John Elliott, 105; Centenarian Golfer

John Paul Elliott, a Navy veteran of both world wars who played golf well past the century mark, has died at the age of 105.

Elliott, who was recovering from a recent heart attack, died Friday at Sharp Medical Center in Chula Vista, according to Robert W. Johnson, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who tracks World War I veterans.

“Life is like golf in that it has so many ups and downs. One minute you’re great. The next minute you can’t do anything. What are you going to do? You move on to the next shot,” Elliott told Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke two years ago, when he played in the Octogenarian Open Golf Tournament at Jurupa Hills Country Club.

In those days, Elliott golfed regularly with his older son, John, and they were playing the nine-hole tournament together. A year ago, Elliott was fit enough to hit the tournament’s ceremonial opening shot. (John died in June at the age of 83.)

The centenarian began golfing in the 1920s, when he worked six days a week. He gave up the game for half a century but resumed after moving to the Riverside area in 1991 to live with John. The father and son even made a golf trip to Scotland, where tradition precludes golf carts, and both walked the course.

“When I was 102, I was hitting 122,” Elliott told the Riverside Press Enterprise in 2003. “I never was very good at the game.”

But he enjoyed golf, as he enjoyed life, with steaks, red wine and cigars, until near the end. He went fishing into his late 70s and was an avid gardener, tending to flowers and tomatoes.

Although he served in both world wars -- he was a Navy corpsman in San Diego during World War II -- Elliott prided himself most on his service in World War I. He wore a cap with the name of his battleship, the Texas, at the Octogenarian Open, in which he shot 19 for the four holes he completed.

Born Feb. 6, 1899, in Terre Haute, Ind., Elliott lived in three centuries and watched household lamps go from kerosene to gas to electric. He saw cars evolve from small buggies with motors to dream machines.

After a childhood in St. Louis and Detroit, Elliott enlisted in the Navy in 1917 and served two years aboard the Texas as a pharmacist’s mate. The ship sailed the North Sea and survived a close call with a German torpedo.

Elliott was still aboard the Texas in March 1919 when it became the first U.S. battleship to launch an airplane -- a British Sopwith Camel -- from a wooden platform built on a gun turret. The platform enabled a takeoff, he recalled, but was too short to allow a landing.

Back home in Detroit, Elliott married and worked in credit and management in department stores. In 1928, he moved his family to California, driving over an unpaved Route 66, and landed a job at the May Co. department store in downtown Los Angeles.

After serving in World War II, he became a salesman for Bates Manufacturing Co., covering 11 western states, and remained with the company until retiring in 1961.

Elliott retired to Mexico for 30 years until the death of his second wife, Dorothy, when he returned to the U.S. to be with his sons.

After his elder son’s death last summer, he moved to the San Diego home of his younger son, Albert. In November, he moved to the Veterans Home of California in Chula Vista.

Widowed twice, Elliott is survived by his son, Albert; four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren; and seven great-great-grandchildren.

Services are scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at the Chula Vista Humphrey Mortuary, 753 Broadway, Chula Vista, CA 91910.