Tuesday, December 10, 2002
A toast to a master
By G.D. GEARINO, Staff Writer
I clearly have set a new standard for cluelessness: I went to a meeting of the Toastmasters Club last week and expected to hear some toasts. Am I the last person in the world to understand that they don't offer toasts at Toastmasters meetings? Did everyone else know this? Boy, you talk about feeling foolish. There I am, primed for a raucous, rollicking good time as the toasts are made and glasses are hoisted, and I find out this is a gathering of people who bolster their business skills by giving earnest speeches that are then critiqued by the other club members. Words like "excelling" and "winning" seem to come up a lot.
What else am I going to find out? That the Lions Club mascot is a chicken? That the Optimists are in reality a gloomy bunch of mopes who meet to complain about the sorry state of the world?
Maybe you'll understand the surge of skepticism I felt, then, when somebody offered to introduce me to the World's Oldest Active Toastmaster. If a toastmaster doesn't make toasts, what do "oldest" and "active" actually mean?
It means he's 96 years old, and that he's still speechifying.
His name is Angus Jackson, he's a retired insurance agent from Wake Forest and if there hadn't been a roomful of people available to attest to his age, I wouldn't have believed it. This fellow doesn't look nor act as if he's 96. His eyes are sharp, his hearing is good, his voice is strong and he walks unaided. He has most of his hair, and he still looks good in a suit. In contrast, I'm half his age and can claim none of those things.
Best of all, he's lucky.
It turns out that the only other person who could have laid claim to the title -- a 103-year-old woman -- passed away recently. A Toastmasters International director who came to Raleigh to honor Jackson declared that of the 186,000 toastmasters around the world (including, for a while, a few at the federal prison in Butner), Jackson is now the most senior.
So that takes care of one matter. "Oldest" actually means oldest.
That left "active." I asked what a person has to do to be considered an active toastmaster. It turns out that paying $18 every year will pretty much do it; that's the club's annual dues. Jackson is paid up, so he qualifies. But every toastmaster also has to stand up occasionally and speak to the other club members, and even the World's Oldest Active Toastmaster can't duck this duty.
Jackson showed them how it was done. He told a joke or two, recited a seminaughty limerick ("There once was a man named Clyde..."), explained how he came to join Toastmasters and testified to the notion that public speaking is an invaluable skill for business people. Best of all, he didn't invoke the words "excelling" or "winning" even once.
But there was no toast.
It's left to me, then. Please lift your glass as I offer these words.
Here's to Angus Jackson: May we all be clear-eyed, full-voiced, well-haired and reciting racy limericks at age 96.
© Copyright 2002, The News & Observer Publishing Company. All material found on triangle.com (including newsobserver.com, carynews.com, chapelhillnews.com, knightdaletimes.com smithfieldherald.com, wendellclarion.com and zebulonrecord.com) is copyrighted The News & Observer Publishing Company and associated news services. No material may be reproduced or reused without explicit permission from The News & Observer Publishing Company, Raleigh, North Carolina. The News & Observer Publishing Company is owned by The McClatchy Company.
Angus died in 2005, shortly after High Noon celebrated his 98th birthday. He will be missed.