The Interview: William Roberson

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - In less than four months, William Roberson will celebrate his 104th birthday.

In his more than century-long lifetime, he has seen a lot of changes in Alabama and our nation.

When the Bay Minette native left south Alabama as a young man, he never planned to return.

However, the civil rights movement, family and a life lesson gave him more than a few reasons to live out his incredible life where it began.

Mr. Roberson recently shared some of his memories in the Interview.

'I just keep living'

"You know I never thought about it, I used to tell them at church: I said, ‘Y'all make me old, I don't think about age, all that is just something that happens, I don't have no control over.’ I say, ‘I just keep living,’" he said.

Roberson has been living for 104 years now. We first visited with Roberson when he was 101.

The only real change since then is that, today, he's using a wheelchair.

He broke a bone back in April. As you might imagine, the last four months have not been Mr. Roberson's most enjoyable days.

"You've got to depend on somebody else to move you around and you're at the hand of somebody else, everything you do you've got to get somebody to help you," Roberson said.

Since then, Roberson's doctor gave him the clearance to start using a walker.

That was the first time in Roberson's long life that he can't get around on his own; born in 1908, he's an amazing man blessed with good health, a sharp mind and a good memory.

A life of work

He remembers at seven years old — that’s in 1915 — going to school in a hurricane. Roberson's early years were spent in Baldwin County, in the "Thicket" community.

"We thought it was good, we thought that was all we had, we thought that was all we were going to get," Roberson said. "I had a granddaddy that was strict on us, he'd tell you in a minute, say I ain't going to have no lying, because if you lie, you'll steal, if you steal you won't work, and he'd say I ain't going to have that in my house," shares Roberson.

He said his grandfather’s discipline of choice, whippings, weren’t handed out to his children and and grandchildren for their actions, but for not taking responsibility for them.

“My mother told him one time, she says ‘He didn't do it Mr. Roberson.’ He says ‘I'm going to whip him because he was going to do it,’" Roberson remembered.

He said he learned a lot about life from his grandfather including a good work ethic. He says he got his first job working with his grandfather with turpentine.

"I had a lot of cousins, they were playing and I was working with my granddaddy, when he was working, I was working, that's how I learned," said Roberson.

He learned from his grandfather that work brought rewards.

Roberson lived in Mobile in the 1920s and worked several different jobs in the Port City. He worked at a shoe shop with a fast-talking boss, and then made deliveries by bicycle for a grocery store, each for $3 a week.

"The next job I had was working at a dry cleaners, they delivered clothes, but you did all your delivery work on the bicycle," remembers Roberson. "I worked all my life."

Roberson remembers what it took to get his first automobile. He worked three years for his first vehicle.

"The oldest car I drove was an Overland, that was the first car that we drove," he shares. "I remember when Dodges came out; they had the Dodges with the floor shift.”

An automobile in those early years and the open road provided most folks more personal freedom; but Roberson says, that wasn’t the case not for most African-Americans.

Moved by the civil rights movement

"You didn't have much authority then, like as about as much as a kid does now who's 10 years old. But I was always the stubborn one, my grandmother stayed afraid for me all the time because she knew I would fight," says Roberson.

He left Alabama as a young man and planned to never return.

In December of 1955, Roberson was in Ohio working on a railroad. The arrest of a civil rights pioneer on a bus in Montgomery started a movement for change.

"When Rosa Parks wouldn't get up for somebody else to sit down, that fell right down the way I wanted to go. Then, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. starting the bus boycott I didn't think a black man would ever be brave enough to do that. And, when I found that out, it just suited my appetite," Roberson said.

Roberson says he learned another life lesson from King: it's about love. Roberson says that — and his faith — may be the reasons he's lived a long life.

Roberson said, "You know people don't understand this but, it's a good feeling to love everybody. Every time you see somebody, remember they're human, like you. I just can't tell you about life no better than that, I love life.”

Roberson has outlived 3 of his 4 children. He also has had the opportunity to get to know his great-great-great granddaughter. Roberson and his wife, Ruby, just celebrated 57 years of marriage and he is still an active deacon in his church in Perdido, Ala.

Roberson, ever an