WEST PARIS – There is a large, overstuffed upholstered armchair sitting in the corner of Roger Brigham’s cozy room at the Ledgeview Living Center in West Paris. He calls it the Eleanor Roosevelt chair. He has owned it for nearly 80 years.

At 102, Brigham, a language teacher and organist, delights in recalling the stories of his life, including how he got the chair.

It was hot September day in the 1930s when he found it, he said Friday as he glanced over to the corner. The streets of New York City were filled with shoppers and businessmen. Brigham was window shopping when the heat overcame him and he sought refuge in the fifth-floor furniture department of the world-famous Saks Fifth Avenue store. He saw the chair and fell into it.

“I was saved,” Brigham said. He bought the chair on the spot. After paying for the chair he went to the elevator, rushing in as the doors opened – right into the arms of a woman.

“I grabbed her in my arms. It was Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the president. … Things like that just happen in my life,” he said, with a twinkle in his pale blue eyes.

Brigham, who left his longtime home in East Sumner several years ago to live at the Ledgeview Living Center, celebrated his 102 birthday on March 8, surrounded by family and friends. He said he’s not sure how he got to be 102 years of age, but he still feels healthy.

“I never was aware of it. Then I end up 102,” he said.

He was born in 1905, son of Fred and Helen Brigham. His family included an older brother and two sisters. With no living grandparents, aunts or uncles, the family of six was his whole world.

“I could not have chosen better parents,” he said with a smile on his face. They lived on 102nd Street in New York City until the day his older brother got away from his mother during a walk and ran through the swinging doors of a saloon.

“My mother was beside herself,” said Brigham. “She said, ‘Fred we’re moving. Your son went into a saloon today. I can’t have that.'” The family moved to New Jersey.

He learned to play the organ at the local Universalist Church in New Jersey. It was there that he heard a great opera singer who was coincidentally from Waterville, Maine, and, who legend has it, was a mistress of a crown prince in Europe. When an acquaintance of his mother asked how she could bring her children to hear such a woman sing, Brigham said his mother simply replied, “I’m convinced that whatever she does in bed does not affect her voice.” With a hearty laugh, Brigham said proudly, “That was my mother.”

He graduated from Princeton in 1928 and hoped to continue his education in the French language and culture. When he asked a professor where he should study, the gentleman responded, “By no means go to the Sorbeaurn. You’ll only associate with foreign students.”

So Brigham set out to Rennes, France, to study at the university. The professor was right. Brigham was one of only five foreign students – one from Australia, one from Germany and two women from Denmark.

He was surprised when a French woman said one of the most beautiful English phrases she had heard was “cellar door.”

It was in France that he met his wife, Yvonne. “I met her in a French University,” recalled Brigham, his eyes lighting up as he remembered his late wife. The couple had a daughter, Helen, and it was Helen who eventually led them to Maine when a friend invited them to a lakeside cottage to get Helen out of the city’s blazing summer heat.

Teaching became his profession. He taught language at a boys school in New Jersey then entered the public school system. He ended his career at the exclusive Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut.

To young people today he says, “Study hard. Pay attention to what you’re doing. Be aware of what is around you. Not just the facts, the door has opened to you. If you aren’t aware of what it can do for you, you’re missing a great deal. No one can teach this.”

In Sumner he played the organ in the local church for 50 years and sang in a quartet that was anchored by the beautiful voice of a New York opera singer.

“The miracle was we were never off key,” he said, attributing their performance to the opera singer.

Brigham recalled a day in the city when he was on a trolley car with a neighbor who came up from Alabama. All the seats were taken, many by “colored” women. The Alabama woman stood in front of them demanding that they give up their seats for the “white” folks. They did, much to the astonishment of Brigham.

The story reminded him of a great Negro spiritual, “All I want is a pair of shoes,” that he began to sing.

“All they wanted was a pair of shoes to walk all over God’s heaven. Just a pair of shoes, so humble. These are the things that keep me going,” he said softly.