104 Years Young : Longtime Santa Ana Resident Celebrating Milestone : Birthday Attributes His Longevity to Liquor, Ladies

As the female chef leaned over to light the candles on Bill Doyle’s birthday cake, his face lit up with a mischievous smile.

“I like the girl in the white hat!” Doyle exclaimed. “How’re you doing?” he asked flirtatiously as he reached out to shake the woman’s hand.

After watching her leave, Doyle, who turned 104 on Thursday, got up from his wheelchair and, to his friends’ and family’s delight, made a quick trip around the dance floor with Wendy Schwind, activity director at Sunflower Gardens residential home.

“I feel wonderful!” Doyle said elatedly.

Doyle, a longtime Santa Ana resident, confided his secret of longevity: beautiful women and a regular dose of Southern Comfort with orange juice.

A native of Tennessee, Doyle grew up on his family’s cattle ranch in Colorado. Always eager to get on with life, Doyle quit school after junior high and became a cowboy.

“I wanted to get out and make money,” Doyle said. “And I hated school--the teacher would always make us give speeches on Friday.”

After marrying in 1909, Doyle and his bride, Mabel, set off for the Arizona territory, where Doyle set up a cattle ranch.

Doyle hung up his spurs in 1928 when he decided to move to California with his wife and two daughters. Settling in Santa Ana, he opened a meat market and later went to work for Safeway. After his retirement from Safeway at age 65, Doyle used his free time to avidly pursue a favorite hobby: collecting and trading horse saddles.

“Dad loved to trade,” said his daughter Jane Connelly. “He once had more than a hundred saddles in his collection.” Connelly, who lives in Tokyo with her husband, Bill, flew to the United States to be with her father on his birthday.

Doyle continued trading until he entered Sunflower Gardens last year, and one former customer, Laurel Howard, brought Doyle some tools of the trade as gifts: a salt lick and a well-worn, manure-encrusted boot.

Howard, a Tustin resident, pulled out Doyle’s business card and read it aloud: “Arizona Bill, 100 years old, selling saddles of all kinds.”

“He’s wonderful,” Howard said as she took a picture of Doyle with his new gifts.

“Bill’s got such a zest for life,” Doyle’s grandnephew, Arthur Rutzen, said. “He’s a real hit with the ladies,” Rutzen added as three women surrounded Doyle.

Rutzen’s fiancee, Victoria Love, joked: “I just hope Arthur has inherited some of Bill’s genes.”

Watching as Doyle greeted longtime friends and played with the infant daughter of a guest, other Sunflower Garden residents appeared surprised by his seemingly boundless energy.

But it was no surprise to Schwind, who said that until last year, Doyle had been living on his own in the ranch home he bought when he first arrived in Santa Ana.

“He’s a bit of a celebrity around here,” Schwind said. “Whenever the elementary school kids come to give a performance, they always flock to Bill. They mention him in all their letters to us.”

And what words of wisdom does Doyle have for that other Bill about to take office?

“Just do what you please,” Doyle said with a smile. “That’s the way to live.”