Henrietta, 105 Years Old and Proud of It

I met a 105-year-old lady who is just as beautiful and spry as someone at least thirty years her junior. Her name is Henrietta and she is ambulatory, reads without glasses, and is mentally sharp. She says she “road horses, chased cows, and was never short on interested men.”

“You’re pretty,” I declared during a recent concert I did for her and her co-residents at Medicalodges in Eudora after she challenged the audience with the question, “Who is the oldest one here?”

“I wasn’t pretty, but I was good,” she kidded. “I had a good life.”

After the concert was over, she told bits and pieces about her wonderful life, particularly how she used to visit the Poor Farms every week and take presents to the people who lived there. Poor farms are defined as “county or town-run residences where paupers (mainly elderly and disabled people) were supported at public expense.” This was back before the Social Security Act took effect in 1935 (Source: Wikipedia).

We’ve come a long way.