company of family and friends on Jan. 17.
“I don’t know why I’m here after all these years,” he muses at Grasslands Estates, an assisted living and retirement home in west Wichita. “But I am. I’ve had an interesting life and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”
When Fulton started going to school at the University of Wichita back in 1927, it was the era of flappers and Model Ts; the campus had fewer than 1,000 students and only a handful of buildings.
Fulton didn’t graduate from WU, where he started out learning to be an engineer; instead, he transferred
his credits to Kansas City-Western Dental College in Kansas City, Mo., where he finished his undergraduate education and completed dental training.
During World War II, he served as dental surgeon with the 1st Armored Division before returning to Wichita to work in the family dental practice, marry and raise three children. For the past 35 years, Fulton has been retired — but not inactive. Along with being physically active, Fulton relishes meeting new people and having conversations, so he sits at different places in the dining room in order to talk to a variety of other residents. Socializing is something Fulton loves to do.
with the 1st Armored Division.
This Shocker doesn’t spend much time pondering how he’s lived a century,
but does suspect good genes have helped. All of his grandparents lived long,
full lives.
The three-day weekend celebration for his 100th birthday included a family dinner and a service at Grace Presbyterian Church, which also was marking its 100th
and where Fulton was the first child baptized.
It was a fitting celebration, says Fulton — adding with his dry sense of humor: “It’s not very often that I live to be 100.”
