In his 102 years, he has never stopped learning

"Why should I worry about it?" he asked, then added, "I sure didn't plan on living this long."

With that, his toothless mouth formed a perfect circle as he emitted a cheerful "ho, ho, ho."

Hedgpeth is one of those rare individuals who have lived in three centuries. Born in Dixonville in 1897, a hamlet about five miles east of Roseburg, he will turn 103 on March 26.

He isn't the only Rogue Valley resident to have lived to see three centuries. Others include Ashland resident Don Lowe, who is also 102, and Central Point resident John Frazee, a mere youngster at 101.

Nor is Hedgpeth the first in his family. His great-grandfather, Willis Willard Elliott, was born Aug. 7, 1799, in Rowan, N.C., and died July 10, 1900, in Independence, Ore.

A retired logger, self-taught botanist and world traveler, Hedgpeth lives in Prospect with his son and daughter-in-law, Robin and Joanne Hedgpeth.

Like most folks who have been around more than a century, Dee Hedgpeth looks the part: His eyebrows are as thick as moss on an old oak tree. Most of his teeth are gone. His legs are as thin as willows.

But he still rises at 5 a.m. each day, still likes to chat about history, and still -- despite his gentle denials -- likes to mull over the future.

"I suppose there will be more discoveries," he said of the coming century. "But it all depends on people's ability to find out things."

Yet he cautions that humanity is but a small part of the universe.

"We really aren't very important," he concluded.

He has given some thought to mankind's ability to continue to expand its knowledge base, perhaps even to colonize some distant planet.

"If they can take stuff on this planet -- with oxygen, water and one thing and another in it -- and plant it up there, then they might have something," he said. "But I've read a lot about astronomy. Some of those places are 5 billion years distant. It looks pretty dim to me."

He allows that any prospects for mankind to explore space were mighty dim when he was born.

When he arrived at the tail end of the 19th century, humankind had yet to fly. There were no airplanes, no televisions, no cell phones.

He recalls when he was 4 years old.

"Teddy Roosevelt was president," he said. "I bet you don't remember him. I even remember when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank."

The son of a horse logger, Hedgpeth never made it past the eighth grade. As a youth he spent some time working on a stage line, earning $15 a month to take care of the horses.

"When I first began to drift around, I had a curiosity," he said. "I went to all the libraries. I went to Portland and got a job there so I could be near that big library. First thing I did was go to the Portland library."

He wanted to find out what wonders the young 20th century had in store.

"I read hundreds of books about everything," he said. "I was curious about the world."

Two horses and a wagon first brought him to Prospect when the century was still young. He was yet a teenager when he met Hope Nye, the woman who would become his wife. A former teacher, she was 99 when she died in 1998. They had been married more than 60 years.

But he had some traveling to do before he became hitched in 1937.

Although he has never flown in an airplane, he traveled extensively aboard ship to distant places such as Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and Fiji during the early 1920s.

"I remember when Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic by himself," he said. "I was somewhere between Honolulu and Frisco when I heard about it. We got the news on the ship."

The wireless aboard ship informed the crew in 1927 when Lindbergh became the first human to fly from New York to Paris.

"You ever hear of Marconi?" he asked, then answered his question: "He was the first guy that sent them (messages) across the water."

He was referring to Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the wireless telegraph. Marconi formed his wireless telegraph company the year Hedgpeth was born.

After traveling for several years, working in a variety of jobs, Hedgpeth eventually returned to Prospect, where he helped Clarice Nye, Hope's mother, collect native plants throughout Southern Oregon and Northern California. Clarice Nye sold Oregon wildflowers worldwide through a catalog business. Hedgpeth learned the Latin names for many native plants.

Later he cut timber for more than 20 years in Southern Oregon before retiring.

Hedgpeth almost never made it to his third century. One evening 20 years ago while he was working in his shop, a chunk of metal from a grinding wheel broke loose. The flying metal punched a one-inch-wide hole in his forehead just above his left eye.

The doctor told his family he probably wouldn't survive the night. He recovered fully, although he lost his memory for three months.

There is nothing wrong with his memory today.

"What people have done since then (1900) is surprising," he said. "I don't believe any other century contains all the knowledge that people have acquired in this 20th century."

He still keeps track of the knowledge humanity has gathered in the century he knows best. He even kept abreast of the potential problems of Y2K.

"I read about that plenty," he said.

"He has me look up things all the time in the computer," said his daughter-in-law. "He's always thinking about things he wants more information on. He always tells me to `go find out what I can on my machine.' I get it, and read it to him."

Hedgpeth plans to continue learning in his third century.

"I never thought I'd make it this far," he reiterated. "But I never worried about it, either."