02:39 PM CST on Thursday, February 10, 2005

Associated Press

SHREVEPORT -- George Dewey Perkins, said by fellow former Marines and Veterans Affairs officials to be the nation's oldest Marine, is dead at the age of 106. He would have been 107 next month.

Perkins died yesterday of natural causes at Overton Brooks V.A. Medical Center in Shreveport. That's according to his adopted granddaughter Rose Mary Mason-Robinson, a patient advocate at the hospital.

Perkins was admitted to the hospital Tuesday. Other survivors include his son, J.R. Perkins -- a World War Two veteran, Mason-Robinson and another adopted granddaughter, Hong Nguyen.

His son says the funeral will include full military and Masonic rites.

Captain John Scripture of the Bossier City-based Bravo Company, 1/23rd Marines, says Perkins was a source of price for all the Marine Corps and an asset to the area.

Perkins was active until just a week or so ago and took part in public events as recently as the Veterans Day rededication of Municipal Auditorium in November.

Perkins was born in Iola, Kansas, and moved to the Ark-La-Tex during the 1920s oil boom. His stories included the time a heavy pipe cracked his skull in the oil field and he was given up for dead by all but one nurse, who revived him and became his wife.

Perkins' wife of 65 years, Miriam Jordan Perkins, died December 7, 1986. After that, he lived with his son, whom he called his best buddy.

Perkins served in the Marines from 1917 to 1919 and was about to head to Europe when he and other members of his unit came down with the Spanish flu, which was killing millions of people throughout the world. Perkins' sergeant, an American Indian, kept them away from the unit doctors and treated them with a tribal medication, which Perkins said saved their lives.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)