Herb Gustafson usually starts his day at 5 a.m. without setting an alarm — he’s naturally an early bird from waking at that time for decades for work.

Before several days ago, he would have been at the gym around 5:30 a.m. to lift weights. They’re not as heavy as they once were, but his routine has proven impressive for a man who turns 100 Saturday. The centenarian has been living an independent and active life.

The retired Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy and World War II veteran is a great-grandfather and accomplished photographer. What’s his secret to a long and healthy life? Not drinking or smoking. Also, “have good genes,” Gustafson says with his dry sense of humor. He says his father and his uncles lived into their 90s.

He’s been a longtime, helpful resident of Applewood Pointe in Woodbury, a senior cooperative for people 55+.

“Everybody here loves Herb,” said property manager Karen Shannon.There were 291 men and 1,252 women aged 100 years and older in Minnesota as of the 2020 Census; that’s up from 170 men and 1,041 women in the 2010 Census. About 79 percent of Minnesotans 90 years and above are living in households rather than nursing homes or other types of group quarters; there wasn’t information specific to those who are 100+ years old, according to Susan Brower, Minnesota state demographer.

Life as a St. Paul kid

Born Feb. 10, 1924 (when Calvin Coolidge was president), Gustafson’s family originally lived in an Italian enclave on the Mississippi River near St. Paul’s High Bridge in the Shepard Road area. His mother, Edith, was of Finnish descent and born in Michigan; his father, Emil, immigrated from Finland.

Does Herb Gustafson speak his family’s native language? He answers a reporter in Finnish, saying, “I’m a Finlander boy.”

Emil Gustafson worked at the nearby grain elevator on the river (now known as City House).

“In those days there were different levels of poor and we were dirt poor,” Herb Gustafson said, adding it was not the lowest level of poor but close to it. It was the Great Depression.

Herb was the older brother to Melvin, two years his junior, and Marshall, eight years younger than him. He’s the last living brother.

The family moved to Forbes Street and then farther west to Bayard Avenue, both off St. Paul’s West Seventh Street.

While Gustafson went to school, he also started working in seventh grade. He sold magazines — “Liberty,” “Collier’s” and “The Saturday Evening Post” — door-to-door. On some Saturdays, he’d go downtown to sell the Pioneer Press, which was 3 cents. His profit was a penny from each sale, which he used to buy White Castle sliders or hot dogs.

In eighth grade, he worked at a bakery, washing pans or kneading dough, making 10 cents an hour. He saved up to buy a neighbor kid’s bicycle for $8.

By ninth grade, while attending Monroe High School, he worked at Stransky’s Bowling, setting pins for 5 cents a lane. He’d spend it on 5-cent PowerHouse candy bars or Crescent ice cream (15 cents a half pint).

At Monroe, Gustafson said he was “a fairly good student” and an athlete. He mostly took first place in the high hurdles and second place in the low hurdles, and he was all-city in the pommel horse in gymnastics.

Army: ‘Wanted to serve’

After graduating from high school, Gustafson served in the Army from 1943 to 1946; he was trained as a combat engineer. “Like everybody else, you wanted to serve your country,” he said.

He trained at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and while attending a six-week specialty school in Omaha, he met his future wife, Rose. She was working at a restaurant to pay her way through training to be a hairdresser.

Gustafson and Rose wrote letters to each other when he was stationed in New Guinea and the Philippines. When he was honorably discharged from the military as a sergeant, they married and settled in St. Paul.

They lived with Gustafson’s parents until they bought their own place on St. Paul’s West Side on Baker Street and later moved to Vadnais Heights. The couple has three daughters and a son — Karen, Kathy, Aric and Kristy.

Gustafson worked for the St. Paul school district for 16 years as the storekeeper and buyer for the schools’ trade shops.

He became a Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy in 1969. He worked as a booking officer at the Ramsey County jail annex in downtown St. Paul.

When Greg Engfer was a rookie deputy, he remembers Gustafson explaining to him why they did things the way they did — “he was very much a policy and procedure-orientated deputy,” he said. Gustafson’s demeanor was encouraging and his “command presence” was enough for “troubled inmates to simply cooperate,” Engfer added.

During another chapter of Gustafson’s career as a deputy, he served warrants starting at 7 a.m. — “I’d catch most of them either still in bed or at work,” he remembered.

Rose Gustafson was a proofreader at West Publishing Co. for 28 years. She and Herb both retired in 1989, and they kept busy as volunteers.

Still active with a sharp mind

After back surgeries left Rose in a wheelchair, and living in a house with too many stairs, the couple settled in Applewood Pointe when it opened.

At the senior co-op, residents own their units and have an equal say in how the building is run — “it’s a community,” Shannon said.

The couple was married for 64 years before Rose’s death in 2011. “It’s been a little bit more lonely,” Herb Gustafson said recently.

Gustafson said he’s been blessed to have “always been healthy.” He uses a walker, dresses neatly each day in slacks and a button-down shirt, and keeps his apartment tidy. His mind “is as sharp as tack,” said Engfer, who still talks to him.

Gustafson recently stopped driving — he said his driving record was accident free, but he decided he should stop because his eyesight isn’t what it used to be.

He’s stayed active his whole life: he’s worked out since high school, later going to the YMCA in downtown St. Paul, and still keeps it up with weight lifting about 20 minutes a day at the gym in his building.

“He doesn’t like sitting around and I think that’s a big part of his longevity,” said son Aric Gustafson. “We all hope to follow in his footsteps.”

Herb Gustafson had planned for his 100th birthday to be a regular day — still his normal early wakeup and weight lifting — but he took a fall in his apartment on Tuesday when he said he turned too quickly.

Gustafson broke his hip and had surgery. His plan is to get back to living on his own at Applewood Pointe as soon as he can. His health and his stubbornness makes daughter-in-law Sandy Gustafson believe he’ll be able to.

Gustafson’s family is planning a big party for him at Applewood Pointe. It was scheduled for the week after his birthday, but they’ve moved it to March to give him more time to recover.

How he spends his time now

Gustafson has never owned a cellphone — he only has a landline phone and he’s active on email.

He’s had a 70-year hobby of photography, winning international awards for his artistic photos. He enjoys using his computer to look up photographs on the internet and still serves as an international judge. He was a photography judge for 35 years for the Steele County fair, the largest county fair in Minnesota.

He’s been a long-time member of the St. Paul Camera Club and the Photographic Society of America, and led a photo tour to Spain, Portugal and Morocco in the 1970s. He and Rose were able to travel to many countries.

At Applewood Pointe, resident Betty Wolf said she appreciates the comics and jokes Gustafson finds online and sends her for the building’s newsletter. “A lot of them are making fun of being old,” she said.

Gustafson enjoys playing board and card games — including hand and foot, and Giant Sequence — and he’s “very methodical about his moves,” said resident Sue Graham.

Wolf, who’s lived in the building for seven years, said her parents have both passed away and Gustafson is almost old enough to be her father.

“I’m just so glad I know somebody who’s doing so well in life at an older age,” Wolf said. “I think his way to being happy is to be involved and to just keep on doing things he likes to do.”