Eleven years ago, Marrowstone Island resident Branan Ward had already published his book “Dimestore Explorer: Adventures of an Impetuous Geographer” at the age of 91.

This year, Ward and his live-in caregiver, Michael Kasten, got into a minor debate about Ward’s birthday, since one set of paperwork placed it at Feb. 27, while his birth certificate had Feb. 26.

Either way, Ward has since turned 102 years old this year, and far from slowing down, he’s brimming with so much energy that he can barely finish telling one story before starting another.

“I don’t know how you’re going to turn this into a coherent story,” Ward said. “There’s been almost no structure in how I’ve lived my life, even on a day-to-day basis.”

Ward has sadly outlived both his wives. He and his second wife, June, first fell in love with Marrowstone Island’s refractory sun dogs during the summer months decades ago, a literal world away from any number of places he’s lived or visited.

Ward, a former member of the Royal Geographical Society of London, has also held membership in the Explorers’ Club of New York and the Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles, traveling from the Arctic Circle and the Far East to the Caribbean Sea.

“A few years ago, they told me I was the oldest member of the Explorers’ Club, and offered me a flight in the plane that recreated the weightlessness of outer space,” Ward said. “I guess if you can wait it out long enough, anyone can get to be famous.”

Ward served in both the Merchant Marine and the U.S. Navy, the latter on board the submarine USS Haddock during World War II. He earned a Purple Heart for injuries sustained during shipboard combat, but he didn’t meet U.S. Navy admirals Richard Byrd, William Halsey Jr. and Chester Nimitz until after the war.

“Hitchhiking works a lot better when you’re in uniform,” said Ward, whose early travels took him to the San Francisco World’s Fair of 1939 and 1940.

Ward was perhaps most honored to meet Matthew Henson, the African American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over nearly 23 years, and reportedly became the first man to reach the geographic North Pole in 1909.

Ward considers Henson one of “the greatest Black Americans who ever lived,” and has spent his life rejecting the racism he was raised with in the South.

He’s made many of his own excursions north. In 1945, Ward traveled to Alaska in 1945, and in 1947, he went down the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories of Canada, the longest river in that country, which spills into the Arctic Ocean.

Ward later lived in Thule, Greenland, 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, before the U.S. Air Force built a base at that location.

Years before, during their move from Knoxville to Pigeon Forge within Tennessee, Ward and his family caught Orson Welles’ 1938 transmission of H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” on the radio.

The arc of Ward’s life took him through a career of more than three decades of teaching subjects as varied as anthropology, geography and electronics to high school and college students in Southern California, even as he booked quick trips to locales such as the North Pole during his time off.

“Oh, that was just a lark,” Ward said, in the same dismissive tone with which he downplayed the wartime injuries that earned him his Purple Heart. “It wasn’t a scientific expedition at all. I was still teaching, so I just went with the Los Angeles Explorers during my Easter vacation.”

Only 10 people made that flight to the North Pole in 1979.

Ward’s academic career turned out remarkably well, given the lack of encouragement he received as a high school student, when his pursuit of painting was actively discouraged by his principal, but Ward has long since had the last laugh.

Ward honed his skills at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and as a member of the Port Ludlow Art League, his paintings from photographs remain in demand within the community.

“I’ll do just about anything I can get away with, and I’m amazed at what I’ve gotten away with,” Ward said, describing his approach to painting and traveling alike. “I sometimes feel like I’m channeling a more talented painter. I just need to find out who it is.”

This might seem to run counter to Ward’s jovially offered secret to his longevity — “I stay out of married men’s lives,” he laughed — but he’s been enlightened enough to recognize his limitations, as when he traveled much of the world solo in his senior years, out of consideration to his wife June, since he admitted he’s not always pleasant company during his treks.

At the age of 77, Ward fulfilled a lifetime goal of visiting the Potala monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, and roughly 10 years ago, he took up Buddhism, meeting regularly with fellow practitioners in Port Townsend.

“I like that Buddhism is about study and practice,” said Ward, who also visited the Angkor Wat Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia. “I’m reading and learning all the time.”

Having once traveled from Singapore to Bangkok by train, when every travel agent instead advised him to take a plane, Ward appreciates the value of taking the long way around.