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From Mules To Model Ts To Highways: A 99-Year-Old's Award-Winning Journey

For 25 years, 99-year-old Frank Kormos volunteered his time teaching older Americans how to drive safely. Over the weekend, he received the AARP’s most prestigious volunteer tribute for community service -- the Texas Andrus Award.

In November, Frank Kormos will turn 100. But you might never know this man, who gets around using only a cane, once had his Model T Ford hauled to his farm by two mules.

“It needed a tire and some work done on the engine,” he remembers, laughing in his Richardson home. 

Credit Kormos Family
Frank Kormos, 99, has been a volunteer with AARP in Texas for more than two decades.

Kormos started volunteering at a young age. He remembers painting his Church’s altar – white with gold trim – as a teenager in Corsicana. His family had a farm there; they grew corn, oats, and cotton.

After attending school in Oklahoma, Kormos got a job on the Railroad in Houston, which at that time was still on a steam engine. Then, in 1940, Kormos got a postcard from Uncle Sam.

“Saying 'Buddy, you are now invited to become a soldier,'” Kormos says.

Diesels and Tank Engines

In the Army, Kormos’s calling was engines. He took courses on Cadillac engines and diesel engines with General Motors in Flint, Michigan, and eventually worked on a maintenance battalion with tank engines.

While en route to southern France, Kormos says he remembers seeing Winston Churchill.

”Winston was out there in Naples, waving us goodbye, with his cigar. He was just like they depicted him,” he says.

Life After The War

After the war, Kormos reunited with a young woman he’d met in Flint, and held down a number of jobs, from a Buick dealer to an insurance salesman to Collins Radio in Dallas. He raised his four kids with his wife, Lois, and retired in 1984 at the age of 70.

That's when the volunteer work began. 

Kormos has served as the head usher at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church, been an active member of the local VFW, and became a sponsor of the Wounded Warrior's Golf Tournament, which benefits wounded servicemen. 

Although Kormos never taught engine repair classes, he did instruct over 100 driver safety courses for the AARP in Texas.

The AARP says Kormos has helped more than 1,500 Texans stay independent and on the road.

Kormos says he enjoys reminding older drivers the rules of the roads, and teaching them tricks to overcome their handicaps.

Lauren Silverman was the Health, Science & Technology reporter/blogger at KERA News. She was also the primary backup host for KERA’s Think and the statewide newsmagazine  Texas Standard. In 2016, Lauren was recognized as Texas Health Journalist of the Year by the Texas Medical Association. She was part of the Peabody Award-winning team that covered Ebola for NPR in 2014. She also hosted "Surviving Ebola," a special that won Best Long Documentary honors from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI). And she's won a number of regional awards, including an honorable mention for Edward R. Murrow award (for her project “The Broken Hip”), as well as the Texas Veterans Commission’s Excellence in Media Awards in the radio category.