Vincent Dransfield

BIOGRAPHY

Vincent Dransfield was born Vincent Delisio in Paterson, New Jersey, United States, on 28 March 1914, the eldest child born to parents William Delisio (1895-1984) and Dorothy Dransfield (1884-1982). His parents divorced when he was six, and he later legally changed his surname to his mother’s maiden name in 1935.

After the divorce of his parents, his mother had little means to support her children financially, leading to the young Dransfield dropping out of school after the eighth grade to find employment. At the age of 15, he began working at a dairy farm to help support his mother and younger siblings, where he would deliver milk for five years. It was during his tenure at the dairy farm when he began drinking milk on a daily basis; he would continue this habit for the following nine decades, which he would later partially attribute his longevity to.

In 1938, he married Anna Kulick (1915-1992), and the pair would have one daughter. A year later, he began working as a volunteer firefighter at Singac Volunteer Fire Company #3 in Little Falls, New Jersey, where his wife was also employed. At the time, the fire department still drove horse-drawn water tanks. The first blaze he helped fight as a firefighter was at the Colonial Inn in Little Falls, where the force of the firehose nearly knocked him off the roof of the building.

In 1959, he was elected Fire Chief of Little Falls, a position he would hold for several terms in the 1960s. In 1972, he was appointed the Civil Defense Control Director of Little Falls.

He remained married for 54 years until his wife’s death in 1992.

In 2023, at the age of 109, he received global media attention due to being the oldest (known) active driver and firefighter in the United States, where his striking health and independence for his age made his lifelong habit of drinking Ovaltine – a milk flavoring product – the subject of discussion on the internet.