100 Years and Counting

Last weekend I attended Alice O'Brien's 100th birthday party, an extraordinary event.  I suppose it's not so unusual now to reach the age of 100 but Alice is among the most remarkable older individuals I know.  She was born March 5, 1911 in Buffalo's First Ward.  I first met Alice when several years ago her neice, my good friend Mary Lou Woelfel, invited me to have dinner at her home with Alice and Alice's younger sister, Jean, who were visiting Albany from their home in Westchester County.  The sisters, both at that time women "of a certain age," were remarkable even then.  I loved their stories of growing up in Buffalo which was ethnically diverse and an industrial powerhouse at that time.  The two women pursued education and began a life of travel and interesting adventures, attending Columbia University for graduate degrees and living in Berlin after the Second World War.  Alice, a teacher in Westchester County schools even lived for a period of time in Kenya to learn about African culture to be better prepared for integration of the that school system.  When asked about her current interests she recently cited happy hour (a glass of white wine), reading the local newspaper every morning, and gathering with her new friends at the Daughters of Sarah Nursing Center for bingo and TV watching on the big screen.  She's also looking for a boyfriend, a woman after my own heart.  Among her secrets of longevity are Godiva truffles eaten daily.  As I said . . .

One of the things that struck me is Alice's memories of the 1918-19 flu epidemic.  She would have been about 7 years old. She recalls that every neighboring family was impacted including her own immediate family of nine children, her parents, and many relatives.  Her sister Margaret suffered the greatest and they feared she would die but she began to slowly rally and, after a prolonged period, recovered.  When one considers all the childhood diseases that individuals of that generation had to survive to make it through childhood:  measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, and on and on, you realize the power of public health advances and immunizations.  Alice had good genes but she also survived all those childhood diseases as well as the most major influzenza epidemic ever known. 

Way to go, Alice!  Continue to enjoy the chocolate and happy hour (although red wine is supposed to be better than white for increasing longevity--something to think about!)