At the end of our days, most of us probably want to look back and remember the times we shared laughter and love with our families and friends. And when those loved ones remember us, it is unlikely that the numbers that identify us and measure our time on Earth – whether it’s our age, years we worked for a company, or savings account balances – mean very much. We want to be known for the intangible things that make us unique such as our sense of humor, artistic talents, rigorous intellect, compassion or integrity.
Yet, to tell the story of a person’s life, numbers are important and can provide context. For example, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center article, centenarians make up 0.03% of the U.S. population, which means that people like Jim Kreko, who turned 100 in January 2025, are quite rare. Another important figure is 73, which marks the number of years that Jim and his wife, Shirley, have been married. As a talented mechanical engineer, numbers (and their accuracy) played a key role in Jim’s profession, which impacted their life together. Numbers provide the outlines to their story, and all our stories.
So let’s start with 16, which was Jim’s age when he graduated high school. He was born in 1925 and raised in Albany, Louisiana. The Kreko family of eight lived in a small agricultural community largely made up of Hungarian immigrants, but he says his parents wouldn’t allow him or his siblings to learn their native language. His father owned a blacksmith shop, which is where Jim picked up his interest in, and talents with, fixing items. “Not only was he a blacksmith, but he repaired tractors and wagons, and that’s where I learned about gears,” he says. “I wondered how they made those and I found out.” His interest in mechanical engineering had been sparked.
The number 1942 is also significant for Jim because it marked his enlistment in the Navy to avoid the draft into World War II. At the time he was 17 and had been working at a filling station after high school; he had already seen his two brothers drafted. He recalls traveling by train to San Diego, California, stopping at various spots along the way – a journey that took five days. Once he arrived at the base, he began training to repair ships.
Eventually he was sent to the South Pacific, where he went to New Caledonia, which served as an important Allied base, and then Los Negros Island, part of New Guinea.
“Going ashore, they gave us rifles and a pocket full of bullets and said, ‘There are still Japanese here,’” he says. “We had no training whatsoever with a gun.” During his two years on the island, he worked six days a week in the humid, hot temperatures to repair damaged ships. The war ended when he was in the South Pacific, and he returned to the states 30 pounds lighter due to the long hours, heat and stress. After making it home to Louisiana, Jim enrolled at Louisiana State University.
This is where the number nine becomes important, since it’s the number of semesters it took Jim to attain his degree in mechanical engineering. “I studied like crazy,” he says, managing to also earn minors in both math and civil engineering. Before his commencement, he was hired by General Electric for their test engineers program, and after the ceremony he headed to Schenectady, New York. “I borrowed $100, had one suitcase and I took off,” he says.
After spending time in New York learning about generators, Jim moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to learn about General Electric’s work with small motors. It was there, in 1951, that he met Shirley.
When it comes to telling some of Shirley’s story, the number 10 is significant because that was her age when her family moved from Whiting, Indiana, where she was born, to Fort Wayne after her father passed away from tuberculosis. She grew up among a large family that included eight children. Once Shirley graduated high school, she began helping her mother with the rental properties she had slowly acquired after her husband died. “I was the maintenance lady,” she says. “I took care of the furnaces; I was stronger than the other girls and I liked doing men’s work.”
Jim and Shirley’s connection began with their participation in the T and Ts, a group of people in their 20s and 30s who attended adult bible classes. “We kept seeing each other at church meetings every Sunday night,” Shirley says. “He finally asked me, ‘Can I pick you up?’” They continued to be busy with activities with the T and Ts, and married in 1952. They moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, so Jim could continue with the engineers program while Shirley got a job with the telephone company. She worked in the frame room and made under 90 cents an hour. “We were the first women that they hired; I was one of three ladies,” Shirley says.
By 1955 they were headed to Louisville where General Electric had moved their refrigeration division in the early part of the decade, and Shirley was happy to be heading south. “When he got the orders that they were moving refrigeration down to Louisville, I was so thankful,” she says. “Coming to this climate was a whole lot nicer.” They bought a house and had their two children. “That was an interesting interlude,” she says, due in part to Jim’s frequent travel for work, which only increased the longer he was with the company.
Jim describes a time during his later years at General Electric when he kept a packed suitcase by the door at all times. One day he was called because a plant had been shut down in Columbia, Maryland, so he caught a flight there and began working to get the assembly line operational again. While there, he got a call that a plant in Illinois was ready to shut down due to a problem with its hydraulic heat exchangers. After completing his work in Maryland, he flew to Illinois where he got another call about a malfunction at a plant in Decatur, Alabama. Jim recalls even having a private plane pick him up. “The pilot didn’t even turn the engine off,” he says. “I climbed in and he took off.”
Although Jim retired from General Electric at age 62, he worked another 15 years on contract, so it wasn’t until he was 77 years old when he completely retired. “I had experience that no one else had,” Jim says.
That experience is what former colleague Beth Hulse-Colananni relied on when she met Jim in 1990. “He was hired back to work on designing polyurethane foam systems for refrigerators for the Decatur, Alabama, facility,” she says. “At the same time, I was working as an advanced manufacturing engineer working on the same systems for the Bloomington, Indiana, site. I actually contracted him to work on projects with me.” They worked together on next-generation conveyance systems and polyurethane processing, and traveled to Germany, Italy and Minnesota to look at new technologies.
“I owe my 40-year career to the start I got working with Jim as a co-op in the mid-’80s,” says Paul Wentzel, principal advanced manufacturing engineer with GE Appliances. “He is still the sharpest engineer I’ve ever known. I worked with Jim in our AP5, Decatur, and Bloomington plants, and whenever the word got out that he was in the building, people would come from every corner with their unsolved equipment and process problems. Whether the issue was mechanical, electrical, chemical, hydraulic, related to welding, metal stamping, plastic extrusion or thermoforming, or anything else you could imagine, Jim would go solve their problems and then come back to our project – simply amazing.”
Of course, Jim and Shirley managed to have fun through their years together, despite Jim’s hectic work schedule. They enjoyed camping at state parks, and by the time their children were 12 years old, the family had visited 37 states. In the 1980s they joined Jeffersontown Christian Church, where they both became integral members of that community. Jim used his engineering and woodworking skills to build the cross above the baptistry and the Communion table, while Shirley was involved in quilting and other activities. Even now at age 97, Shirley attends weekly Bible study.
Throughout their many years together much has changed, and the numbers that have given form to their lives have become less important. What matters is that they have built a life together. “You marry somebody like Shirley and you’ve got it made,” Jim says, while Shirley says of her husband: “He’s not perfect; he’s a human being, but he comes pretty close.”
