Lucile Weaver, 105: Family matriarch

Only 1 in seven people lives to be 100 years old.

Lucile Weaver, of Atlanta, beat the odds by five years.

The only other people in her family that lived to, and beyond, the century mark were her paternal grandmother and her great-grandmother. She outlived two sisters and two brothers. And she outlived John A. Weaver, her husband of 68 years. He died in 1992.

Whenever a relative, neighbor or friend died, Mrs. Weaver responded with what became a common refrain: "I'm next."

Her granddaughter, Jacqueline Preston, of Atlanta, would admonish her for saying such a thing.

"I told her that I might go before she did," Ms. Preston said. "Her health was good right up till she turned 103."

Then, the Atlanta resident started having digestive problems. In 2008, doctors removed part of her colon. Recently, Mrs. Weaver had started sleeping more and more. Relatives suspected her time was near.

On Wednesday, Lucile Weaver, died at her home. She was 105. The funeral will be 11 a.m. Tuesday at First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta. Herschel Thornton Mortuary is in charge of services.

Mrs. Weaver was a country girl, born in Greene County. She went as far as the fifth grade in school. After she married, she and her husband moved to Clarke County. In 1942, the couple moved to Atlanta and settled in the Fourth Ward.

Here, she and her husband worked at the Lockheed plant during World War II. Most of her other jobs were domestic related, housecleaning and such.

When she was a child, Ms. Preston came to live with her grandmother in Atlanta. She recalls a "feisty woman" who took nothing from nobody. When Mrs. Weaver's husband would discipline the children, she often intervened.

"She'd step in and say ‘that's enough,' " Ms. Preston said. "Then, she'd get in the middle of the whipping and make sure he stopped. She was a protector and would stand up to anybody if she thought someone did her children wrong."

Mrs. Weaver lived in the Adamsville community, in a house located off Delmar Lane and Stafford Drive. She used to go for walks in the neighborhood, but relatives put a stop to it two years ago.

"It was tough to go up and down that hill," said her daughter, Katie Martin of  Columbus. "We couldn't even do it. Plus, we were worried that she might wander off or get disoriented and not know where she was."

Before Mrs. Weaver turned 103, high-blood pressure medicine was the only medication she took. In a nod to her rural upbringing, she also ingested a concoction of her own to combat the disease: a mixture of vinegar and garlic.

Ms. Preston, her granddaughter, said no one could honestly say anything bad about Mrs. Weaver.

"She had a mouth on her -- she got that from her daddy," she said. "But she never did anybody wrong. She was a strong-willed black woman."

Additional survivors include three other daughters, Beatrice Woods and Thelma Henderson, both of Pontiac, Mich.; and Agnes Garrison of Adrian, Mich.; 20 grandchildren; 49 great-grandchildren; 57 great-great grandchildren; and four great-great-great grandchildren.