Celebrating local man's fascinating century of life
When asked about his life, Casey Metcalf is quick to pull out a sheet of faded documents paper-clipped to a black-and-white photo. The picture shows a handsome, square-jawed man sitting behind a desk. He has short-cropped dark hair and a knowing smile. Clipped next to the photo is a business card that reads, "Casey Metcalf, Manager, Singer Industrial." The card is from Singer's Honolulu office. The photograph was taken in 1941. He was 32-years-old. He turned 100 May 7, making him one of JCPL's eldest patrons.
Casey Metcalf has been a resident of Jefferson County for more than 50 years. Until five years ago, he lived with his wife Sue in Arvada. Since then, he has lived in an apartment in The Courtyard at Lakewood. A Colorado native, Casey met his future wife at a dance at Lakeside Amusement Park. They were married for 74 years, until she passed away recently. Together, they raised three sons and a daughter.
For the majority of the last century, Casey Metcalf worked as an industrial engineer. He spent a good deal of that time employed by Singer Industrial, designing and managing the set-ups for industrial sewing lines. He worked for Singer for 37 years, until they went bankrupt in the early 1960s. Afterward, he struck out on his own and ended up helping to install industrial sewing equipment in facilities across the state and country. Metcalf oversaw the set-up and construction of sewing lines for foundations for the blind, mental institutions and many prisons, including the one in Cañon City.
As that combination of photograph and business card can attest, Casey was in Honolulu during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was in Hawaii on business for Singer, training sailors and soldiers in the use of the company's industrial equipment. His keepsakes and anecdotes paint a vivid picture of the strangeness of wartime Hawaii. "Servicemen couldn't buy liquor," he relates. "I had a friend in the Navy, and we'd meet up and trade clothes and ID cards so he could." To illustrate the point, he produces a photograph of himself in a sailor's uniform, grinning.
Metcalf has been a patron of the Bookmobile for five years - as long as he's been a resident of The Courtyard. He appreciates the fast, friendly service the Bookmobile provides. Usually the first person at The Courtyard to hop aboard the mobile library, Metcalf likes that his held books are ready to go as soon as the Bookmobile hits the curb. He especially appreciates the scope and variety of the Library's Large Print collection. His favorite books are all westerns, since they make references to and remind him of his days working as a Singer representative in their Southwest territories.
Join all of us at Jefferson County Public Library in wishing Casey a very happy birthday. Here's to a hundred extraordinary years, and many more to come!