♪ Happy Birthday to you ♪ Happy Birthday to you ♪ Happy Birthday dear Coy ♪ Happy Birthday to you - [Jason] Saying thank you the best way he knows with a salute, Coy Shue celebrating a milestone birthday.

- Well, it was awesome.

It really was.

- He loves it.

He loves it.

I know he does.

- [Jason] Then again, every birthday is a milestone when you're 102.

- September 24th, 1921.

- We've been having birthday parties for Coy for quite a while.

- [Jason] With 102 American flags in the front yard and a birthday cake fit for a king.

- Not too big, major.

- It's his birthday.

(crowd laughing) - [Jason] And family members from both his own family as well as the Marines, all there to celebrate a man who's more or less a living history book.

- Well, I really never did cross my mind how old I was gonna get.

(lively music) - [Jason] Born and raised in Charlotte during the 1920s and '30s, this picture hanging in Coy's garage shows a Charlotte most of us wouldn't recognize.

(plane swooshing) (explosion) But when 20-year-old Coy saw what happened in Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.

- The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.

- [Jason] And heard President Franklin Roosevelt's speech in response, he knew right then he had to do something.

- I volunteered.

I talked to my uncle, he was a Marine and I called him up and I said, "Listen, Carl, I want to go to the war."

He said, "Join the Marines."

And that's what I did.

- [Jason] Showing him this photograph of himself when he first joined the Marines, I asked Coy what he remembers most about the strapping young man in the picture.

- He loved the Marine Corps, he really wanted to be a Marine and he did.

- [Jason] But the thrill of representing his country and fighting the enemy soon faded as Coy quickly found himself in battle in the Pacific.

- You didn't know whether he gonna be living or not.

Day after day after day.

I became a squad leader.

Had eight men that I looked after.

I always told my men to dig a fox hole wherever you stop because if a sale comes, you got to find some place to get - [Jason] Of the eight men you were leading, how many were able to come home and how many didn't make it?

- I lost three.

(lively music) - [Jason] It's the most enduring image of World War II US, Marines raising the American flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima, immortalized in pictures and movies.

But the five-week battle took the lives of nearly 7,000 US Marines, including three of the men who raised the flag that day.

Another 20,000 were wounded.

Coy saw it all unfold firsthand.

He was there.

- Iwo Jima was the front there to hell.

It was terrible.

Screaming and hollering and there is gun smoke and the smell of it.

- If you've seen movies and stuff about that, if it's anything close to being like a movie, I don't know how you made it.

- [Jason] Truth is, Coy probably should never have made it out of Iwo Jima if not for the ultimate stroke of good luck or perhaps, divine intervention.

- We heard this shell coming down.

I said, "That's gonna hit us."

And we jumped in a hole and the shell came down and landed right between us.

And I couldn't breathe for a minute.

I was waiting for it to blow me up, you know, but it didn't, it was a dud and didn't go off.

- That's a rarity, one of those freak things, you know, you hear about it and read about it when you know, he did it.

- That's the reason I'm here today.

That shell didn't go off and God was blessed me and I don't know why, but he did.

- [Jason] Upon returning to Charlotte after the war, Coy opened an automotive upholstery business, shoes, automotive, top and trim, which was in business for nearly 50 years.

- And I tried to live a Christian life all the time Tried to raise my family as Christians, went to church, did the things that the people did back then.

(gentle music) - [Jason] By his side all those years.

Wife Doris May, she was there for Coy's 80th birthday party.

90th, even is 100th.

But sadly, she passed away earlier this year at the age of 94, ending a marriage that lasted three quarters of a century, - 75 years.

Doris was an angel.

I always called her my angel.

(laughs) She was super, I can't cry or nothing else about losing her because we had so much together.

- [Jason] But Coy is still surrounded by loved ones, his two sons, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and of course, the Marines and the bonds of their brotherhood that tie all generations together.

- But I think the other services don't really have the connectivity that many of the Marines have.

- A Marine is a marine.

Period.

- [Jason] Outside his East Charlotte home, the flags of the United States and Marine Corps proudly fly.

Inside his house is loaded with military mementos, with reminders of Iwo Jima just about everywhere.

The question Coy of course, gets asked all the time these days, what's his secret to living a long and healthy life?

- Eat your oatmeal, pray a lot.

That was my secret,