Port Hueneme man 103 and still climbing

It's hard to keep a good man down. In the case of 103-year-old Port Hueneme resident George Kenneth Seaton, it's hard to keep him down off the ladder.

Seaton is still climbing ladders and doing handiwork at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Port Hueneme.

His friend Ray Chapin, 79, tells the story of working with Seaton at the church one day 10 years ago.

"We were up on a foot ladder, and they were yelling at me, telling me I was too old to be on a ladder," Chapin said. "They never said a word to Ken, and I'm 20 years younger than he is."

In honor of his 103rd birthday, congregation members served a cake, which he was able to enjoy.

"Last year, I was away on vacation when they served the cake, so they sent me pictures of them with it," Seaton said. "This year they checked to see whether I would be around."

The tradition started on Seaton's 100th birthday, with cake each year since.

Seaton has belonged to Westminster Presbyterian for the past 13 or 14 years, and has been ordered off ladders more times than he can count during that time. He doesn't listen.

"I painted the cross outside. I stood on an 8-foot ladder and was painting the cross because it needed it," he said.

Seaton's health remains good, and he lives alone, caring for his large fig tree in back and making fig jam each summer. He said he had some health issues last year but is feeling better.

"My heart bothered me. There was fluid around it and my lungs, but they put a breathing tube down and that took care of it. Otherwise, I'm doing pretty well," he said. "I'm still able to drive and take care of my trees," he said.

"He's an amazing man," fellow parishioner Evonne Peterson said, although she acknowledged that seeing Seaton climbing on ladders is unnerving. "He gets up there before anybody knows he's up there is the problem. But he had a lot of apartment buildings in town, and he's used to doing things himself. He's a charming man."

Seaton was born to George Milton and Helen Grace Miller Seaton on Feb. 7, 1909, in Leavenworth, Kan. His family moved to his maternal grandparents' farm in Lathrop, Kan., where Seaton said there were no indoor bathrooms and the water had to be heated for bathing.

"I remember my grandpa sitting by the pot belly stove in the living room with his feet in a washtub because of leaking sores from gout," Seaton wrote in a memoir he prepared for his 100th birthday.

He grew up in rural Missouri, where he was a good student.

In September 1928, Seaton came to California, where he got a job at a Safeway in Glendale. He then worked for Richfield Oil Co. at a service station at Wilshire and Rampart boulevards in Los Angeles, where movie stars, including Clark Gable, would stop in.

Seaton married Lois Ladd Mitchell on Sept. 24, 1940, and the couple had two children, Elaine Ladd Seaton Boynton and Paul Seaton.

The couple moved to Oxnard, where Seaton worked for a car dealership while also buying apartment buildings around town that he maintained and rented until he retired at 95.

In honor of Seaton's 103rd birthday, his children are sending him on a seven-day Alaskan cruise, where he will be able to visit the office of his son, Paul, a district representative from Homer, Alaska, to the state's House of Representatives. George Seaton will be visiting Juneau, Alaska, for the first time, though he has traveled to the state many times. He and Lois drove there for the first time in 1965 in a Ford Falcon station wagon, and the entire trip was on unpaved roads, he said.

"We drove 35 miles an hour the whole way because if you would drive faster you would ruin the tires," Seaton said. They had no car problems, but he brought an extra ignition coil, fuel pump and condenser.

"We went on the ferry, and everything was fine, but on the way back the car would stop and start, so I just put in the new fuel pump and we went home," he said.

Boynton said she still has the motor home, an 18-foot Lazy Daze, that her father bought in 1980, and used to travel around the country. It still runs, thanks to her husband, Jim.

"People are always asking my dad what he's done to live so long. Some of the lifestyle choices include healthy eating, plentiful exercise, maintaining a good weight, never smoking and having good friends," she said.

She added that her parents were avid square dancers and she and her brother would sleep in the back of the family car in the parking lot during the Valley Stars dance club's get-togethers.

"I stopped going in 1995 because everybody got so old. But I never missed a dance," Seaton said.

In addition to his children, Seaton has four grandchildren and five great-granddaughters.