Bob Evans, a World War II vet who was treated with the then-experimental drug penicillin decades ago, sat down to a special game of bingo with friends and family Dec. 17.

It’s a game he has spent much of his time on lately, playing up to three times a week at the senior living community of Brookdale Montclair in Poulsbo. He also has been on 12 bingo cruises, residency staff said.

However, this particular game, coined “Bob Bingo,” had its 5×5 grid of blocks filled with a century’s worth of accomplishments and character traits that make up the game’s namesake. It was a pack of cards depicting the now 100-year life of Evans as of Dec. 18, who, among his lifetime of accomplishments, served in the US Navy in the latter parts of World War II as an electrician petty officer 2nd class of the Sea Owl submarine.

“I think about the example he set for me and how to live life,” grandson Jeffrey Corey said in a birthday toast. “What an example you’ve set for us.”

Born in Tacoma, Evans graduated from high school in the early 1940s and worked for the Western Electric company doing military installation work. He had a draft deferment as a result but ended up enlisting and was sent to an electrician school in Ames, Iowa. He suffered an injury while playing soccer, and his recovery time in the Great Lakes region prompted him to volunteer for submarine duty to give him extra time to study for exams.

That led him to completing submarine school and serving on the Sea Owl, a submarine that departed from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for three patrols. “The end of the third patrol, they dropped the bomb in Nagasaki, and that ended it,” Evans said of the second war. He remembers his time on the water as one consisting of much military training, but a lot of luck thrown in as well. “We had to go into shallow water where we couldn’t dive,” he recounted on one particular part of a patrol. “We had to go in, and we were lucky that nobody bombed us.”

A particularly interesting piece of his history was one of his more painful experiences. He injured his knee, a “black knee” as he referred to it, and was treated in a revolutionary way. “I was maybe in the second week in the hospital. This other doctor showed up, and he took a look at the paperwork on it. He treated it with a new experimental drug,” he said.

That drug turned out to be penicillin, considered a contributing factor to America’s successes in the war and medicinal advancements.

The core memories stick out, but the overall history of his time in the war and the early parts of life do not come easily to Evans. He relies on subtle reminders from a written publication in 2005 and help from relatives. However, it was evident that when he was interested in a particular piece of his life, his words would come together much smoother.

One such topic is Susan Corey, one of his daughters who continues to play an instrumental role in his life in Poulsbo. “Susan got involved, and she takes care of me. She handles my finances, and she gets everything that I need,” he said.

Corey responded: “I would do anything for my dad. I mean, he was a great dad and did so much for us. He would work weekends in Westport so we could have extra things.”

Corey said it surprises her to still have her dad, even though long life appears to be in his blood. “Both of his parents lived to be 96, and when he got in his mid-90s, I kept going, ‘You’re going to make it to 100. I know it,’” she said.