Louis Roney: Staying young

• How to stay young – My constant reminder to me:

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctor worry about them. That is why you pay him/her.
2. Keep only cheerful friends. Grouches pull you down.
3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never leave your brain idle. “An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.
4. Enjoy the simple things.
5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.
6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.
7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's your family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your personal refuge.
8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, to the next county, to a foreign country, but leave guilt behind.
10. Tell the people you love that you love them at every opportunity.

And always remember: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

• Gone with the wind:

Fate sits next to you when you’re driving a car. If you are reckless and hit a human body, you may be shocked to learn whose body you hit. That body’s identification could be the damning variable that turns your life’s equation into an insoluble nightmare.

At age 28, in the spring of 1949, I traveled from New York to Atlanta to sing the role of Lt. Pinkerton in several performances of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” with the Atlanta Opera Company.

On a non-performance night, I went to see a highly touted Italian film in an art theater on Peachtree Street at 14th Street. When I walked out of the theater after the movie, I saw a turbulent scene in front of me across Peachtree Street.

Police cars were everywhere. An ambulance, siren blaring, was driving away from the scene. A taxi stood slantwise in the street, driver’s door open, front wheels against the curb. Two police were holding the arms of a young man who was the driver of the taxi.

A hushed gasp dominoed through the increasing crowd on the sidewalk.

“It was Margaret Mitchell! He hit Margaret Mitchell... That’s the guy who was driving the taxi. He was goin’ like a bat out of hell...”

Margaret Mitchell had gotten out of a car, looked both ways, and then started across Peachtree Street. She never saw the speeding taxi coming. Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone With The Wind,” hung on to life through five tenuous days.

No hope was ever held for her recovery.

In their youth, my mother and Margaret had been friends at Washington Seminary.

A 29-year-old taxi-driver, Hugh Dorsey Gravitt, had killed one of the most beloved Georgians. Gravitt said she had “darted” in front of his cab. He had tried to miss her, he said, but couldn’t.

The front pages of the Atlanta newspapers gave the tragic story of Mitchell’s death the same space that had been devoted to Pearl Harbor, and to the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Letters to the Editor” hysterically demanded legal retribution.

Gravitt should be “tried for murder,” “jailed for life,” even “executed.” Gravitt was charged with involuntary manslaughter. He was convicted, and served about 10 months in prison.

He had not known Margaret Mitchell, and, of course, had no intent to kill her.

If his taxi had killed Jane Doe, the story would have been in the inner pages of the newspapers.

Almost half-a-century later on April 15, 1994, Hugh Dorsey Gravitt died at 74 in Cumming, Ga. Cause of death was not given. Gravitt had long been a recluse of sorts in the small Georgia town.

But wherever he was since 1949, Gravitt had been known simply as, “The man who killed Margaret Mitchell.”

Mitchell was the person who had given us Scarlet and Rhett, Ashley and Melanie — and “Tara.”

All of those names, as well as that of Margaret herself, were immortal. Gravitt often said, “I’d rather it had been me instead of her. It won’t ever heal.”

I wonder if Gravitt ever heard prizefighter Joe Louis’ famous words, “You can run, but you can’t hide”?

For 45 years, no state could have been large enough to give Gravitt a hiding-place. And no town, even Cumming, Ga., could have been remote enough to allow him to escape the lasting ubiquitous stare of public hatred.

For Hugh Gravitt, Margaret Mitchell was dead, but never gone with the wind.