Anne Mulaney examines with her uncle Richard Schiefelbusch the pin the retired KU professor wore on his lapel Saturday at a reception in his honor for his 100th birthday.

As he surveyed the two rooms filled with well-wishers Saturday at the University of Kansas Adams Alumni Center, Richard Schiefelbusch said he wasn’t surprised by the turnout.

“When you live 100 years, you make a lot of friends,” he said.

With his great sense of humor and openness, Schiefelbusch, a distinguished professor emeritus in speech and language pathology, may have made more friends than other centenarians, said his granddaughter Maggie Fenton, who returned from her current home in Phoenix, Ariz., to attend the reception. Schiefelbusch’s daughter Jeanie Schiefelbusch and the KU Endacott Society, which consists of retired faculty and staff, hosted the reception.

“He is wonderfully funny and full of life,” Fenton said of her grandfather, whose 100th birthday was July 23. “Our thing when I was growing up was dancing; he would take me in his arms and swing me around the room. That and going to KU basketball games. He is a 75-year Jayhawk season ticket holder.”

Everyone who lives to 100 has experienced a lot in life, Fenton said, and her grandfather may have squeezed in more than his share.

“He has so much knowledge that he loves to share,” Fenton said. “We are so lucky he is willing to share his war experiences.”

Schiefelbusch was a navigator on a B-24 bomber during World War II, Fenton said. On one mission, his plane was shot down over the Baltic Sea. After parachuting out of the crippled bomber, Schiefelbusch was rescued by German fishermen and spent two years in the Stalag Luft III, a German prison camp in Poland.

“I was in Poland earlier this summer and tried to visit his camp, but I couldn’t get in,” Fenton said.

The KU ROTC program and KU Veterans Alumni Network honored Schiefelbusch for his service Saturday with the presentation of an American flag, a letter from fellow WWII veteran Bob Dole and a framed KU Veterans Challenge Coin.

Schiefelbusch returned to KU after the war, earning his master’s degree in 1947. He started teaching at KU that same year, and later earned his doctorate from Northwestern University. According to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, he established the KU speech and hearing clinic and helped develop the Intercampus Program in Communicative Disorders. He founded and directed the Institute of Life Span Studies, which now bears his name.