For Peter Jacullo — an Army veteran who fought in the Battle of Normandy, an airplane enthusiast who learned to fly at age 15 and a man who built his own house with no previous experience — life never has a dull moment.

The Emerson man, a former borough councilman, turned 100 years old on Sunday. He was born on the Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on Nov. 25, 1918, later moving with his family to Wood-Ridge in 1919.

Growing up, Jacullo always felt bad that World War I had happened without him. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the Civilian Conservation Corps, a public works relief program, in the 1930s, Jacullo’s mother had a prediction: Roosevelt was creating the program to prepare for war.

Excited by the opportunity the CCC could provide, Jacullo was eager to enlist in the program. There was only one problem: You needed to be 18.

Jacullo wasn’t going to let a little thing like age stop him, however. He returned to the Bowery, where “you can buy anything,” and purchased a new birth certificate with a new name, for a dollar.

Jacullo, now Peter Macullo, was sent to the Palisades, where he received drill instruction and worked on public projects such as removing trees and building roadways, sidewalks and bridges.

“We worked very hard, but we loved it,” Jacullo said.

During off hours, Jacullo and his friends would hang out near the Hudson River at the base of the Palisades, which was the big social scene at the time. It was common for Jacullo and his friends to swim back and forth across the Hudson River.

“The danger was being run down by a ship,” he said. “We would swim across and wait for the tide to change; otherwise we would end up way north or way south, and that wasn’t good. It was a great life.”

The military wasn’t Jacullo’s only boyhood love: He was captivated by airplanes and flying. He spend time at nearby Teterboro Airport, helping pilots by handing them tools to work on their planes. Eventually, one of these men told 15-year-old Jacullo to take a ride on a plane himself.

“I got on the plane and went down the runway,” Jacullo said. “He said, ‘You are perfect.’ I flew under the bridge over the Hackensack River … I used to do the screwiest things.”

Travel was another of Jacullo’s loves. When he was about 10 years old, he said, he would sneak onto freight trains, seeing the country while his unsuspecting parents believed he was at a Boy Scout camp.

“My friend at Boy Scout camp would send letters to my mother every couple of weeks,” he said. “Meanwhile, I was in Cleveland.”

One thing Jacullo didn’t love growing up, however, was school.

“When I was 10 years old, I said to my teacher, ‘I’m not interested in c-a-t is cat and 2 and 2 is 4,’ ” he said. “‘I want to know how to make money.’”

The teacher responded with a lesson that Jacullo would hold dear for the rest of his life: If you want to make more money than those around you, you have to work harder.

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The military years

Taking his teacher's lesson to heart, Jacullo worked hard in pursuit of one of his true dreams: serving his country as an airplane pilot during a war.

When he applied to the Army Air Forces, the predecessor to the United States Air Force, however, he was rejected after failing the Ishihara test, which checks for colorblindness. Jacullo, undeterred, hopped on his motorcycle and went up to Canada to see if he could join the Air Force there. Unfortunately, the country didn’t have the facilities to train him, he said.

“I wrote letters to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa,” Jacullo said. “I was so determined, but they all gave me the same answer. They couldn’t take me as a pilot, but they would take me as a navigator or a gunner … that didn’t sit too well with me.”

Seeing how determined Jacullo was, a man in the Air Force gave him some advice: if you join the military, they might forget about how you failed the colorblind test.

“I joined the Army and immediately try to get in the Air Force,” Jacullo said. “They wouldn’t take me.”

Although he did not fly a plane, Jacullo did achieve one of his goals from childhood: serving his country in a war. He served in Panama, San Francisco and islands in the Pacific Ocean, before being sent to England. While there, a frustrated Jacullo spent much of his time sitting around with fellow soldiers, drinking beer.

“I remember saying to myself ‘What am I doing here?' " he said. "I volunteered to fight in the war."

Normandy, 1944

Little did he know he would soon be thrust into the biggest battle of World War II. A spot for two officers opened up to help transfer two ships to Normandy, France, an opportunity Jacullo jumped on. Before boarding, he and his fellow officer each got to choose a ship, without knowing the cargo.

Once they were away from land, Jacullo opened a packet of documents and learned that his ship was transporting black gunpowder.

“I said, ‘Mother of God,’ ” he said. “You can’t jump off and go home, because you are in the water.”

After arriving in La Pointe du Hoc in Normandy — a promontory between Utah and Omaha beaches — Jacullo ran to shore while German soldiers were tossing artillery shells.

“This was chaos,” he said. “You’ve never seen anything like it. I said to myself the best thing we could do is get in these boats and go back to England, because this was a mess.”

Jacullo eventually encountered a captain and informed him of the gunpowder delivery. Then, for the next three weeks, he helped his fellow soldiers clear out German mines. The nerve-wracking work would involve shoving bayonets into the ground for hours on end.

“It was a terrible, terrible job,” Jacullo said.

One moment during his time in Normandy has stuck with him. While German tanks were sending shells at American troops, Jacullo was hit by shrapnel when a shell exploded feet away from him.

“The shrapnel got under my helmet,” he said. “Wow, talk about a headache.” The explosion left him with permanent hearing damage.

The shell also hit Jacullo's legs. After the medic patched him up, he was told he would return to England and receive a Purple Heart, an award for those injured or killed while serving in the military.

Jacullo, however, wasn’t having any of that.

“I said, ‘Mister, I just came from England. I don’t want to go back to England,' " he said. "I didn’t even know what a Purple Heart was. I didn’t give a damn.”

Jacullo did, however, wind up in England for a few days, before returning to France.

After the war

His adventures didn’t end with the war. After he married his wife, Ines, they began to look for a place to settle down.

Instead of the traditional ways of searching for a new home, Jacullo decided to take to the skies, spotting a piece of land at the Hackensack Golf Club from his plane.

“I used to fly around to see certain areas and tell my wife to see how much the land costs,” he said. “She saw the golf course and asked them, 'How much do you want to sell your property?' They must have thought she was nuts.”

After the golf course turned them down, Jacullo purchased a piece of property in nearby Emerson around 1947. As he started to build, a borough building inspector dropped by one day.

“He asked, 'What do you know about building houses?' And I said, ‘Absolutely nothing, but I assure you there’s going to be a house here,’ ” Jacullo said.

Jacullo was true to his word. He lives in that same house to this very day.

Secret to longevity

According to the Census Bureau, there were 53,000 centenarians in the U.S. in 2010, the overwhelming majority — nearly 83% — women. New Jersey had one of the higher rates of 100-plus-year-old residents.

What's the secret to living to 100? Many people will give different tips and tricks, but for Jacullo, the honest truth is: absolutely nothing.

"I did nothing unusual," he said with a laugh. "In the service, I used to drink like a fish."

His daughter, Jean Jacullo, said she’s always been amazed by her father’s remarkable life. He was a family man from the very beginning, even as a child, taking odd jobs to help his family through the Great Depression.

“He was pretty fearless,” his daughter said. “He was an adventure-taker and he was going to make a better life for himself. We are very proud of him and happy he made it to 100.”

Whatever the reason for for his long life, Jacullo is glad to be along for the ride.

"I’ve had a wonderful life," he said. "I did as I pleased."

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