The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

WWII vet's birthday today is dressed up to the nines

90th birthday on 09/09/09.

Staff photo by Gary Stelzer Bob Cravens pictured Tuesday, Sept 8, 2009, inside his home in Monroe. Cravens turns 90 today, on 09/09/09.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Child injured in Ohio 741 accident
8:07 p.m.
Board to review superintendent applicants Saturday
5:54 p.m.
Mayor against Waynesville income tax
5:00 p.m.
State jobless rate jumps to 10.5 percent
3:14 p.m.
Checkpoint tonight
2:04 p.m.
> More headlines

By Rick McCrabb, Columnist Updated 4:37 AM Wednesday, September 9, 2009

MONROE — In 1995, preparing for his second open-heart surgery in 13 years, Bob Cravens received sobering news from his cardiologist and surgeon.

Cravens and his wife, Margaret, were informed that his next stop after surgery: coroner’s office.

The docs couldn’t have been more wrong. Today, 14 years after his second heart surgery — a success by the way — Cravens will celebrate his 90th birthday today — 09-09-09.

He was born in 1919.

His next stop? Ohio Lottery.

“They wrote me off back in 1995,” Cravens said about his second heart surgery Tuesday, Sept. 8, while sitting in his living room. “I figured I’d be on to my reward a long time ago.”

He spent more than a month recovering in Kettering Medical Center.

And whatever happened to those doctors, known as Pessimist Nos. 1 and 2? Drum roll, please.

“They’re probably dead,” Cravens said with a smile.

He’d probably join them if not for some major lifestyle changes he made following his quadruple-bypass surgery in 1982. It took him eight years, but he finally quit smoking, and at the same time, reduced his alcohol consumption. He weighs 158 pounds, a drop of 45 pounds.

“I feel pretty good for a guy my age,” he said.

He certainly never figured to live this long. His parents, Herbert and Elizabeth Cravens, died when they were 60, but his two brothers lived to be 78 and 88, and he has two cousins on his mother’s side who are in their late 80s, early 90s.

Besides heredity, Cravens had history against him. He served for six years in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and he realizes 1,000 WWII veterans die daily.

Cravens, a 1938 Middletown High School graduate, enlisted in the Navy in 1940.

Eventually, he was assigned to USS Putnam, a 335-crew destroyer. Whenever the ship pulled out of port for another potentially dangerous mission, Cravens “said a long prayer.”

While in the service, Cravens met another crew member, who, after finding out Cravens was a Middletown native, asked if he knew another sailor on the ship from Middletown.

That man was Bill Erb. When Cravens returned to Middletown for a 30-day leave, he met Erb’s parents and their daughter, Margaret.

The future Mrs. Cravens.

“It’s funny how things turn out,” he said.

Just ask the doctors.

Share this article