It seems that a Bronx man has found the fountain of youth. Joe Binder from Belmont is celebrating his 105th birthday. NY1's Erin Clarke filed this report.
Joe Binder has a secret to living a long life.
"You’ve got to be kind to people and stay away from stress,” Binder says. “I don't carry any grudges. Turn the other cheek.”
That motto has served him well over the years—105 years yeas to be precise.
Wednesday Joe turned 105 and he's still as sharp as a tack.
"He sits here every Wednesday with us and has lunch with me. He's got maybe 20 jokes every time he comes. He writes poetry, he sings, he plays the ukulele," says Joseph Migliucci, Binder’s friend.
Migliucci was just a kid in 1946 when he first met Joe Binder, a navy vet who had settled in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx in a three room apartment renting for just $18 a month.
Years later, Migliucci would hire Binder to park cars in his restaurant's lot.
"My restaurant guests looked for him all the time and when he wasn't there they were all upset," Migliucci says.
"I'd still be working there if I didn't lose my breath. I had to retire at 102," Binder says.
Pneumonia made Binder slow down a bit.
He's now living at the Providence Nursing Home in the Bronx.
Every year on April 8, Binder—now a local celebrity of sorts— returns to this neighborhood to mark the day in style.
"Joe is a one in a million," says friend Pat D’Amore.
The people on Arthur Avenue even put up a sign to show just how much they appreciate him.
A couple of restaurants along the strip known as the Bronx's Little Italy host birthday parties.
"He's such a wonderful man. Caring, loving, giving person,"
It's that love the Joe says has kept him around for more than a century.
“The people around here have been wonderful to me and they're the ones who've kept me going all these years. I came up as a young boy, a young jewish boy, 26 years old and they all embraced me. They kept me going until 105," Binder says.