If you ask Dale Wyatt his secret to long life, he’ll smile broadly and say, “Good whiskey and lots of women,” but he admits that his daily bicycle rides probably contributed, as well.
Wyatt, a World War II veteran, celebrated his 100th birthday earlier this year. With Veterans Day coming up Nov. 11, the Fishers resident reflected on his early years in Indiana and his time in the Armed Services, first as a U.S. Navy medic and then with the Marines — where he fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima, the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history, according to the National Museum of the Pacific War.
Wyatt was born Feb. 10, 1926, in St. Bernice, just north of Terre Haute along the Illinois border. He said his father tended to travel a lot for work and they ended up moving to Paris, Ill., for a while, then back to Indiana when he was 16 — this time to Mishawaka, near the Michigan border.
“I got a job in a furniture factory and I got paid the total sum of 40 cents an hour,” he said, adding that even back then, that wasn’t much.
In 1943, at the height of World War II, Wyatt said he decided to join the Navy, where he served as a medic. He recalled a head nurse who, when she needed a medic, would st...