the fourth thing Roy has learned about living a long life, he needs to turn back the hands of time. “This is when I was a rascal,” Roy says, opening his photo album and pointing at pictures of when he was a child. Roy says he taught himself how to repair timepieces after figuring out how to fix a clock his dad had that stopped ticking. “And I’ve been doing it ever since,” Roy says. He spent more than 13 years in the merchant marine and jumped into the ocean to save the life of a drunk captain who fell overboard, before rising the ranks to master. Through it all, he kept repairing clocks. “Even on my leaves when I came home, I was doing clocks,” Roy says. And he kept at it, despite later working for decades as a ballroom dance instructor, schoolteacher, and principal. “I was making more money doing clocks in the evening. So, I quit early,” Roy says. But Roy’s never really retired from repairing, because he credits living almost a century, with never not having a purpose to help others. “You’ve got to enjoy what you do,” Roy says. “As long as you do that, with a smile, then you can do anything.”
