The world’s oldest bicycle paperboy has died
Marvin Teel, a 90-year-old World War II veteran, who rode his antique Schwinn bicycle five days a week to deliver newspapers in his southern Illinois town, died this week.
Marvin Teel died Saturday, two weeks after the great-grandfather was admitted to the hospital, but only after he insisted on finishing his delivery of 40 newspapers on his three-mile route that day.
"He was feeling sick and we wanted to take him to the emergency room, but he wouldn’t go until he got the newspapers delivered. So even the day he went into the hospital, he delivered," Sheery Bullock said of her brother, who would have turned 91 next month.
"He had a real work ethic. He believed if you said you were going to do something, you did it."
Teel, a Southern Illinois University alumnus who studied physics, chemistry and math, briefly worked after college as a teacher and chemist. He later did television repair and antenna work for decades, scaling 100-foot antennas well into his 80s. He also was a rural mail carrier for 45 years.
He felt the more active you were, the more alert you stayed," Bullock said.
Teel told the media last year that his five-day-a-week route earned him the title of "World’s Oldest Paperboy," given that his closest competitor, a 93-year-old California man, delivered the news only once a week.
RIP Marvin !
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