THIS THURSDAY, June 2, David Slonim will celebrate his 100th birthday at his home in Ayios Pavlos, Nicosia, with a family party.
It’s been quite a journey for David.
In 1912, aged just seven, David’s father decided to take his family away from Siberia, due to the violence perpetrated against Jews by the Cossacks.
After spending the next 19 years in Palestine, where he was caught up in World War I, David arrived in Cyprus in 1931 with a degree in Agriculture and Engineering.
As a young, part-time inventor, David had hopes of putting his engineering skills to work. But in the end, it was his agriculture skills that came into their own in the red earth of the island.
David had wanted to emigrate to America, but his application was denied by a quota system, so he came to the then British colony of Cyprus instead.
With his specialist knowledge, it took him only two weeks to find fertile, red soil in the Fassouri region, west of Limassol, which he decided to cultivate.
“People thought I was crazy,” he says. “The whole area was marshland and strong winds blew in from the sea. They thought I would never manage.”
But he bought a few hundred donums of land from an Englishman and persevered.
“Eucalyptus trees use plenty of water, so I planted them all around the marshes and they sucked the water up,” he said. “Then I planted Cypress trees to shield the wind.”
David contracted malaria through his daily visits to the marshes, as did many of the workers, some of whom died. But he recovered and never gave up.
The hardiest of citrus trees is the bitter orange, which he used to graft sweet orange. The mother tree produced 8,000 seeds, which were planted and later produced tons of oranges for export to Britain.
He was the first man to produce grapefruit commercially in Cyprus and also introduced sultana grapes using similar methods of grafting.
Word of David’s feats soon began to spread and in 1939, he was invited to the United States by Caterpillar Tractors to inspect Californian citrus plantations.
While on his way to America on the Queen Mary, David met Elsie, and they married in Chicago two months later.
Daughter Daphne says her mother has played a key role in helping David become a centurion. “Behind every great man is a great woman. I think my father has lived to such an advanced age thanks to my mother’s beauty, charm and personality.”
David and Elsie returned to Cyprus soon after, before David’s skills were again in demand in 1952. He moved to Israel for four years, where he set up an experimental plantation on new crops introduced to the country, such as avocado, pecan and sugar cane.
In 1964, he was sent to work in France, where he worked for three years for the Israeli citrus marketing board.
Impressed by his ability to manage agricultural land, the Archbishopric and Hellenic Mines Company in Cyprus also employed him.
In his lifetime, it’s been estimated that he has cultivated around 20,000 donums of land.
He has also owned various patents throughout his life for inventions such as a water wave energy converter, an amphibious vessel and apparatus for recovering the energy of a moving fluid.
When asked what the secret to his longevity is, Daphne said “he has always had superhuman energy and has led a relatively stress-free life, meaning that he now has very few physical problems. Nowadays, he drinks a spoonful of Commandaria a day, has a two-hour siesta every afternoon and eats healthily.”
She went on to say that David “still has an unbelievable lust for life and exhibits a very keen interest in what goes on around him. In fact, when he’s asked how old he feels, he says 59!”
