Mich. woman marks her 108th birthday

[Sara_Paris 0]

Don't ask Mattie Caldwell how many candles go on her birthday cake. "I don't remember," she said. Medicare records indicate Caldwell's birth date is March 5, 1901. An old family Bible gives the same date but three years earlier, in 1898. And there's no legal record of her birth because she was born at home.

 

In any case, Caldwell is celebrating this week with friends and family at her home in Genesee County's Flint Township, about 55 miles northwest of Detroit.

 

"It's special," she said.

 

The great-great-great-grandmother to at least seven — she stopped counting a while ago — grew up on a farm in rural Mississippi and relatives say she never learned to read or write. She was the oldest of seven children, and the only one still alive.

 

"They didn't send us to school too much," Caldwell told The Flint Journal. "Father had us working in the fields."

 

She later moved to Gary, Ind., with her husband and had one daughter, both of whom are deceased.

 

Caldwell uses oxygen, and a hip injury in 2005 left the avid dancer using a wheelchair. She says she has one more dance left in her, but won't break it out yet.

 

"I don't know when the Lord will be ready for me, but when he gets ready, I've got to move," she said. "I'm going to dance for him, too."

 

I just think thats amazing

[ddillard 2]

That is truly amazing, I can only hope that I can make it that long.

[youbroughtheryouRiker 2]

I thought this was going to be about my mother.

 

 

I'm kidding, Mom! Love you!!

[trekz 7]

I knew a couple brother's bachelor farmer friends of my father who both lived to be 98. They were pretty active until the last year or two.

 

My father was also born at home. They couldn't locate his birth certificate and he always complained that Social security cheated him by a year. My cousin located it after his death in county records. The country doctor had recorded it, but not until 5 months afterword when he had time to get into the county seat and file it!

[Voyager recruit 0]

She sounds like a sweet lady. The people of her generation could teach our 'modern society' a thing or two about life, no doubt. Though when she passed she was only in her early eighties, my grandmother was one of the nicest, kindest, and most upright, decent people I have known...and raised a wonderful daughter-who was in truth my best friend in this world...