A September 12, 2010 article in the Los Angeles Times profiles the remarkable Richard J. Bing, a 100-year-old retired California physician and classical music composer who escaped Hitler and knew Lindbergh. An excerpt from the piece by Steve Lopez is followed by a short film about Bing that premiered at Sundance this year. (Thanks to Newmark’s Door.)

“He said he’d retired at 93, as if that were normal. He said that he’d written hundreds of classical music compositions before medical school, that he slipped ‘out the back door’ to Switzerland when Hitler moved into power in Germany and that Charles Lindbergh had persuaded him to move to the U.S. in the 1930s to do heart-related research that might help Lindbergh’s ailing sister.

I Googled Bing’s name and it was all true. I had a Renaissance man on the line, his breathing labored but his mind sharp.

‘You should take a look at my video on YouTube,’ Dr. Bing suggested, and so I did, enjoying a short documentary on an amazing life that included a stint as education director at Huntington Hospital (Bing is still technically on the faculty at Caltech).

Twice last week, I went to Bing’s home, where he lives with a caretaker who comes running when Bing rings a call bell that plays the start of Beethoven’s Fifth. Bing, who made great contributions in heart research, has a failing heart, of all things, as well as skin cancer.

Bing said he’s grown mellower and more tolerant with age, which makes you wonder how he handled utility companies at 70 and 90. He said he most values his extended family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. By day, he sits in an easy chair surrounded by great books and photos of loved ones, and he powers up his computer to write for medical journals.

‘Life, it’s in you,’ said Bing as his cat, Louis, climbed on top of the piano to catch the warm light coming through from the garden. ‘It’s a composite of all your organ systems telling you you won’t die,’ even as hard evidence to the contrary gathers darkly.

In one of the more poignant moments of the documentary, Bing says: ‘The time goes like a river with great speed, and all of a sudden you find yourself 100 years old. It seems to me that only a few years ago I was middle-aged, and only a few years ago was a child.'”