World's Oldest Worker Quits at 104

GRANTHAM, Pa. (April 14) - A man billed as the world's oldest worker is calling it quits.

Ray Crist, a retired scientist who started teaching at Messiah College near Harrisburg in 1970, put down his pointer Tuesday at age 104.

Crist, though, has no plans to rest on his laurels.

Instead, he'll keep up with his research and academic papers, the latest of which sets out to explain how plants absorb toxic metals and thereby clean the soil.

''When you have a mission, you go after it,'' said Crist, who worked on the Manhattan Project. ''And I am still going after it.''

Two years ago, at age 102, Crist was named America's oldest worker by a nonprofit training group called Experience Works.

He started at Messiah at age 70, after a career in science and a decade teaching at Dickinson University. In his 34 years at Messiah, he took only a token salary of $1 a year.

''...(L)ast year when I had classes in his building, I would walk by and see him in his office,'' said sophomore Kinsey Rice. ''He would be in there, hunched over at the desk, working. It was kind of like motivation.''

Crist was born in central Pennsylvania, just a few miles from the land where Messiah would be built. His grandfather was a Union soldier in the Civil War, and his father a farmer and auctioneer.

Crist got used to hard work early, feeding hogs every morning as a boy.

In 1926, he earned a doctorate in chemistry from Columbia University. In 1945, he was a director with the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. effort to develop an atomic bomb. He later worked at Union Carbide Corp.

Crist, who lives in Carlisle, lost his wife in 1961. His son, Henry Crist, is a pathologist at Carlisle Regional Medical Center.