102-year-old's life is not the same old story

Marie H. invited me to her 102nd birthday party this month. It was in her own home, where she lives by herself.
Please picture that home in Youngstown. It is small and neatly painted a cheerful yellow. The yard has been recently mowed and the bushes trimmed.
Dozens of dusted statues, figures and dishes Mrs. H. made when she took a ceramics class for seniors are positioned in the crowded living and dining rooms.
You'll find similarly well-kept pictures of her four children (a striking young man in uniform, who was killed in World War II and three lovely daughters, also all deceased), handsome grandsons and beautiful great-grandchildren.
There is a television in the corner, which is off, because Mrs. H. doesn't care for watching. Instead, she sits and thinks, or keeps her home tidy (with the occasional help of her grandson Jerome Straughter, who lives in Pittsburgh). Or, as on this day, she barbecues, and climbs the basement steps to get canned peas from her pantry. The latter task will bring a scolding from HM Home Care, which visits once a day to treat an ulcer on Mrs. H.'s left leg.
Also in her living room is an antique piano, purchased for Jerome when he was a boy living with his mother in Mrs. H.'s home. "He don't look at the piano now," she said of Jerome, who is in his 50s. "His mama worked hard for that. ... He's a good boy. He visited me every night when he was in town. Cleaned the floor, did the laundry."
Life's memories
Mrs. H. remembers well and cries little. When asked what the best thing about her life has been, she hesitates, then says it was her children and grandchildren.
When asked if she had a happy life, Mrs. H. looked at me thoughtfully through her glasses. (Her black face, even after 102 years, is without wrinkles.) She smiled slightly and said, "So far, so good."
Marie was born in Dinwiddie, Va., June 8, 1901."I had three sisters. They all passed now," she said.
"I stayed home; I worked hard. ... Colored people did the housework. We worked in the field, raising corn, cotton, peanuts. Came up the hard way."
At 15, she started working as a domestic servant. It wasn't until she married that she occasionally did field work. "When my husband went in the fields, I helped him. I didn't like that," she recalled.
They moved north when her first husband found work in a Youngstown steel mill; then Marie's focus became caring for her house and family.
That husband was killed in a hunting accident. "He liked to hunt groundhogs. ... He said you laid down in the bushes and shook 'em and a groundhog would come over. ... Somebody shot him -- thought HE was a groundhog!" she said, then laughed heartily. "So, anyway, that's the way he got killed."
Mrs. H.'s second marriage was to a "church man." She has spent the past "40 or 50 years" in her little yellow home, and, God willing, she will die there.
Highs and lows
I visited Marie a few days before her birthday. That day, with HM Home Care nurses Joe Jones and Janice Bricillo nearby, we spoke for the first time. The only time she cried (a small, angry line of tears down her right cheek) was in recalling the few weeks she was made to spend in a nursing home away from her home.
I returned a second time with a tape recorder. I also brought my questions typed on slips of paper because Mrs. H. is hard of hearing. I handed her the questions one by one and read them aloud. She put up with me for a good, long time. Even so, she often apologized for "talking too much," then laughed, and went on at my urging.
At the end of our conversation, I had a good idea of how one lives to be 102. Mrs. H. took the highs and lows of her life with equal grace.
To read a portion of our interview, please check out Thursday's column.
murphy@vindy.com