Von Drehle moves to Kansas City and meets his cheerful, sharp-minded 102-year-old neighbor, Charlie White.

Charlie White's father is killed in an elevator accident, leaving the family without income and in grief.

White and two friends drive a Model T Ford across the country from Kansas City to California.

Stranded in California without money or a vehicle, White and his friend Ed Snow train-hop all the way home to Kansas City.

White teaches himself the saxophone by listening to the radio and starts playing at university dances for income.

White earns his undergraduate degree in medicine from the University of Missouri.

Rejected by Northwestern University medical school, White travels to Chicago and personally persuades the dean to admit him.

White marries Mildred Christel and struggles to maintain his medical practice during the Great Depression, often accepting barter as payment.

White enlists with the Army Reserves and serves as chief of anesthesia in a military hospital during World War II.

White's wife Mildred is found dead at a hotel, and White believes she died by suicidal overdose.

White returns to Kansas City after the war and establishes himself as a leading anesthesiologist.

While tending his horses, White has a revelation and develops an ice-water cooling method for open-heart surgery.

White meets widow Lois Grimshaw through a mutual friend, marries her, and becomes a father and stepfather in his fifties.

White breaks his ankle at age 106 and is hospitalized, where he begins hallucinating due to failing eyesight.

Charlie White passes away peacefully shortly after celebrating his 109th birthday.

Pool 1 follows the central arc of Charlie White's extraordinary life, from the moment journalist David Von Drehle meets his 102-year-old neighbor to White's peaceful death at 109. It covers the defining traumas and triumphs of his early years, including the death of his father, his cross-country car adventure, and his determined entry into medicine against long odds. The pool traces his struggles through the Great Depression, his service in World War II, and the devastating loss of his first wife, Mildred. It highlights White's post-war reinvention as a pioneering anesthesiologist and his breakthrough contribution to open-heart surgery. The pool ends with his later marriage, fatherhood, graceful aging, and final passing, showing how White embodied resilience and optimism across a full century of change.

The headline events of Charlie White's remarkable 109-year life.

Von Drehle reflects on his inability to mentor his own children through rapid societal change, prompting him to write about White.

White's mother converts the family home into a boarding house for single men to support the family financially.

White attends a summer camp in the Ozark Mountains where some teens later accuse the organizer of sexual abuse.

White and his friend Ed Snow take grueling farm jobs harvesting wheat to earn money for their California journey.

The three road-tripping boys meet Buddy Rogers, an unknown Kansas teenager pursuing a Hollywood acting dream in California.

Bob Long sells the car and calls home for rescue, while White and Snow choose to train-hop rather than ask for help.

White and Ed Snow are hired as non-union railway workers in San Francisco during a railroad strike, earning money to head home.

White arranges a dance band for a cruise ship sailing to Japan and China to earn money during medical school.

White completes his medical internship at Kansas City General Hospital, eagerly treating a wide variety of cases.

White treats victims of Prohibition-era gang violence in Kansas City, including a man shot in the street.

White accompanies White House doctor Wally Graham to Peru to provide anesthesia for surgery on the president's hand.

White tours several countries in Africa with a pilot friend as part of his adventurous middle-age travels.

White's son-in-law Jack Moore recalls how White invited him on emergency calls to sharpen his medical skills.

White begins a new relationship with Mary Ann Walton Cooper, a widow and long-time acquaintance, in his nineties.

White moves into a nursing home at age 108 to live alongside his girlfriend, Mary Ann.

Pool 2 focuses on the supporting events and encounters that gave texture to Charlie White's life, beginning with Von Drehle's own motivation for writing the book. It covers formative moments from White's youth, including his mother's practical resilience after her husband's death, his Ozark summer camp experience, and the gritty details of his cross-country adventure. The pool traces White's resourcefulness during his university and medical training years, from harvesting wheat to arranging cruise-ship dance bands. It captures his work treating Prohibition-era gang victims, his bold mid-life travels abroad, and the personal relationships of his final decades. Together these events reveal the rich, textured world that surrounded and shaped Charlie White's extraordinary long life.

The supporting moments and secondary stories that shaped Charlie's world.

Charlie White is born in 1905 into an America without reliable medicine, widespread electricity, or automobiles.

White's mother assigns Charlie household duties including managing the coal supply after his father's death, building his self-reliance.

White decides to sleep outside on the porch on a cot as a personal act of self-determination after losing his father.

White is inspired to pursue a career in medicine by medical missionaries who lodge at his mother's boarding house.

White and Ed Snow are discovered by a train inspector and thrown off the train in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

White volunteers to have his own tonsils removed so that fellow medical students can observe the surgical procedure.

The state board chairman refuses White an exam exemption but suggests he practice medicine unlicensed for a year.

White attempts to save a shooting victim in Chicago by donating his own blood in an improvised street-side transfusion.

White decides to enlist with the Army Reserves despite the significant risk of abandoning his established Kansas City medical practice.

White insists on completing a 90-day training course at the Mayo Clinic before accepting his Army transfer to Nebraska.

White remarries a World War II pilot named Jean Landis, but she eventually leaves him over his possessiveness.

White purchases a pet monkey in the Amazon jungle after touring the region following the successful presidential surgery in Peru.

White's wife Lois passes away from cancer after many years of happy marriage and family life.

White tells close friends and family he expects to die soon, then changes his mind as his 109th birthday approaches.

Shortly before his death, White writes down his final life advice, including the words 'Practice Patience' and 'Observe Miracles.'

Pool 3 zeroes in on the moments of choice and revelation that shaped Charlie White's philosophy and resilience, beginning with his birth into an America almost unrecognizable today. It traces how White's response to his father's death — asserting small personal acts of control and responsibility — forged the habits of mind that would sustain him for over a century. The pool captures scenes of ingenuity and courage, from train-hopping mishaps to volunteering his own body for medical procedures and attempting a blood transfusion in the street. It follows White through the risky commitments that defined his adult life, including enlisting for wartime service and insisting on professional retraining, as well as the personal losses and surprising adventures of his middle years. The pool ends with White's final act of wisdom, writing down his life philosophy as his 109th year drew to a close.

The pivotal decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that forged Charlie's character.