Remarkable story of a 109-year-old who became soulmate and book for noted KC author

David Von Drehle, a respected columnist for The Washington Post and author of books about Abraham Lincoln, capital punishment and a horrifying 1911 fire, has taken a career detour.

The Mission Hills resident has written a book for his children. But it’s not a children’s book — his four kids are all in their 20s after all. It’s more of a guide to the 20th century as told through the lens of a man who was born in 1905, eight months before the legendary San Francisco earthquake, and became Von Drehle’s neighbor and soulmate more than 100 years later.

Call it “Little Big Man” meets “Tuesdays With Morrie” meets “Forrest Gump,” with a bit of philosophy mixed in.

“Young people grow up now thinking the world is in a lot of flux, really screwed up, and many of them have a hard time being optimistic about their future,” Von Drehle said. “So by telling the story of someone who lived through the entire 20th century, it was a chance to say that things have always been screwed up, there’s always been reasons to be fearful, there’s always been dynamic change. And there are tools for being happy and successful in spite of all that.”

“The Book of Charlie: Wisdom From the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man” will be released May 23, and Von Drehle will have an event at Unity Temple on the Plaza that evening.

The titular Charlie is the late Charlie White, a doctor who spent nearly his entire life in the Kansas City area. Among his accomplishments, he treated gangsters and their families in Kansas City’s Little Italy in the 1930s, became one of the nation’s first anesthesiologists and served as an officer during World War II.

He traveled the world, even going to South America to perform surgery on the president of Peru and returning with a smuggled pet monkey. He rubbed elbows with actor Buddy Rogers, author Edgar Snow and mobster Johnny Lazia. He played saxophone in a dance band, and he rode horses with nuns.

He also experienced the deaths of his father in a freak elevator accident, of his first wife to suicide and of his third wife to cancer.

Through it all, he remained an optimist.

“Very much so, but in a practical way,” Von Drehle said. “There was no point in being pessimistic. It was a waste of energy. Because you’ve got to live your life no matter what, so you may as well do it with optimism.

“Interestingly, Charlie never described himself as being happy. I didn’t ultimately call this a guide to happiness or how to be happy, because Charlie didn’t really remember being happy or sad, just never any time for that.”

He was too busy being a doctor, making house calls.

“Women didn’t bring their sick children into your office — you made house calls,” White told The Star in 2005, on the occasion of his 100th birthday. “You get acquainted with your patients. You had a great knowledge of everything about them. Nobody has time to do that anymore.”

Von Drehle and his family moved to Mission Hills in 2007 from Washington, D.C., where he was writing for Time magazine. White, then 102, lived across the street in a home he bought in 1960. The two immediately struck up a friendship, and the stories began to flow.

The many amazing anecdotes in “The Book of Charlie” include Charlie giving a transfusion of his own blood to a gangster (who died anyway) on the streets of Chicago, watching a man get mowed down by a machine gun from a passing car, riding in an ambulance with a reporter from The Kansas City Star who flew out the door when the vehicle took a sharp turn and making a house call where he delivered a premature baby he placed in a warmed shoebox.

“Most things worked out well for him,” Von Drehle said. “But I would argue that his frame of mind was part of the reason so many things worked out well. He lived his life on his toes. He was prepared for opportunities, and he was willing to grab them when they arose.”

Von Drehle, who grew up in Colorado, began his journalism career as a teenage sportswriter for The Denver Post. He then attended the University of Denver and earned a master’s in English literature at University of Oxford. His wife, Karen Ball, grew up in Kansas City and attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She helped research and fact check “The Book of Charlie.”

His editor at Simon & Schuster suggested the book idea after Von Drehle wrote an essay for Time about White’s life and death in 2014.

“It was a challenge to figure out exactly how to write it because it’s not a conventional biography,” Von Drehle said. “It’s more of an attempt to learn some lessons from somebody’s well-lived life. It was not like any other book that I’ve written, so finding the right voice and the right tempo for it did take more work than I anticipated.”

“The Book of Charlie” already has one influential supporter.

Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks, whose novel “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece” was released May 9, posted unsolicited praise on his Instagram account that has nearly 10 million followers:

“I gotta recommend this book, filled with history, wisdom, common sense and laughs galore. I wish I had lived across the street from Charlie AND that I make it to 109!”

In addition to a recommendation from Forrest Gump himself, Von Drehle is bracing for comparisons with “Tuesdays With Morrie,” saying they are “kind of inevitable.” The 1997 memoir by Mitch Albom about the author’s visits with his dying mentor has sold nearly 18 million copies.

“I’d be happy if I sell one-tenth as many copies,” Von Drehle joked.

He said he didn’t read “Tuesdays With Morrie” when it came out, then made a point of avoiding it when he began working on the Charlie project. “I didn’t want to have it in my head.”

A certain centenarian had already taken up residence there.

When asked whether he became soulmates with White, Von Drehle said, “I did. I do share a lot of Charlie’s philosophy. I would say he made me more aware of what I think about life. … I guess he was a soulmate.”

Book event

David Von Drehle will speak about “The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man” at 7 p.m. May 23 at Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707 W. 47th. $27.99 (includes copy of book). rainydaybooks.com.

Other books by Von Drehle

▪ “Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year” (2012)

▪ “Among the Lowest of the Dead: The Culture of Capital Punishment (Law, Meaning, and Violence)” (2006)

▪ “Triangle: The Fire That Changed America” (2004)

▪ “Deadlock: The Inside Story of America’s Closest Election” (2001)

▪ “Among the Lowest of the Dead: Inside Death Row” (1996)