Enjoying life immensely at 109

 

Edith Renfrow Smith in 2022

   Happy birthday to you, Edith Renfrow Smith!
     While this column is not typically directed toward one specific individual, Ms. Smith, who turns 109 years old Friday, is no typical individual.
     Readers might recall her incredible story from two years ago, on her 107th birthday — she was the first Black graduate of Grinnell College. Class of ’37, who came to Chicago, where she became secretary to Oscar DePriest, Chicago’s first Black alderman. Future jazz great Herbie Hancock lived across the street, and taught her daughter to play “Chopsticks.”
     When Ms. Smith turned 108, we revisited, and were rewarded with sound advice (“This is a wonderful world and you need to take care of it”) and a jar of her homemade raspberry jelly. I figured, if turning 107 and 108 were noteworthy, how could 109 not be?
     Besides, I was curious: How’s she doing?
     “Oh, I’m just fine,” said Ms. Smith. “I’ve been doing fine.”
     I apologized for not visiting in person, as in previous years. But I had unwisely put off reaching out until July, and by then COVID had settled in for a prolonged stay. She understood completely.
     “You go keep that to yourself,” she said. “I don’t want it. I don’t need it.”
     What Ms. Smith did not mention — and this might be a clue to how one gets to be 109 — is that she herself already had COVID, last May.
     “She didn’t have COVID like everybody else,” said her daughter, Alice Frances Smith. “She was in the hospital for something else. They tested her, and the day she left, the doctor said, ‘You know she has COVID.’ And I said, ‘No, no one told me.’ My mother didn’t have a fever. She had nothing. That was her big excitement for the year.”

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