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DEL.ICIO.USThe 110-year secret? Be happy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
She grew up in a log cabin.
To get to school, she trudged through many a Michigan winter. School was one of those one-room wonders, a la “Little House on the Prairie.”
Jessie Ilene McArthur witnessed the advent of machinery and technology that most of us have never lived without, couldn’t fathom life without, and take for granted.
Electricity. Automobiles. Television.
“When she first saw electric lights, she said she thought it was a miracle,” said Deborah DiPaolo, a granddaughter who lives in Lawrenceville.
McArthur grew up on a farm in Dowling, Mich. She and her four siblings milked cows, fed chickens and did schoolwork by oil lamp.
And like many in her generation, she married young — 19. She met Lisle McArthur at a roller-skating rink. They wed in June 1915. The newlyweds rented a house for $8 a month in Hastings, Mich. Jessie McArthur became a homemaker. Her husband ran garages in Hastings and Hickory Corners.
“My grandfather was one of the first in town to own a model T,” DiPaolo told me while flipping through two albums of photos. “He was a mechanic.”
And a builder.
McArthur’s husband built their two-bedroom, one-bath house in Hickory Corners. He died on New Year’s Day in 1963. After his passing, she continued to stay in the home. She tended flowers, volunteered for community groups and kept up with the Detroit Tigers.
Then one day in 2000 she fell and broke her hip. She was 105, unable to fend for herself. DiPaolo decided to move her into an assisted-living facility, the same one that DiPaolo’s parents were in.
But Michigan was too far away.
DiPaolo wanted her grandmother and parents closer to home. Mom and Dad moved down first, followed by McArthur in 2003. She settled in Del Mar Gardens of Gwinnett in Lawrenceville.
On Aug. 9, the facility celebrated her 110th birthday. The party room was adorned with 110 pink balloons. McArthur wore pink, her favorite color. A band played. McArthur, wheelchair-bound for five years, had wanted to dance. DiPaolo twirled her hand.
“She was very aware it was her birthday, and that we were there,” said DiPaolo, a Delta flight attendant. “She knew all of us. She was very talkative and very animated.”
By Thanksgiving, McArthur’s disposition turned dour. She stopped eating and stayed in bed. Grandma, a doctor told DiPaolo, had a few days left.
McArthur died in her sleep on Dec. 14. She was 110.
According to Guinness World Records (www.guinnessworldrecords.com.), the oldest woman to have her age verified died Aug. 4, 1997, in southern France. Jeanne-Louise Calment lived 122 years and 164 days. She was born in France on Feb. 21, 1875. Now, an American holds the title as the oldest living woman. Elizabeth Bolden of Memphis turned 115 last August, according to Guinness.
McArthur — maiden name Matteson — was born Aug. 9, 1895. She outlived her siblings, one of her two children and one of her grandsons.
People want to know her secret. The University of Georgia sent researchers to interview her for a study on people who lived to see 100. She’s featured in a Michigan book about centenarians.
McArthur never drank and never smoked. She didn’t credit her longevity to a Puritan lifestyle, though. And she disappointed those looking for her to say something profound about her endurance. The key, she told those with inquiring minds, was to stay positive and happy.
“She’s been very well her whole life,” DiPaolo told me. “No cancer or anything like that. She always looked 10 or 20 years younger than she was. Her skin was real pretty.”
Lisle McArthur is buried on a family plot in Hastings. The tombstone already carries his wife’s name, but one thing will have to be changed. The headstone lists the year she died as “19—”.
She beat that century by several years.
Comments
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By Robert
January 5, 2006 05:12 AM | Link to this
Just a note, Guinness World Records gave the “world’s oldest person” title to Maria Capovilla, 116, of Ecuador on Dec. 9, 2005.
By N. Nelson
January 9, 2006 08:47 PM | Link to this
My great-great grandmother Virginia Simms lived to be 108. She died in the fall of 1989 when I was in my third trimester of pregnancy with my first child. Had she lived a few more weeks, she would have been a great-great-great grandmother. I was able to see her a few weeks before she died. I don’t know much about her (yet) other than that in her latter years she would move in with people, outlive them, and then move in with someone else. She and her late husband, my great-great grandfather, Rev. Holly Simms ran an underground negro newspaper in Kansas called The Negro Star. When she died, Jet Magazine published a short obituary. I am looking forward to getting to know more about her. My other great-great grandmother lived to be 96. We were very close. She was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. I always tell my husband that with a legacy of longevity like that if I’m going to live that long, I might as well be old AND healthy.