MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — When Fuller Kimbrell was born in rural Fayette County in 1909, Teddy Roosevelt had just left the White House and William Howard Taft was in his first year as president.

There was virtually no electricity or running water and no indoor toilets in much of rural Alabama, or much of rural America for that matter. Hardly anyone had a telephone.

Wages for most people were less than 25 cents an hour, the stock market crash precipitating the Great Depression was 20 years away and Kimbrell would be 30 years old by the time Adolf Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg on Europe.

Few people who witnessed that history are still around to tell about it. Statistics show that only 31 boys out of each 100,000 born between 1909 and 1911 will live to be 100. But on Monday, Kimbrell, an influential player in state government during the eras of “Big Jim” Folsom and George Wallace the heyday of Alabama politics — becomes one of those 31.

Kimbrell, who was born and raised in Berry and lives in Tuscaloosa, chuckled when asked to divulge the secret to living so long. It’s not the first time he’s been asked the question. He attributes it mostly to genes.

“My father lived a little bit past 103, my mother made it to 99,” he said. “She was one of six children that made it past 95. My young sister is 92 and the next sister will be 95 in July. She still drives. I still drive.”

Kimbrell said he never drank or smoked, exercises moderately he isn’t overweight and eats his vegetables for the vitamins and minerals.

Still, he said, his longevity is “hard to believe.”

To celebrate the milestone, his son, Donald Kimbrell of Fayette, has invited family and friends to a centennial birthday party for his father at the Northport Civic Center on Saturday, two days before his actual birthday, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

“I’m very proud of him and we’re very pleased we’ve had him all this time,” Donald Kimbrell, a mere 73, said of his father.

“He’s a great storyteller and remembers a lot of details,” Donald Kimbrell said. “I’ve followed politics all the way from when he started in the Senate.”

Fuller Kimbrell, a businessman who owned asphalt and metal pipe plants and a farm implement dealership, was elected to the state Senate from Fayette in 1946, the same year James E. “Big Jim” Folsom was elected governor. He was able to cobble together support for Folsom and help him pass his programs.

He then ran Folsom’s second campaign and became his finance director from 1955-59.

“Big Jim in his rallies in 1954 would refer to the fact that the papers had accused him of stealing (in his first term), and he would say, I confess to stealing’,” Fuller Kimbrell wrote in his second book, “You Won’t Believe It But It’s So.”

Then, Kimbrell wrote, Folsom would point to voters at his rallies and say, “It was the only way I could get anything for you, you and you.”

Kimbrell, a lifelong Democrat, would go on to serve as a special adviser to George Wallace and even today remains interested and involved in politics. Both of his books, the first was “From the Farmhouse to the Statehouse: The Life and Times of Fuller Kimbrell,” are laden with political anecdotes.

State Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, who represents part of Kimbrell’s old Senate district, noted that Kimbrell is on a state commission examining the feasibility of a limited access highway along the west side of the state.

“Fuller has high political standards and believes in bringing the bacon home,” Bedford said Thursday.

“He and (then-House Speaker) Rankin Fite used to ride to Montgomery together, and they said the money was divided up by the time they got to Montgomery city limits.”

Kimbrell’s wife, Elizabeth, died about 12 years ago, and lately he’s been joining his buddies for coffee in Northport, to reminisce. Most of them are in their 80s and 90s.

“That’s young,” Kimbrell said.