CEDAR FALLS - Darrell Grinnell's favorite card game is 500, but this year it might as well be Crazy Eights.

Grinnell will celebrate his 88th birthday Friday, on 8/8/08.

"We've never really celebrated my birthday before," he said. "We get each other cards and eat out sometimes, but nothing really grand or spectacular."

This birthday, however, really does call for a celebration. Darrell has undergone a series of three spinal surgeries in the past year.

"Other than that, my health's been pretty good," said the octogenarian, who still dabbles in woodworking. "I've had health problems, but I feel good."

He and his wife, Jean, who turned 88 in June, will mark the milestone with a gathering of family and friends. If they track down the whole family, the gathering will be a big one.

Jean and Darrell were both married once before - their spouses died - and, between them, have several children and grandchildren. On Darrell's side? You guessed it, eight great-grandchildren.

The man who has split loyalties between the Hawkeyes and the Panthers and enjoys reading postwar spy novels seems to have filled every spare moment of his 88 years.

Grinnell graduated from Dunkerton High School in 1938. He attended the University of Northern Iowa - then called Iowa State Teachers College - and received his master's degree from Drake University. He joined the service toward the end of the war and served three years in the Philippines and Japan as a special agent in the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps.

When he returned to the area in 1947, he started as a social studies and business teacher in Readlyn. He went on to become principal there, then principal and later superintendent in the Orange Community School District. When that district was later folded into the Waterloo Community School District, Grinnell served as a personnel manager there before becoming an associate superintendent.

Bill Blake, who worked in curriculum department of the Waterloo school system from 1978 to 1998, remembers Darrell well.

"He was a great sports fan, had a very good sense of humor, he seemed to be almost always upbeat," he said.

So many years later Darrell and Jean still seem upbeat as ever, retaining a sense of humor about life more often found in 9-year-olds than in those pushing 90.

"She's a Cyclones fan," he says with feigned irritation, "I have to put up with her."

The couple met at an Electric Park Ballroom dance in 1997 and married in 1998, when they were both 78 years old.

Darrell retired in 1983, but the couple have wisdom enough to know they shouldn't spend their golden years on a numbers hunt.

Before his surgery, Darrell spent some of his retirement woodworking in the Cedar Falls Lutheran Home and has built most of the furniture in the couple's home, piece by piece.

"It took me a long time 'cause I've never done this before," he laughs, "It probably took me all summer." He also helped a friend build a house in Waterloo.

Though the couple's time spent wintering in Florida has come to an end, they would like to take another trip soon, maybe to Alaska, Jean says.

"It's amusing." she says, reflecting on her and her husband's daily life. "We are both kind of getting hard of hearing, so we don't know if what we heard is what the other person actually said,"

They both laugh.

"It's kind of ridiculous is what it is," Grinnell says jokingly. "But we enjoy life together. We go to bed with a laugh and wake up with a laugh."

Contact Laura Grevas at (319) 291-1423 or laura.grevas@wcfcourier.com.