WELLFLEET — It seemed to Frank Koebel that he was always the youngest in everything. When he started school in Columbus, Ohio at five, he was young for his class. A few years later, his teacher deemed him advanced and moved him from the fourth grade to the fifth, making him even younger than his classmates.
Koebel went to a school with only two rooms: one for the first-, second-, and third-graders and another for the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders. Moving up a grade meant traveling a few feet to a different row of benches. Koebel left for Cornell University when he was just 16, in 1941.
Now, he says, “I’m about the oldest in everything.” He turned 100 on Nov. 20.
At his house on Herring River Road, Koebel sits in his favorite leather chair in front of the fireplace. Behind him, windows look out on tall trees. The sky is gray on a December day, but inside it’s warm and bright: drawings of Main Street hang on the walls, and there’s a small Christmas tree in the living room. Koebel moved here from Ohio with his wife, Natalie “Nonnie” Fox Koebel, in 1983. Natalie died in 2014.
The two met in 1944, when Koebel was a Navy aviator stationed in Rhode Island, and Natalie was a sophomore at Vassar College. Koebel, who’d left Cornell to join the Navy at 18, was part of a night fighter squadron based on a carrier. One of his squadron mates knew a girl at Vassar — that was Natalie.
“She was looking for a blind date for the sophomore prom,” says Koebel. Natalie was on the swimming team and part of the flying club. “We seemed to like much of the same things,” says Koebel. “Always did.”
She was good-looking, says Koebel. Moreover, she was up for adventure. “She was very much alive.” After that first date, things progressed quickly. He was due on a carrier in Hawaii in May, so in April he and Natalie got engaged.
World War II was “dead serious stuff,” says Koebel. He spent much of the war in the Pacific. But the carrier was hit at Okinawa before he was deployed. When the war ended, he remembers being disappointed at first. “We’d done all this training, and we hadn’t gotten to do anything,” he says. “But maybe I’m still alive because of that.”
Natalie graduated from Vassar in 1946, and the two were married two weeks later. The next year, their first daughter, Susan, was born. Koebel went back to Cornell and graduated with an engineering degree in 1949. They’d go on to have a son, David, in 1950, move to a suburb of Columbus, where Koebel got a job at Buckeye Steel Castings, and then have two more daughters, Molly and Cynthia.
Koebel’s hands are folded in front of him. On one finger is a large gold band. “My fraternity ring,” he says. “Chi Psi, at Cornell.” He wore it in the Navy, and every time he landed his plane, he made sure the ring was right side up, adjusting it under his glove. “Talk about superstitious,” he says.
When the Korean War erupted, Koebel was ready to fly. He’d been training in Columbus one weekend a month. In 1952, his squadron was called up. But if you had four dependents, you didn’t go, and his daughter Molly had been born two weeks before. “She’s never said anything,” he says, “but I bet in the back of her mind she’s saying, ‘Yeah, you owe me, big boy.’ ”
Koebel settled into jobs in real estate and banking while continuing one of Natalie’s family traditions: summer vacations on the Cape. Now there’s nothing that could persuade him to leave. In their Ohio suburb, “we had maybe five trees on our lot,” says Koebel. “Here, I bet there are 500.”
Koebel is “a man of habit,” he tells a visitor, and it’s time for his daily espresso. When he rises from his chair, he towers. “I was always six feet tall,” he says. Now, he admits he’s more like “5-11 and something.” He still keeps his favorite breakfast cereal, Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats, in a cabinet high above the stove.
A row of woven baskets hangs from the kitchen ceiling — Natalie, among other talents, was a skilled basket weaver. Looking at her handiwork, Koebel muses that their marriage “was a great journey.”
Travels were indeed a big part of their life together. Molly’s husband, François, used to work for Air France, a job that meant free flights for the family. “We probably went to Europe 40 times,” says Koebel. “Sometimes we were in first class. Sometimes we were in jump seats.” And he and Natalie didn’t just go to Europe — they explored Asia, Greece, Morocco, and the Caribbean islands.
For him, those trips were in part about flying itself. “I missed it,” he says.
Soon after moving to town, Koebel joined the zoning board of appeals. “I was the old guy when they put me on,” he says. “I was 60.” When the chairmanship opened, Koebel says, he’s pretty sure two “very sharp gals” (he’s not naming names) nominated him for the role, thinking, “He’s the new guy. He doesn’t know a damn thing about anything.” Koebel must have learned a thing or two: he didn’t retire from the board until he was 75.
“I never felt old,” says Koebel. His father lived to 95 and his mother to 98; an uncle lived to 99. “Then all of a sudden, it just kind of dawned on me: I’ll be damned,” he says, settling back into his chair. “What am I going to do now?”
There are books, for one thing. He enjoys reading just for fun — mostly mysteries. “Pretty simple stuff. I’m not trying to learn anything, let’s put it that way,” he says. He kept a dog, Kaylee, until she died a few years ago.
His 13 great-grandchildren visit often to shatter the quiet. The oldest is only 10. A busy house doesn’t bother him, he says.
And there are friendships. In the dining room, a sign over the back door reads “No Skinny Dippin’ Alone.” His best friend, Judy Morrissey, might have put that up, says Koebel. Morrissey brings him dinner twice a week. “I don’t cook,” he says. “I prepare.”
Almost 40 people were at his 100th birthday party at the adult community center, including Molly and François, who live in France.
Visible through the window is the house where Grace Ebert lives. His neighbor turned 100 last spring. “She’s a few months older than I am,” says Koebel, “and she’ll never let me forget it.”
