HE'S A SHORT, bald guy who calls himself "Curly," and once you get past his age, there is something else about him that stays with you.

He will tell you he was born June 14, 1902, in Dubuque, Iowa, which makes him 105 years old, but Curly--real name Larry Haubner--will tell you he isn't worth all the fuss people have been making over him. But he is wrong. He is quite a special man.

"He seems so genuinely surprised by the attention," said Shirley Heim, an old friend who introduced my son, Tim, and me to Curly one day early last year.

That was the day the three of us drove over to Greenfield Senior Living Center in Stafford County to meet Curly.

You may have seen the story about him in The Free Lance-Star on June 16. It was a fine story, and in it, reporter Jim Hall detailed efforts to keep Haubner at Greenfield now that his funds are nearly gone. The effort is ongoing; the outcome, at this writing, is uncertain.

Haubner, a genuinely happy and almost mythically healthy man, makes an unforgettable impression on those who meet him.

He is a self-described "health nut" who wears no glasses, uses no hearing aid and has his own teeth well, some of them.

Although Curly is deaf, we sat out front at Greenfield on a bench and managed to talk with him for the better part of an hour. For some reason--habit, I suppose--I made notes. We managed to talk with him by speaking in a normal voice, directly into his ear.

Going over my own notes and Hall's story, there remain many large gaps in the story of Haubner's life, but it appears that his family, including his two brothers and a sister, grew up in Tacoma, Wash.

He told us that he graduated from high school and apparently attended a St. Martin's College. There was Army service during World War II. From Haubner, we learned that he lived--apparently for a long time--in New York City, where he was a doorman at an upscale hotel. With his outgoing personality, he made many friends.