HAPPY 101th BIRTHDAY!

Hattie Rogers Broadus is 101 years old today! This picture was taken in 2002.

My grandmother Winnie Chatman Mizell, who died in 1982 at age 76, was her first cousin and friend. When MawMaw Winnie was in a nursing home in Gulfport, Hattie, who was older than she, would ride her bike to visit.

When my parents moved to Gulfport after their marriage, Hattie helped them move many times from apartment to apartment, as they didn't have a car. After Daddy died in 1992, Hattie welcomed me into her home where I stayed as we took care of getting Daddy's house ready to sell. Staying there made me feel "mothered" or "grandmothered" again. She's an amazingly strong Christian woman with an admirably positive attitude in life.

This is the story she told me about when she had smallpox as a young adult:

“Tell me again your job at the Edgewater Gulf Hotel,” I asked, hoping to put together more pieces of the life of my extraordinary cousin, Hattie Broadus. She was my grandmother’s first cousin and, since my grandmother died over twenty years ago, my adopted grandmother. At 100 years old, she still stands tall at almost six feet although she now uses a tri-wheel walker for balance.

“In the 1930s, I was a cashier at the Edgewater Gulf Hotel on the beach in Biloxi. I was already dating Maxie, who was away at college in Texas.” Hattie continued the story for my sake. Without my prodding, she would have preferred asking me about my family and my life or playing a game of gin rummy.

I remembered the huge white structure with the sprawling green lawn and said, “How I wish they hadn’t torn down the Edgewater!”

In sharp detail, Hattie continued the story, “Employees were allowed to live in the hotel during tourist season. One day at work, I suddenly developed a raging fever. The doctor at the hotel told me to go home, so I drove myself the forty miles to the country town of Perkinston. As I drove, I got sicker and sicker, but finally reached the small doctor’s office. I forced myself to get out of the car and enter. The nurse looked at me and quickly left the room. I heard her whispering to the doctor.”

Hattie leaned back in her mahogany rocker and said, “When she returned, nurse stammered, ‘get back in your car and wait for Dr. James.’ Dr. James quickly came out to the car, took one look at me, and said, ‘Hattie, you have smallpox. Go home!"

“What happened then?” I was stunned. I could remember my grandmother complaining that, because Hattie had never been sick in her life, she had no sympathy for those who suffered. (Of course, my grandmother could never get all the sympathy she wanted from anyone!)

“I went to my parents’ home and shut myself in my room. I wouldn’t let Mama come in, so she left my food at the door. Sixty or seventy people saw me before I was diagnosed, but all were vaccinated and did not get sick. My hands swelled to twice their size, and I worried about scarring. People came to my window to see me.” Hattie chuckled and said, “I worried that Maxie’s sisters would write and tell him that I was scarred, but, when it was over, I was surprised to see that I didn’t have any scars. Maxie and I were married about two years later.”

I wondered if surviving smallpox had made her strong or if she survived smallpox because of her strength. Either way, Hattie Broadus is one tough lady.

P.S. I had written this post in February 18, 2008--Hattie's 101th birthday. On April 15, 2009, Hattie went to be with Jesus. About a week before, Ralph and I visited with her. She had been asking her minister why she was still here. She held my hand and said these most precious words to me: "I'm so glad we still love each other."