Carpentersville patriarch still a jokester at 100

Ask Herbierto Rodriguez a question and the chatty centenarian will regale you with stories from his childhood that include selling whiskey in Texas during Prohibition.

“I was a bad boy when I was young,” he exclaims.

Rodriguez turns 100 on Wednesday and last Friday the Carpentersville resident held court at his granddaughter’s home, where 35 members of the family were coming in from all over the country to celebrate. Earlier this month the village board proclaimed March 16 “Herbierto Rodriguez Sr. Day” in recognition of his birthday and the more than 40 years he has lived in town.

The family decided to surprise their patriarch with the honor. “They brought him to village hall, not knowing what we were going to do,” Village President Ed Ritter said.

On Sunday, the village presented Rodriguez and his family with the proclamation during Mass at St. Monica Catholic Church, where Rodriguez remains active with the Knights of Columbus. It’s not known whether Rodriguez is the oldest living person in Carpentersville — the village doesn’t keep such records.

The father of eight (seven living), grandfather to 13, great grandfather to 17 and great, great grandfather to one, is in tiptop shape, family members say.

He eats whatever he wants — except for rice, which bothers his stomach — and indulges in a half glass of beer from time to time. He also remains active by flying to Florida and Texas for family fishing trips.

Locally, his favorite pastimes are window shopping, flirting with sales girls and word searches. Although Rodriguez owns a walker, he gets around just fine without it. Other than wearing a pacemaker and hearing aid, he has no known health issues, his children say.

His oldest child, Maria Shetzley, is quick to point out that his son, Herbierto Jr., and daughter Susie Urbina live with Rodriguez — not the other way around.

“Let’s get that straight,” she said. “It’s his home.”

Rodriguez, who became an American citizen in the 1970s, dropped out of school after three years in Alice, Texas, to support his family after two of his three siblings died. He was the eldest.

Although he didn’t have much of a formal education, Rodriguez taught himself to read, write and speak English from his children and used what they taught him on the job. Rodriguez instilled the virtues of hard work, learning a second language and education in his own children.

“He stressed pride in work because if you do a good job, they won’t fire you,” Shetzley said.

Rodriguez was born in Linares, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, in 1911 and moved to Texas with his family when he was 11. Once here, he held a series of odd jobs that included a paper route, shining shoes and selling homemade whiskey to anyone who would buy it.

“We’d sell it by the gallons,” Rodriguez said.

As a young man in Texas, he secured employment working as an airplane mechanic and he later flew them on crop dusting routes. The latter was a job Rodriguez took on during World War II, after the pilots who originally crop dusted were called to fight.

When they returned, he was out of a job and he spent the next few years delivering lumber.

Rodriguez eventually moved to the Northwest suburbs to seek employment, settling first in Palatine, then Lake Zurich and finally Carpentersville in the 1960s. He farmed vegetables for a while in Palatine, then spent the next 10 years working as a maintenance man for Motorola.

Rodriguez and Marta, his wife of 63 years, later formed their own office cleaning company in Carpentersville they ran for 10 years. But he retired from the business to look after her once she became ill. She died in 2006 at the age of 78.

“He’s just been a working man, taking care of his family and always being involved with his children and grand children,” said Sylvia Valdez, Rodriguez’s youngest child.

So last weekend was all about pampering the patriarch. On Saturday, his family and friends took him out to dinner at Brunswick Zone XL, where he had a few sips of beer, prime rib, ham, potato salad and cake and read more than 100 birthday cards.

Longevity runs in the family, and Rodriguez is already looking ahead to the next adventure. So what’s he going to do for the next 20 years?

“Take it easy, that’s all,” Rodriguez said.