Not that it's a particularly meaningful statistic but someone asked me who lived longer — Carl Barks or Al Hirschfeld — and I just did the math. Barks was born 3/27/01 and died 8/25/2000, for a total of 36,311 days. Hirschfeld was born 6/21/03 and died yesterday morning, so he lived for 36,373 days. So the life of Al Hirschfeld was about two months longer, and I have no idea why I bothered to figure that out, except for this: It's a little difficult for those of us who are around the halfway mark to comprehend what it's like to live for almost a century. The more data we have, the better our chances of putting it in perspective.
Years ago at local cartoon fests and seminars, a frequent guest was Grim Natwick, who created Betty Boop and was later the key animator of Mr. Disney's Snow White. Natwick was born in 1890, and to grasp the concept of that, we had to remind ourselves of other historical markers — like, that was the year the zipper was invented and several years before there were typewriters. (Al Hirschfeld was born the same year the Wright Brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk.)
Different, odd things enabled some of us to grasp just how long Grim had been on the planet. Around 1985, I remember him speaking at an event and talking about how, when he was animating, a certain "young punk kid" would come by and tell him, "Mr. Natwick, when I grow up, I want to draw cartoons like you." The kid was Walter Lantz, who was very much his junior, having been born ten years later. Everyone laughed that a 95 year old man was referring to an 85 year old as a "young punk kid," but it especially floored us to realize it was true: We all thought of Mr. Lantz as a Grand Old Man of animation…and Grim had gotten into the business a decade before him. Amazing. (Grim lived to the age of 100; Lantz, to 94. Drawing silly pictures for a living seems to be good for the heart.)
The most amazing thing about Al Hirschfeld was not that he lived to be 99 but that he still drew and, from what I've seen, he still drew pretty well. When I met him, he was a relatively spry 89 but he sure didn't act 89. He had just returned from a camping trip, and was back in his home — a beautiful old brownstone townhouse with his studio on the top floor and no elevator. Giving me the tour, he bounded up and down the stairs and it was all I could do to keep up with him. (Barks was the same way until about age 90.) Hirschfeld's mind was sharp and inquiring, as well. My visit was not long after the L.A. riots of that year and, since I was from Los Angeles, he peppered me with questions about what it was like in the city, how it felt to be in the midst of all that, etc. (I mostly asked him about people like George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott.) If I hadn't known better, I'd have taken him for 65 or 70.
Satchel Paige used to ask, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?" Hirschfeld certainly did not conform to our notion of someone his age, nor did the other gents mentioned above. We loved him for his work, of course. But I think some of us also loved him because he reminded us that it's possible to get old without getting old.