5 centenarians celebrate 500 years of good living at group birthday party in Barberton
They lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the JFK assassination and 9/11 and are now enjoying their second century with friends and family.
A half millennium of experience.
"Some of these people have had friends since high school that they kept in touch with," said Ashley Lamp, activities director at Pleasant Pointe.
Friendships, marriages and family were a familiar theme in their discussions. Here's a snippet of some of their stories.
June said she and her two older sisters used to sneak off to Summit Lake before she was a teen for a swim.
"It was always condemned," she said. "It was not open to the public."
She served as a U.S. Navy WAVES 2nd class yeoman in World War II, stationed in Kansas.
"I was in the personnel office," she said.
She graduated from the University of Akron, finishing her degree in secretarial science, a four-year degree at the time.
She had two daughters and was married to her husband for 64 years.
June said she kept up with friends from her youth and Navy days.
"I just had one of my best friends from the Navy pass," she said. "… Guys from the Navy would visit; we were a good group."
Dolores said some of her earliest memories involve her father's Ford Model T car and trips from her home in Akron to see her grandmother.
"We always went to Massillon where my grandmother lived," she said. "She was upset if we didn't come to see her every two weeks."
Dolores said her first job at O'Neil's in downtown Akron was short-lived.
"It didn't work out too well," she said. "My sister said I was too slow."
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She is a lifelong member of St. Mary in Akron, and worked in the church to help needy families.
When television came along, she remembers going to a neighbor's house to watch TV before her family had one.
"(She) always had everything first in the neighborhood," Dolores said. "… We went to her house some evenings. We asked to see TV once in a while (and) we loved it."
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She said she couldn't choose an earliest memory, but noted how time changes a person's perspective.
"When we were little, every little thing amounted to something," she said. "Everything was big to us."
Like Dolores, Lucy's family had a Ford when she was young and she recalls long drives in the car.
Born in Cleveland, Lucy said her family wasn't wealthy when she was a child. She would help her mother can vegetables.
"I cut so many green beans," she said.
She was a good student, but her family didn't have the money for her to go to college. It was less common at the time for women to attend college for a degree, she said.
She was 20 when she married her husband of more than 50 years, and they had four children.
"I'm thinking about my husband all the time," she said.
She remembers World War II and Franklin D. Roosevelt as president.
"My dad cried when he died," she said. "I was in shock."
Early in life, she had health issues, she said, but grew out of those over the years.
She was a children's librarian at Twinsburg Public Library.
Margaret, like June, spent some of her youth at the local swimming hole, a small creek in West Virginia.
She married her first husband in West Virginia, but their marriage ended abruptly after a tragedy.
"He worked in a coal mine and died in a mine accident," she said.
She said he died when he got his foot stuck in a machine inside the mine. The coal company didn't provide much more than condolences, and reopened the mine the next day, she said.
She married her second husband in her mid-20s and had four childen.
Margaret attended business school, worked in a rubber factory and had four children.
Susan, the senior member of the centennial club at Pleasant Pointe, lived in Barberton and New Franklin all her life.
She went to business college and worked in an office.
During Thursday's party, she serenaded Barberton Mayor William Judge with a brief song and requested a smooch.
She also speaks Slovak, but sang in English.
During the celebration, Judge presented a city proclamation to each of the women, listing their many accomplishments.
"This is one of the greatest parts of the job," he told them.
The five women are part of a growing body of centenarians in the U.S., most of them women. The number is expected to triple from about 101,000 in 2024 to 422,000 in 2054.
"A lot of them (did not have) very easy lives," Lamp said. "It's incredible to see their personalities even though they've had such hard lives."
Leave a message for Alan Ashworth at 330-996-3859 or email him at aashworth@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @newsalanbeaconj or Facebook at www.facebook.com/alan.newsman.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: 5 centenarians celebrate in Barberton at group birthday party
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