FREDERICKTOWN – Don Melick celebrated his 90th birthday on Friday.

Most mornings, you will find Don at the Fredericktown Bellstore drinking coffee and swapping stories before he heads home to saw and cut wood with his trusty dog Blue. His long life he credits partly to some good advice from Dr. Drake when hospitalized for three months at Mercy Hospital at age six for pneumonia: "Don't you ever smoke!" – and partly to staying active. A trapping and hunting enthusiast who enjoyed "outsmarting the game warden" in his younger years, he's still an eagle-eyed shooter and enjoys sighting-in hunting rifles for the young fellows.

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