Not many people can say they brawled with Humphrey Bogart and turned down a job offer from Thomas Edison.

But then again, not many people can say they've celebrated their 107th birthday.

C. Yardley Chittick — who will tell you he is actually 1071/2 — will be honored by Phillips Academy at its upcoming alumni weekend as he celebrates alumni weekend at the Andover campus.

Chittick graduated 90 years ago and is the last man standing from the Class of 1918.

"I'm honored a lot these days," Chittick said while sitting in his recliner at the Pleasant View Retirement Community in Concord, N.H., where honorary degrees and proclamations fill up most of the wall space.

"It's only taken me this long to be recognized," he added.

The oldest patent lawyer in the country, Chittick graduated from Phillips the same year the Red Sox won their fifth World Series, and when daylight savings and airmail were both just going into effect.

"This will be the first time ever someone is coming to celebrate a 90th high school reunion," school spokesman Sally Holm said. "We want to honor Yardley's longevity and relationship with the school."

Chittick grew up and went to high school in New Jersey but did not graduate.

A rich distant uncle sent Chittick to Phillips for a year to ready him for college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

By glancing at his personal belongings, it's obvious the school left a lasting impression.

He still plays the mandolin, an instrument he first took up at Andover. Hardcover Phillips Academy volumes line his shelves. Upon a closer inspection, you can find a Humphrey Bogart biography sandwiched between several books stacked in his office.

Chittick will forever be memorialized in "The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart" as the kid in Taylor Hall that Bogart fought — the "nerd who wore horn-rimmed glasses."

It all started when he refused to polish the future Academy Award-winning actor's shoes.

"About Bogart, you think it's safe to say anything now?" Chittick asked mockingly. "He and I had a row about. Somehow or other I didn't like him. He didn't like me. ... I polished all the shoes on the floor, but I wouldn't shine Bogie's."

Bogart threw the first punch. The star was later expelled, or as Chittick likes to say, "fired," from the school for bad grades.

"That ended everything I had to do with that Bogart," Chittick said. "I personally never saw him again. I watched his movies, obviously ... 'The African Queen.'"

Two books below the Bogart biography is a history of Thomas Alva Edison, that famous inventor of the light bulb who represents Chittick's second brush with fame.

Chittick interviewed with Edison after working in the silk mills for a few years following his graduation from M.I.T.

As he tells it, Edison sat him down in his office with a punishing 150-question test.

Applicants had to answer questions like: "What language is generally spoken in Brazil?" "What did Lewis and Clark do?" "What is black ink made of?" and "What three letters occur most frequently in the English language?"

"This was all stuff you would know on the side. I didn't know a lot of it. ... I wish I could have taken the test home," Chittick said. "I would have done better. I would have looked up the answers."

He must have done all right, though. Edison offered him a job.

Chittick turned him down, instead taking a job in the golf club manufacturing business because it sounded more fun. It's a decision he still doesn't regret, even after watching people's shocked reactions every time he tells the story, which has to be more than 107 times by now.

"Golf companies were very popular then," he said matter-of-factly.

Several years ago, Chittick requested a copy of the test from the Thomas Edison Museum. He wanted to remember what the questions were like. They sent him a copy of his own test, with Edison's handwriting in the margins.

Now, he keeps no less than six copies in his office and can only read his handwriting with the help of a magnifying glass attached to a string hanging around his neck like a chain.

"It's not a fake," he said of the test. "And it's not without mistakes, of course."

Chittick went on to law school in Washington, D.C., and become a patent attorney, estimating that he has helped about 100 inventors obtain patents for anything from a simple quiet car spring, to a complex way for oil deliverymen to double the amount of fuel transported in a day.

It was important to him to be self-employed, after watching his father get laid off from work in the silk mills and struggle to make ends meet for the family.

"I wanted to be employable no matter what happened to me," Chittick said.

He thanks his uncle Farnum Yardley for the chances to attend Phillips, M.I.T. and law school.

"He had Andover connections," Chittick said. "He married into a rich family. ... I didn't know him well. I saw him when he gave me my tuition money."

Now, Yardley Chittick is the one with the connections.

His name is etched on Phillips' bell tower, according to Phillips' Annual Giving Associate Director Nancy Imbriano. And Chittick has led the alumni parade for two years, riding in a golf cart.

Imbriano visits him on his birthday every year, along with other Phillips staff.

"It is amazing the things he can remember, the dates and names. It's like he has a photographic memory," Imbriano said. "He has such great stories. He is a very funny man."

This weekend, four generations will gather at Cochran Chapel as Chittick is honored with a proclamation during the alumni celebration. There's his son, Charles Yardley Chittick Jr., who graduated from Phillips in 1945; his grandson Charles Sedgwick Chittick; and his great-granddaughter Catherine Chittick.

What's his secret to a long life?

That's one thing he's not so sure about.

Chittick has been married twice. He has tried to stay away from popping prescription pills for his aches and pains. He lifted weights and ran. He still drinks a screwdriver every night with his dinner, evidenced by the row of tiny vodka bottles on his table. He lived alone in his own home until he was almost 100, before moving into assisted living.

Maybe he's stayed around so long to show someone up.

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Bogart the "Greatest male star of all time." So is Chittick shooting for the title of oldest person ever?

"Old Bogie has been dead for a long time, and I'm still here," Chittick said with a chuckle. "Now I'm the main show."