‘Hard work’ key to Manuel’s 100 years

Working hard has paid off for Jimmy Manuel.

He celebrated his 100th birthday Tuesday at Morgan’s Restaurant inside Clarion Inn in Morgan City.

Manuel, a longtime Morgan City resident, said his secret to longevity is “hard work,” and he still enjoys life.

“I worked hard all my life, and I enjoyed working,” Manuel said.

He still likes “to dance around a little bit.” He used to sing, but stopped after his wife told him he had the worst singing voice she ever heard.

“I don’t feel any different now than when I was 18,” he said.

His advice to young people is to enjoy life, word hard and “never give up.”

“Always find work that you like to do and do it as best you can,” he said.

Manuel grew up one of 11 children on a farm in Evangeline Parish, where he milked cows as a child and continued to do so to pay for college. Life is definitely different now compared to growing up at a time “before the automobile was very well known,” he said.

Manuel, a World War II veteran, worked for decades as an insurance agent in Morgan City and was married to wife, Muriel, for nearly 72 years. She died in December 2017. Manuel began his career working for his father-in-law.

The couple met in 1944 while Manuel was on leave from serving in World War II, their daughter, Alida Lorio said. Muriel Bibbins was a student teacher at the time in Evangeline Parish at the same time she was attending Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Their younger daughter, Melanie Manuel Vidrine, said she and her sister had a happy childhood. Manuel also has two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Manuel is fortunate to have sitters who “love him like we do,” Vidrine said. He now resides at Maison Jardin Senior Living Community.

For years, Manuel has gone to Morgan’s Restaurant at Clarion Inn for coffee in the morning and then come back to eat lunch there, Vidrine said.

“The people here kind of adopted him,” she said of the staff.

Manuel graduated from high school in 1936 and then got degrees from Southwestern Louisiana Institute in 1939 and LSU in 1941. After graduating from LSU, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps shortly before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

He was stationed in Trinidad during World War II as part of a ground crew tasked with hunting German submarines. Manuel was later stationed in the United States and Pacific before the end of the war. He was on Iwo Jima shortly after U.S. Marines took over the island.

He married Muriel at the end of 1945, and within a couple of years they moved to her hometown of Morgan City where he’s lived ever since that time.