As featured originally in May 1978 and reprinted in January 1998
A Youthful Centenarian
Cynthia Fitzpatrick, 113 Years Old
By Valerie Elverton Dixon
What will I tell my children who are black, what will I tell my dear ones, fruit of my womb? I was very excited about the prospect of meeting and talking with the oldest living woman in the United States. What stories she must have to tell, what light she could put on a past that often hides itself in the dark. I had visions of an African village; of an old wisened “griot relating the story of a people’s past, a walking record, a testimony to a heritage.”
Cynthia Fitzpatrick, who was 113 years old last December had seen first-hand what life for black people in this country had been. She had seen it for more than a century of time. In many ways a century of time is nothing, only an instant in the eons of pulsating energy, of dialectical forces pulling and tugging, expanding and contracing to make the universe, whose movement makes time. But for a human being to live on this earth for more than a century is rare. For a black person in America to survive that long is nothing short of a wonder, a miracle. So many black men die here, struggling to be real men. So many black women die from the work and the heartache that comes from the struggle. They die watching fathers, husbands, and sons offer up their lives as sacrifice to unseen rulers, and from watching the cycle continue through their daughters.
Having lived for more than 1OO years, I knew that Cynthia Fitzpatrick’s memory must be filled with personal stories that illustrate historical events. She had witnessed the struggle. Reading history was one thing, but sitting and talking with a woman who had lived it would be quite another.
How would her remembrances of life as a sharecropper go with the historical and sociological accounts? Would she put the emphasis in the same places, underline the same points? What were the real lives of people like?
I had been thinking off and on for days about the kinds of questions I would ask Cynthia Fitzpatrick. It was a cold, rainy April day when I went to talk to her. It was the sort of day that made you feel cheated out of spring. Only the hope of warm spring days made the winter bearable. Spring with its new life pushing through a soft, pliable earth would be our final reward. But it was April and spring, like a shy little girl, simply peeking in from time to time, not coming in boldly. It seemed our reward would be forever postponed.
But entering Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s granddaughter’s home took the chill off the day. The smell of fried chicken gave the house a warm and homey atmosphere. I felt welcome as if I were in the home of my own grandmother or my favorite great aunt. Mrs. Fitzpatrick was in her bedroom. She didn’t feel too well that day because the cold, damp weather made her arthritis act up and it just generally made her feel bad. Later that afternoon she would tell me that she was just like a tadpole.
“When the sun is shining, I’m out on the log, but when the weather gets bad, shush, I go back under.” Despite the bad weather, she kept her good humor. Mrs. Fitzpatrick is a short, dark woman who looks younger than her 113 years. She moved about the house slowly, but she still moved on her own. She did not quiver or give any impression of feebleness. She showed me a steady strength that somehow said there was something more than physical endurance that had kept this woman living longer than any other woman in this country.
After our initial greeting and smiles, I started to ask my questions about the past. She was polite, but curt. She told me the usual things that old folks say about not having telephones, televisions, and modern conveniences. She admitted that life was harder, but she would not elaborate. I asked her about life as a sharecropper in Mississippi. Again, she didn’t have too much to say.
“Did you live in the country?” I asked.
“Yes, we lived in the country,” she responded.
“Well, how did you like the country? Was it better than living in the city?”
“I had to like it then.” Enough said.
She told me she was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi, but was raised in Tallula, Mississippi. She said that she hadn’t lived in the country since she was grown. As a young woman, she lived in Helena, Arkansas, with her husband and three children, Elizabeth, Manuel, and John. One of her sons died as a child and she lost the second when he was only in his twenties. But her daughter still lives in Florida. In the winter, Mrs. Fitzpatrick spends anywhere from a few weeks to two or three months in Florida. She perked up when she started talking about the present. A spark seemed to radiate from her like the light reflected by a precious stone. Life today is what interested her and it was obviously what she preferred to talk about. When we talked about the past, she did not seem excited; she did not give off that spark.
She talked about the garden she still keeps when she is in Florida and about her fishing trips that she enjoys. But this winter was different from the other winters she usually spends in Florida. This winter, for the first time in her 113 years, she flew on an airplane. She swings her body with the spice and sass of a teenager when she talks about her new experiences.
The producers of the American Broadcasting Company’s “Good Morning America” television program had heard about Mrs. Fitzpatrick. They wanted her to appear on the program. At first she did not want to go because she didn’t want to fly to New York from Florida.
“But I studied over it and I prayed over it and I decided that if that’s what the Lord wanted for me to do, that I would do it,” she said. A devout Seventh Day Adventist, Mrs. Fitzpatrick has a strong faith in God. She says she came to know what being a Christian meant at an early age and she says she learned from her mother’s example.
“A mother is everything to a child,” she said. Mrs. Fitzpatrick told me about the day when she was a little girl, and had gone to the well to fetch water. When she came back, the women taking care of her sick mother told her and her father to go to her mother’s bedside because her mother was dying. She said her mother looked around the room, asked her father and the other women to take care of her children. Her mother then died, bravely and peacefully. She said it was her mother’s faith in God that gave her grace at the end of her life.“Iwanted a religion that would do that for me,” she said. She has been close to God every since.
So she called on that same God to give her courage to travel by airplane and made up her mind to do it.
She remembers that she was treated like a queen on the airplane. “I was sitting in the airport and I saw a man pushing a wheelchair, so I started looking around to see who was sick enough to need a wheelchair. And he was bringing it for me.
“It probably was a good thing that he brought the wheelchair . . . I could have walked on the plane, but I just would have been slow,” she continued.
“When we got to the foot of the stairs that led to the plane, I was about to get up and walk on the plane, but do you know that about six white men came and carried me up those stairs, wheelchair and all.”
She laughed at that and told how the pilot announced her presence on the airplane and when he told her age “You couldn’t hear your ears for the clapping,” she said. When the plane landed, the flight crew asked her to wait and she shook every person’s hand on board the plane.
These are the stories Mrs. Fitzpatrick loves to tell, stories of the here and now, not of hard times some 100 years ago.
In the past two years she said, she has traveled all over. She had been on television, both in Rochester and nationally. She has never seen herself on television, because her eyesight is poor and her granddaughter has a black-and-white television that is hard for her to watch. But she is a woman busy enjoying her new experiences.
She has been honored here as an elder. And she has talked to a doctor at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. They want to know the secret of her longevity. A room is dedicated to her honor at the Triangle Community Center. She has the key to Rochester, New York, presented to her by Mayor Thomas Ryan, and she has a telegram from the Governor telling why he was unable to attend her birthday celebration.
Tina Clark and Lynn Underwood of the George Eastman House are writing a book about Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s life. They visit her often and she says that she enjoys her talks with them. People young and old, black and white love her. A little white boy who lives in Gates calls her his grandmother and nobody can dispute his word. His father is principal of Gates-Chili High School (a suburban district), and that school has given her an honorary diploma. She visits with the family often.
What does all this attention and all the notoriety mean for Mrs. Fitzpatrick? She says it’s a good thing for the example that it sets for young people. Mrs. Fitzpatrick is intensly concerned with young people and the way they are being taught today.
“It’s a good thing for young people to see how I get treated so they will have more respect,” she says. It hurts Mrs. Fitzpatrick to see and hear young people cursing on the streets, and she says that much of that probably comes about because adults aren’t careful about the kind of language they use around young people.
“I never used those bad words around any of my children,” she said empathically with an energy that belied her age. “You can ask that girl over there, I never used those words.” She referred to her granddaughter, Mrs. Fannie Davis. She lives with Mrs. Davis when she is in Rochester.
But Mrs. Fitzpatrick says that even if a parent does try to raise their children to have respect for themselves and for their elders, they still have to play with children whose parents may not be teaching their children with the same care. So parents today have a difficult job and the oldest mother in the United States knows that and it concerns her. She remembers a time when every adult in the community worked to raise children.
“When I was coming along, if a grown person saw me act up, he’d tell me to go tell my mother how I was acting. If I didn’t tell her, I’d get a whipping twice ’cause my mother would find out and I’d get it for what I did and get it again for not telling her,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said.
She said that society is too easygoing today, that we think nothing of it when a girl turns up pregnant with no husband. She remembers a time when any good girl would not be allowed to talk to a girl who got pregnant. Peer group pressure worked to keep young people in line, not to encourage them to step out of line.
I asked her if she didn’t think that young people should be free to do the things they wanted to do.
“When I was coming along, you wasn’t free until you were 21.” If Mrs. Fitzpatrick talks at all about the past, she is telling about how some old values have slipped away, and how children are being cheated in the process. There is no talk of history gone forever, that no one can change.
“People always want to ask me about the good old days,” she said. “But I don’t like to tell them about that. Why should I? What good will it do them?” she asked.
“Well, what would you like to tell people?” I asked.“I’d tell them who loves them. That God loves them and to treat everybody right.”
People always ask her what makes her live so long. It could be any number of things. It could be her diet that consists mainly of vegetables with lean beef, chicken, or fish occasionally. It may be her love for the outdoors, fresh air, and sunshine. It most likely is her faith and her love for people, especially for the new generation, the people in whose hands future history lies.
I often wonder what I will tell my children. I wonder what kind of world they will live in, what kind of gadgets they will have that will make life easier, what kinds of vehicles will transport them from place to place.
I cannot even imagine it, just as Mrs. Fitzpatrick probably never imagined herself riding a jet airliner when she was in her twenties during the late 18OOs. I wonder what instruction, what knowledge I can give them to help them cope with a world that is becoming more and more complex every single day.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick told me one thing that I remember. “Speak to your children gently so they know you love them and they will love you.”
I went on a cold April day looking for some insight into a long gone past, but I came away with a gift a thousand times more precious.
I had been given a string of truth pearls, wrapped in the timeless cloth of truth and wisdom. I got a gift that would help me face the future, not fret over the past. I got more from Mrs. Fitzpatrick, who in many ways is like a mother to us all, than I ever had expected.
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