‘Inside Edition’ features 107-year-old Sarasota driver

Joe Newman drives his 99-year-old fiancee around in the red Mercedes convertible he bought from his doctor at age 103.

This week, “Inside Edition” posted a video featuring Joe Newman, who celebrated his 107th birthday on Jan. 13.A Sarasota man is getting national attention for his particular set of skills: He’s still driving at age 107.

He drives his 99-year-old fiancee around in a red Mercedes convertible he bought from his doctor for $4,000 at age 103. The newsmagazine asks: Is he the oldest driver in America?

“It added some fun to my life,” he told the Herald-Tribune’s Chris Anderson in September. If you are over 80 in Florida, you are required to renew your license every six years. What you don’t have to do is pass a driving test. Newman feels that is wrong.

He’s most proud of working on Social Security during the era of President Franklin Roosevelt, he told Herald-Tribune reporter Carlos R. Munoz in early 2019.

In 2018, Herald-Tribune columnist Carrie Seidman wrote that Newman has never stopped trying to make a difference.

“If I am not doing something, I might as well die,” he told Seidman. “I remember visiting my mother and she would always say, ‘Joe, what have you been doing?’ And when I told her she’d say, “Well, and what are you going to do tomorrow? ‘We’ — it was always we, not I — ‘only have so much time. Are you rowing or are you just sitting in the boat?’”