Long after midnight, when the building around him has settled into silence, Marvin Hurley is still awake. He leans back in his chair, the glow from his iPad lights his face as sports scores refresh, old films flicker, and music drifts softly through the room. He taps his foot almost imperceptibly — responding to the rhythm, an old habit, a quiet pulse that has carried him through a century.

It would have surprised the boy he once was in Indianapolis, where eyesight problems made ordinary childhood play difficult and set him slightly apart from other children his age.

No one could have predicted that he would one day cross oceans, learn multiple languages, work for the U.S. government abroad, or live long enough to welcome a great‑grandchild into the world.

And yet here he is.

At 100, he does not describe slowing down. He describes continuing, just in a quieter room.

He lives alone in a condominium that has been in his family for decades. There is no staff, no structured programming, only neighbors who help when needed and a routine he has shaped himself.

Most days unfold slowly, filled with small rituals and the familiar comfort of his favorite chair, iPad still in hand.

“I watch sports. I follow the news. I listen to music. That keeps me going.”

Music has threaded through every stage of his life. It began in Indianapolis in the late 1930s, when he heard big bands perform live. One concert with his mother changed everything: Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, and the sound of drums.

“That was it for me.”

From then on, music became both compass and destination.

In the restless years of the WWII era, he and four of his college buddies piled into a mechanically risky Model A Ford at the start of a summer break one year. They rolled out of Indiana heading to California, traveling along Route 66.  

But miles into their trip, their car sputtered out, throwing their plans off course.

Two of the boys hitchhiked onward, while Hurley and two others pieced together the rest of the journey by whatever means they could find, most memorably, hopping a steam locomotive that was heading west. The destination was Los Angeles, but for Hurley, the deeper pursuit was always music.

The boys spent nights sleeping wherever shelter could be found. Hurley worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica to support himself during this trip.

“I would get off work and go listen to the big bands … I was just into the music.”

Hurley describes it as one of the greatest adventures of his life. 

At the end of that magical summer, he returned to the midwest to complete his education including bachelor’s degree from Butler University and master’s from Indiana University. He served in the U.S. Army before beginning a career that took him first into high‑school Spanish classrooms, and later into international education, overseeing foreign student admissions at Indiana University. 

His path widened again when he went to Madrid, where he enrolled in a Spanish‑for‑foreign‑students program at the University of Madrid. There he met Maria Sandiford, a young woman from Rome who was also in the program. They fell in love, and before long he left the coursework to take a job. He needed to earn money, he says simply, because he wanted to marry her.

They were wed in Rome on March 2, 1957, at the Basilica of Saint John at the Latin Gate, beginning a partnership that spanned more than six decades.

Through the Agency for International Development (USAID), he later served tours in Peru and Egypt, along with time in Syria, building a life defined not only by music and movement, but by language, service, and a widening view of the world.

Maria, the more gregarious of the two, died in September 2020 after more than sixty years of marriage. After her death, something shifted.

“My wife was always the outgoing one … After she passed, I had to learn to do it myself.”

He began greeting neighbors, thanking service workers, and speaking with the people he encountered on daily walks — including the garbage collectors he passes regularly. A small adjustment, but one that reflects a larger truth: adaptation has always been part of his survival.

When asked what explains his longevity, he does not offer a philosophy or platitudes. Instead, he returns to habits that sound almost ordinary. He never smoked. He did not drink heavily. He stayed in motion.

“I always walked a lot. … I never really stopped moving.”

He remains connected to St. Agnes Catholic Catholic Church, attending Sunday Mass.

He and Maria had five children, though one died in infancy. Today, he has eight grandchildren and a newly arrived great‑grandchild — born the same year he turned 100. He mentions it with quiet pride, as if acknowledging the generosity of time.

The stories from his life — cross‑country journeys on Route 66, being in Los Angeles during the announcement of Japan’s surrender in World War II, and decades of travel and work across continents- sound almost too improbable to belong to one life. But he does not describe them as exceptional. He presents them as lived experiences.

What remains most visible now is not the scale of his past, but the simplicity of his present: music in the room, sports on the screen, news unfolding in real time, and a man still tapping his foot to a beat that has followed him across 100 years.

“I’ve always believed I’m one of the luckiest guys on the face of the earth,” he says, borrowing Lou Gehrig’s famous words. “I’ve been very blessed by the Good Lord.”