Indiana's 97-year-old former gov is having a moment

Former Indiana Gov. Edgar Whitcomb is 97 years old, four decades out of office and not in the greatest of health. But he is having a moment. "Comeback" is too strong a word, but consider:

■ Whitcomb rated a mention in "Unbroken," Laura Hillenbrand's best-seller about World War II prisoner of war Louis Zamperini that last winter was turned into a movie directed by Angelina Jolie.

■ Last month, following the death of former Arizona Gov. Raul Hector Castro at age 98, Whitcomb became the nation's oldest living former U.S. governor. He is 97.

"Wow, number one," Whitcomb said.

"He makes a joke out of it, but I think it's an honor," said his wife, the former Evelyn Gayer.

■ And now, a relative of Whitcomb's, a Los Angeles-based public relations practitioner named Jacqueline Lovejoy, is shopping Whitcomb's story around to movie studios.

"He had a real connection with Zamperini," Lovejoy said, "but his life is incredible in its own right."

Lovejoy is using as her sales tool Whitcomb's 1958 book, "Escape from Corregidor." The book is about his wartime capture, escape, recapture and torture at the hands of the Japanese. She said there is "some interest in it in Hollywood."

But Whitcomb's life after the war was even more eventful, and his life after his governorship was more eventful still. He got fed up and turned his back on politics, split from his fashion-model wife and went off alone, across the Atlantic Ocean, in a small sailboat. Years later, he came home to a tiny house in a southern Indiana town and read Thoreau and rode his bicycle and, at age 95, remarried.

Recently, gout developed in one of Whitcomb's knees, and he has been struggling to walk. He takes rehab seven days a week and uses a wheelchair.

When asked which actor he would like to play him on the big screen, Whitcomb just laughed and said, "That'll never happen."

Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.