Valley man to celebrate 100th birthday with skydive

Soon-to-be centenarian Charlie Montanaro said he’ll be celebrating by jumping out of an airplane next week.

Montanaro’s 100th birthday is Sunday and next week he’s planning on flying to Tucson where he’s going skydiving with the Honor Flight.

“I flew airplanes for years,” he said. “I guess I’ll try jumping out of one.”

The former machinist and merchant marine was born in Cleveland but he said he didn’t spend long in the Buckeye State.

He was raised in the Midwest, mostly in Iowa and Illinois. He first set eyes on the Silver State in 1932 on vacation with his family where they saw Hoover Dam under construction.

“It had 400 feet to go,” he said on Tuesday. “Boulder City had mud streets.”

Upon graduation, he was a civilian worker at the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C. Shortly before Pearl Harbor, he transferred to North Island in San Diego, where he was when the war broke out.

Because he was partially color blind, he joined the Merchant Marine, where he served on four supply ships during the war.

“I was always in the engine room,” he said. “Our main job was that we were the supply line. We kept the Navy in toilet paper. I went and fortunately I came back and that was it.”

He mustered out of the Merchant Marine in 1946 and took up his former profession.

He also took flying lessons and received his pilot’s license, which is still good.

He said he moved to Reno in the 1960s before retiring in 1989. He left Reno in 1994 and returned to Nevada in 2014.

He has been living in Carson Valley for the past two years.

How did he make it to 100 years old?

“Nobody ever believes me, but I led a good clean life,” he said.