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Solving the world’s problems, over lunch

At 79, John Adams could comfortably retire from Adams Paint Center, the store at Northwest Highway and Abrams he (and before him, his father) has owned and operated for decades, but he’s having too much fun. He arrives at the shop about 7:30 each morning. He works for a few hours framing art and photography, which is a significant part of the paint store’s business, but by 10:30 a.m., he usually has prepared lunch/ brunch for 4-8 people — maybe sandwiches, soup, meatloaf or chicken. Unfailingly, a small crowd will gather at about noon to break bread in the back room.

“You see — they are not just my customers. They are my friends,” Adams says.

Leah Ekmark, whose artist-husband Fred is Adams’ longtime framing customer, says the lunchtime gatherings are remarkable. “You will find a variety of people gathered around his weathered table — cops, judges and other city officials, a retired horse jockey all the way down to your ordinary contractors. It’s a colorful crew.”

Among the attendees the days we visited was retired letter carrier Dick Barber, pro golfer Rives McBee, and Judge Ken Blackington from Mesquite. Conversation is as varied as the company but, Barber says, “This table has solved many of the world’s problems.”

An interesting, ever-changing and lowstress workload and stimulating friendships give Adams a reason to “get going each morning,” but he didn’t arrive at his golden years without having lived well all along.

Adams left high school to become a Marine, and he trained pilots during WWII. He has owned six Harley Davidson motorcycles. He has two Yamaha motorcycles now and recounts an accident in which he survived sliding along Northwest Highway after a car forced him to lose control of the bike.

“I got a ticket for failure to control my vehicle,” he says, “but I had a buddy on the force who helped take care of that.”

Adams and his wife did a stint on their farm in Nevada, Texas, raising racehorses, and they enjoyed some success, especially with one thoroughbred named Red Sun, a horse that Adams says “nearly paid for the farm.” There was also Ice Cool, Adams Aries, Lord Thomas (named for Adams’ dad), Come Rain or Shine, and Beau Bidder. His greatest contribution to society, in his opinion, is his involvement with Scottish Rite Masonry.

“Masonry takes a good man and makes him better. That’s how it was explained to me,” Adams says.

“When I was a young man living in Vickery — I was pretty mean back then — there were these few men who were very nice and polite and one day I asked them, ‘Why are you so nice?’ and they said, ‘We are Masons,’ and I said, ‘How do I become one?’ and they said, ‘You just did.’ After that, I got nicer.”

The Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, which has treated more than 200,000 children free of charge since its inception in the 1920s, is one of the organization’s “pet projects,” Adams says.

Aside from the time on the ranch, Adams has spent his life in Dallas. He learned to swim in a lake where the Village Apartments are now located. He remembers the WWII POW camp at White Rock Lake and the skeleton recovered during the lake’s 1953 dredging. He’ll tell tales on acquaintances, including district attorneys, judges and mayors (“Henry Wade and Jack Evans were honest men,” Adams says. “I can’t say that for many of them”). He’ll regale his tablemates with stories about well-known friends, including Keller’s burgers’ Jack Keller and Campisi’s Egyptian Restaurant’s Joe Campisi — “he was the number one guy,” Adams says of Campisi. Without specificity, and with a raised brow and a wink, Adams notes the well-circulated rumors of Campisi’s mafia ties.

Adams, despite recent heart problems, still plays golf regularly (did we mention he was a good golfer? “Wasn’t anyone who could out-drive me back in the day,” Adams says). In fact, the day after we met Adams, he played in a charity tournament. He says he’s having a little trouble getting around, but that the event benefits impaired and in-need kids — his soft spot.

92-year-old miracle

Anyone who has ever said, “I am too old for that” needs to meet Bernice Press, a 92-year-old miracle. An encounter with Press is a wake-up call after which one can’t help but realize that before him or her lies a vast amount of possibility.

I am greeted in the lobby of C.C. Young’s Asbury building by an upright, smiling woman with a firm handshake and a strong voice.

“Hi, I’m Bernice,” she says.

Her cropped hair is pure white. An aura of color surrounds her — perhaps it’s the crisp blue blouse, matching watch and earrings, or the hint of rose on her lips and cheeks, or maybe it’s something less tangible. At a brisk pace, Press leads me to her first-floor apartment. She says she’s Bernice Press, but the Bernice Press I came to meet is 92 years old. Can this really be Bernice Press?

The coffee table scrapbook filled with honors, magazine articles and photos from a past life as a WWII-era nurse and an entrepreneur who, with her husband, started the country’s first laundromat prove she is who she claims to be.

What’s her secret? For one, each morning she stretches, showers, exercises and dresses for success.

“Every day, I am prepared for a date,” she says. Dry wit drives much of her dialogue.

She stays active during most mornings, doing various volunteer activities, and after lunch she relaxes and plays video games on her bejeweled iPhone.

“I’ve always been a curious person. Always wanted to do more, learn more, keep busy,” she says. Also, her mother lived to be 103, so maybe it’s in the genes, she adds.

When she was in her late 70s and had recently moved into C.C. Young (where her mother also lived), she began putting together new resident welcome bags for patients entering the health center.

She knew firsthand that being in the hospital was “the pits,” and the gifts seemed to lift spirits.

Shortly after this, the center opened a new wing and the number of patients jumped from 10 to 26. It is typical, she says, that a job she has taken on becomes bigger than expected. Good thing she doesn’t let large tasks deter her. These days, the staff at C.C. Young helps out with the welcome bags. When she decided to recognize war veterans living at C.C. Young, it also turned into a big job. Every November, you’ll find Press lining the hallway with photographs and stories of the more than 100 veterans (and counting) who are her neighbors.

The other residents call Press “Mrs. C.C. Young,” staffer Cameron Hernholm says. “Bernice has more energy and volunteers more hours of service than a teenage Boy Scout. She’s a miracle who seems to have found the fountain of youth.”

Because there is so much to do, Press says age 75 is the perfect age to move to a retirement community.

“Don’t wait until you’re old,” she says.

Since she arrived, Hernholm says Press founded the first support group for adult children of aging parents. She also facilitates the Alzheimer support group; she was on C.C. Young’s national championship Wii Bowling team; she traveled last year to Washington, D.C., as the one female among a group of WWII vets; she is the C.C. Young Auxilliary Club’s vice president. Off campus, she volunteers at the Dallas Bethlehem Center, a non-profit that helps South Dallas children.

In the 1930s, Press received a music scholarship and played the baritone during college. Her mom encouraged nursing school.

It’s no surprise that Press spent her early years as a nurse, loved for her bedside manner.

“Touching, listening, talking,” she says, is as important as the medical treatment. One of her patients, Leonard Press, married her. He was an entrepreneur, and in the 1940s, the pair opened up Leonard’s Self Serve Laundry Mat, the first of its kind, in Los Angeles. Years later, they also owned a country and western bar in East Texas, The Hitching Post.

Along the way, they adopted a Bolivian child, Carol, who recently celebrated her 60th birthday.

Carol is to thank for her mother’s aforementioned bling. “She goes to the shops along Harry Hines and buys earrings and watches,” Press says.

She opens a drawer containing dozens of colorful wristwatches. “I have one for every outfit.”