This Friday was a very special day for Alejandro Gómez, an Ecuadorian immigrant who turned 100 years old and, therefore, they gave him a very special cake.
“I feel happy and content because I am in this country and you are so kind, all of you,” commented the centenary celebrated.
Despite his age, he still has the ability to play guitar, sing, play dominoes, and even walk fast.
Alejandro was born in the Pearl of the Pacific: Guayaquil in Ecuador and emigrated to the United States in 1967: “I traveled with $ 15 dollars in my pocket. I arrived in Florida, I came in a company called Ecuatoriana Air.”
She now comes three days a week to the Guild Care Manhattan Senior Assistance Program at the Lighthouse Guild organization. Here, older people are cared for for five hours. That is why today about 30 elderly people toasted him and celebrated, because Alejandro has become an inspiration.
“I feel happy, because I am surrounded by ladies and gentlemen, young people and adults, who I see appreciate me and I appreciated them all,” says Gómez.
And it is that between smiles Alejandro tells that the secret of his longevity is the change of life that his faith in God caused him, because he says that he rescued him from the life of excesses. Today he continues to preach in a church: “If I earned $ 100 sucres, at night it would disappear from my pocket: drinking and dancing. I stopped drinking, I stopped going to cabarets, I stopped hanging out with women here and there” .
Alejandro takes out of his shirt pocket, next to his heart, the photo of his wife, his traveling companion of more than 50 years in the United States. They both worked in a textile company and today he dedicates a large part of his time taking care of her, because she is in poor health.
Patricia Rincón, the director of the Program for the Aged at the Lighthouse Guild in Manhattan, comments on this: “Imagine a man who needs so much, having to go home and now take care of another person who is sick. But he is so dedicated and loves her. so much that for me it touches my heart, he is an example “.
And on this special day, Gómez says that he would like to be like his grandparents: “My grandfather died at 118 years old. With 24 teeth in his jaw, and he never wore glasses until that age.”
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