Polyanna Ellison White, who is 104 years old, talks about a few of the moments in history she has witnessed and her experiences while sitting in her apartment at The Kommons Assisted Living in Kankakee on December 13. Photo: Nicholas Holstein
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A recent Harvard study says centenarians make up a robust group, whose numbers have nearly doubled between 1990 and 2000. This story of Pollyanna Ellison White, 104 is the first in the "Century of Living" series that Daily Journal of Kankakee, Illinois, plans.
KANKAKEE, Illinois (The Daily Journal), December 15, 2007:
After spending a few critical days in the hospital recently, Pollyanna Ellison White, was joking and spinning yarns in her wheelchair, parked next to a cage of colorful finches and canaries in the foyer of Provena Our Lady of Victory.
She opted out of the facility's Christmas party taking place that afternoon -- despite a volunteer coaxing her with the promise of singing schoolchildren -- so she could go back to her room and watch "Judge Judy." And, she dissed the attire of the visiting Daily Journal reporter, complaining about the skirt she wore. "It's too long," she said. "I don't like real short skirts but I don't like them when they drag on the floor either."
That's OK. At 104 years old, Pollyanna has earned the right to say anything she wants.
Pollyanna was born Aug. 23, 1903 to sharecroppers, who scraped out an existence in Hollywood, Alabama.
One of 13 siblings, Pollyanna spent her young childhood "going to church on Sundays, picking cotton, hauling cotton and shucking corn," she said.
It was a hardscrabble existence to be sure. Living in a home without running water or electricity -- and for a time without an outhouse-- Pollyanna and her family "were not slaves," she said, but they never seemed to "get out of debt" to the owners of the land her daddy farmed.
"It was a good place to be born, but it was a good place to leave," she said of Hollywood.
Pollyanna is one of a growing number of centenarians in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people 100 years or older increased from 37,000 in 1990 to more than 50,000 in 2000. About 80 percent of them are women.
Shattering a misconception that older people are infirm, studies show centenarians are a robust group, even compared to people in their 60s and 70s. The New England Centenarian Study, conducted in conjunction with Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and released this year, found that 25 percent of the 169 study subjects were completely free of any significant cognitive disorders; 15 percent live independently in their own homes and most are uncommonly healthy until the end of their lives.
Good longevity genes, emotional resilience, self-sufficiency, good sense of humor and religious beliefs are traits these healthy 100-year-olds shared.
Pollyanna could have been one of the study subjects, so closely do the attributes align with her character and good health. At 104, she seldom needs to wear her glasses, her hearing is acute and her mind and memory are as firm as ever. Until the Monday after Thanksgiving, when flu-like symptoms put her in the hospital, she lived alone at Kankakee Kommons.
And don't go assuming that because she's old she's "crazy." Nothing makes her more crazy mad than that, she said, illustrating the point by grabbing the reporter's shirt collar in a tight-fisted grip. That's what she did to the last person who made that assumption. The next one who does so, will be "knocked down" with her good hand, she said.
It's this kind of tenacity mixed with humor that has blessed Pollyanna and brought her with courage and personal flair to this point in her life. In fact, about the only thing that makes her cry is the overwhelming gratitude she feels about the many blessings in her life.
Reflecting on them, a single tear creeps down her cheek. No matter that she's outlived her parents, 13 siblings and scores of friends, she's been blessed because, "God made me 104 years old.
"I don't know why everybody's dying," she said. "I'm just gettin' to livin'."
By Kristin Szremski
Copyright 2007 Daily-Journal Company
