(I tried to edit this for easier reading, but it is just too long, so this is more or less how I received it in an email.  It is a wonderful story!)

This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and 
  small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the
> > Pulitzer Prize for
> >       editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a
> > few good chuckles are
> >       guaranteed. 
> >                                 
> >
> >       *     *    
> >       *     *    
> > *   
> >       *    *    *
> > My
> >       father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite
> > right. I should say I
> >       never saw him drive a car.
> >
> > He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25
> >       years old, and the last car he dro ve was a 1926
> > Whippet. 
> >
> > "In
> >       those days," he told me when he was in his 90s,
> > "to drive a car you had to
> >       do things with your hands, and do things with your
> > feet, and look every
> >       which way, and I decided you could walk through life
> > and enjoy it or drive
> >       through life and miss it." 
> >
> > At which point my mother, a
> >       sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:
> > "Oh, bull----!" she said. "He
> >       hit a horse."
> >
> > "Well," my father said, "there was that,
> >       too." 
> >
> > So my brother and I grew up in a household without a
> >       car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses
> > next door had a green
> >       1941 Dodge, the Van Laninghams across the street a
> > gray 1936 Plymouth, the
> >       Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we
> > had
> >       none. 
> >
> > My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would
> >       take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk
> > the 3 miles home. If he
> >       took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I
> > would walk the three
> >       blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home
> >       together. 
> >
> > My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born
> >       in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how
> > come all the neighbors had
> >       cars but we had none. "No one in the family
> > drives," my mother would
> >       explain, and that was that. 
> >
> > But, sometimes, my father would
> >       say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16,
> > we'll get one." It was as
> >       if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16
> > first.
> >
> > But, sure
> >       enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in
> > 1951 my parents bought a
> >       used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts
> > department at a Chevy
> >       dealership downtown. 
> >
> > It was a four-door, white model, stick
> >       shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and,
> > since my parents didn't
> >       drive, it more or less became my brother's car.
> >
> > Having a car but
> >       not being able to drive didn't bother my father,
> > but it didn't make sense
> >       to my mother. 
> >
> > So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she
> >       asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in
> > a nearby cemetery,
> >       the place where I learned to drive the following year
> > and where, a
> >       generation later, I took my two sons to practice
> > driving. The cemetery
> >       probably was my father's idea. "Who can your
> > mother hurt in the cemetery?"
> >       I remember him saying more than once. 
> >
> > For the next 45 years
> >       or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in
> > the family. Neither
> >       she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he
> > loaded up on maps --
> >       though they seldom left the city limits -- and
> > appointed himself
> >       navigator. It seemed to work. 
> >
> > Still, they both continued to
> >       walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my
> > fath er an equally
> >       devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem
> > to bother either of them
> >       through their 75 years of marriage. 
> >
> > (Yes, 75 years, and they
> >       were deeply in love the entire time.)
> >
> > He retired when he was 70,
> >       and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so,
> > he would walk with
> >       her the mile to St. Augustine’s Church. She would
> > walk down and sit in the
> >       front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw
> > which of the
> >       parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If
> > it was the pastor, my
> >       father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk,
> > meeting my mother at the
> >       end of the service and walking her home. 
> >
> > If it was the
> >       assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk
> > and then head back to the
> >       church. He called the priests "Father Fast"
> > and "Father
> >       Slow."
> >
> > After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my
> >       mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no
> > reason to go along.
> >       If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit
> > in the car and read, or
> >       go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep
> > the engine running so
> >       he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the
> > evening, then, when
> >       I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs
> > lost again. The millionaire on second
> >       base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first
> > base, so the
> >       multimillionaire on third base scored." 
> >
> > 0A If she were going
> >       to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the
> > bags out -- and to
> >       make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he
> > was always the
> >       navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88
> > and still driving, he
> >       said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a
> > long
> >       life?" 
> >
> > "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would
> > be
> >       something bizarre.
> >
> > "No left turns," he said
> >
> > "What?" I
> >       asked.
> >
> > "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years
> > ago, your
> >       mother and I read an article that said most accidents
> > that old people are
> >       in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming
> >       traffic. 
> >
> > As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can
> >       lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother
> > and I decided never
> >       again to make a left turn."
> >
> > "What?" I said again.
> >
> > "No left
> >       turns," he said. "Think about it. Three
> > rights are the same as a left, and
> >       that's a lot safer. So we always make three
> > rights." 
> >
> > "You're
> >       kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for
> > support. "No," she said,
> >       "your father is right. We make three rights. It
> > works."But then she added:
> >       "Except when your father loses
> > count." 
> >
> > I was driving at the
> >       time, and I almost drove off the road as I started
> > laughing.
> >
> > =2
> >       0"Loses count?" I asked.
> >
> > "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes
> >       happens. But it's not a problem. You just make
> > seven rights, and you're
> >       okay again." 
> >
> > I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I
> >
> >       asked.
> >
> > "No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we
> > just come home
> >       and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so
> > important it can't
> >       be put off another day or another week." 
> >
> > My mother was never
> >       in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car
> > keys and said she
> >       had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when
> > she was 90.
> >
> > She
> >       lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the
> > next year, at
> >       102. 
> >
> > They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in
> >       1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty
> > years later, my
> >       brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the
> > tiny bathroom -- the
> >       house had never had one. My father would have died
> > then and there if he
> >       knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid
> > for the
> >       house.) 
> >
> > He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a
> >       treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid
> > he'd fall on the icy
> >       sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was
> > of sound mind and
> >       sound body until the moment he died. 
> >
> > One September afternoon
> >       in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to
> > give a talk in a
> >       neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us
> > that he was wearing
> >       out, though we had the usual wide-ranging
> > conversation about politics and
> >       newspapers and things in the news. 
> >
> > A few weeks earlier, he
> >       had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first
> > hundred years are a lot easier
> >       than the second hundred." At one point in our
> > drive that Saturday, he
> >       said, "You know, I'm probably not going to
> > live much
> >       longer." 
> >
> > "You're probably right," I said.
> >
> > "Why would
> >       you say that?" He countered, somewhat
> > irritated.
> >
> > "Because you're
> >       102 years old," I said.
> >
> > "Yes," he said, "you're right." He
> > stayed
> >       in bed all the next day. 
> >
> > That night, I suggested to my son
> >       and daughter that we sit up with him through the
> > night.
> >
> > He
> >       appreciated it, he said, though at one point,
> > apparently seeing us look
> >       gloomy, he said:
> >
> > "I would like to make an announcement. No one in
> >       this room is dead yet" 
> >
> > An hour or so later, he spoke his last
> >       words:

 "I want you to know," he said, clearly and
 lucidly, "that I 
       am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had
 as happy a life as 
       anyone on this earth could ever have." 

A short time later, he 
 died.
 
I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've
 wondered 
       now and then how it was that my family and I were so
 lucky that he lived 
       so long.

> > I can't figure out if it was because he walked through
> >       life, Or because he quit taking left turns.
> > " 
> >
> > Life is too
> >       short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who
> > treat you right.
> >       Forget about those who don't. Believe everything
happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.