Here's a big reason people thought "Grandpa" Al Lewis was born in 1910 when he was actually, they're now telling us, born in 1923. Kip Williams sent me a link to this interview in which Lewis was asked his birthdate and he gave it as April 30, 1910. And if he said it in one interview, he probably said it in others.
So what happened here? It's possible that whoever transcribed the interview misheard him but that sure doesn't sound likely. So either his family, which announced the 1923 date, is wrong…or Lewis, for whatever his reason, chose to lie about his age. But why lie to add thirteen years? And if that's wrong, a lot of stories he told are probably wrong too, including his war stories and his tales of getting involved in politics in the thirties. Among many other accounts that don't fit the corrected timeline is that he sometimes claimed to have been involved with the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, who were executed in 1927. (Hey, maybe that's why they got the chair. They had a four year old kid defending them.)
My hunch is that the family is not wrong; that Al just thought it made him more colorful to have all those colorful experiences in his past and that he had to lengthen his past a bit to accomodate them all. But we may never know for sure.