He enjoyed everything he did

People have searched for many years for the secret to a long life.

A man who lived in Cedarhurst for more than a century might have found it.

Charles M. Bodan said many times to people who knew him: “I never got married, did not drink, enjoyed working and everything I did.”

Bodan died on March 2. He was 106.

His more than 100-year life began in Brooklyn on Feb. 27, 1907. When he was 3-years-old his family moved to Cedarhurst. He graduated from Lawrence High School.

The family-owned business, Bodan Interior Decorating & Upholstery, begun by Bodan’s father, Alexander M. Bodan, was where Bodan worked for the majority of his long life. The business was first established in Brooklyn and at different times operated out of three different Cedarhurst locations.

During World War II he served in the army as a airplane mechanic. After returning home from his military service, Bodan went back to work for the family business. One of his larger contributions to the enterprise was building a truck that hauled the furniture.

In 1965, his father died and Bodan and his brother, Alexander Matthew Bodan II, closed the upholstery business. Bodan continued to manage the family-owned stores that were at different times located on Central Avenue, Spruce Street and Elderd Lane in Cedarhurst. He enjoyed visiting and talking with the store owners over a cup of coffee, said his niece, Nancy Bodan-Gonser, who added that her uncle stayed fit by walking daily between Cedarhurst and Hewlett prior to turning 100.

Harry S. Taubenfeld was Bodan’s attorney. Taubenfeld was a lawyer for more than half a century. He thinks that Bodan was a very principled man who met every one of his obligations. “I practiced law for over fifty years,” Taubenfeld said. “I have never met a more honorable businessman as Mr. Charles M. Bodan. Mr. Bodan lived up to each and every commitment that he ever made. He was a good and upstanding citizen, who will be deeply missed.”

Bodan is survived by his nephew, Alexander Bodan III and his wife Joan of Sebastian, Fla.; niece Nancy Bodan Gonser and her husband Gary of Novato, Calif., niece Alma Ruth Bonner, seven grandnieces and grandnephews and 18 great-grandnieces and great-grandnephews.

He was buried in the family plot at Holy Rood Cemetery in Westbury on March 8.