Sam Latter celebrates his 106th birthday today and is believed to be Scotland’s oldest man. To mark the occasion, he plans to regale his relatives and friends with stories of his childhood in Glasgow, where he was born the son of a Jewish immigrant master tailor.
Scotland’s previous oldest man, Bob Taggart of Rutherglen, died in August, just more than a month after turning 109.
Mr Latter, who was born on January 4, 1904, at 115 Hospital Street in Glasgow’s Gorbals, told of one of his early memories, when his brother wanted a kilt.
The diminutive Mr Latter said: “My brother Wee Alfie – I called him that because he was half my size – wanted this kilt and my father wouldn’t make him one. He said it would take 12 yards of material and he could make three suits with that.
“The First World War broke out and Alfie went north to join the Gordon Highlanders. I said ‘what for?’ and he said ‘because they wear kilts’.”
He then recounted his football days with one of the leading teams in Scotland of the time.
“I saw myself playing in defence at Celtic, and I wanted to play for Queen’s Park, but I ended up playing with Third Lanark. I was signed for £25 and had £6 a week in the first team and £4 a week in the second team.”
After his football career he met his wife Flora and moved to Edinburgh.
“We opened up a sweet shop across from the university. Then another, which my wife looked after, and then another shop. I did exceptionally well through that.”
He volunteered for service when the Second World War started, joining the RAF and ultimately being stationed at Dalcross in the north of Scotland to train pilots.
He retired in 1973, and now lives in Strachan House care home in Edinburgh.
Last week Ellen Watson, who is among the oldest people in Britain, celebrated her 110th birthday.
The great-great-grandmother, who is among the oldest people in Britain, marked the milestone with family and friends at her Surrey care home.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article