We have long admired and adored Iris Apfel. At age 97, she signed a modeling contract with the world- wide agency IMG. Seventy years ago, Iris and her husband launched Old World Weavers. The firm specialized in textiles from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Traveling the world for their business, she began collecting non-Western artisanal clothing and jewelry. This past summer this extraordinary woman turned 100. She is still fun, still glamorous and still making news.
Her recent birthday got us thinking about who else might be living it up at 100. As we continue our journey growing up (notice we did not say older), there are days when we feel aches and pains and maybe a bit “down in the mouth.” What better way to boost our spirits than to meet those who have successfully crossed the centenarian mark.
Here are a few of the notables:
Ruthie Thompson is a supercentenarian at age 110. She was a longtime Disney animation supervisor, having been hired by Walt Disney at the age of 18. She is the oldest resident at the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s Country House and Hospital.
Never one to do nothing, she is leading a campaign to raise funds to support a postproduction suite at the Woodland Hills campus’ in-house television and video facility. She and her fellow retirees still spend countless hours pursuing their industry craft.
Lily Renee, age 100, according to Wikipedia, is an “Austrian-born American artist best known as one of the earliest women in the comic-book industry, beginning in the 1940s period known as the Golden Age of Comics.” She escaped the Nazis in Vienna and moved to New York where she found work as a penciller and inker at the comic books publisher Fiction House. She focused her illustrations and comic features on women as heroes, unheard of in the day.
Phyliss Latour “Pippa”Doyle, age 100, born in South Africa, was an agent of the United Kingdom’s clandestine Special Operations Executive during World War II. She secretly relayed 135 messages to the British military using her knitting to carry the coded messages. She was awarded France’s highest honor, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 2014.
Virginia Oliver, age 101, was recently featured on WCVB-TV in Boston. She is still an active lobsterwoman, out in her boat pulling traps three or four times a week. She says she has done it all her life and is going to keep doing it as long as she can.
Evelyn Witkin, age 100, is an American geneticist who was awarded the National Medal of Science for Biological Sciences in 2003 for her work on DNA mutagenesis and DNA repair. She is a professor emerita at Rutgers University. She proved that women could be leaders in scientific research as early as the 1940s. There is a laboratory named in her honor at the university.
What are the take away lessons from this limited sampling? The overarching characteristic is confidence in their abilities, a thirst for knowledge and a passionate dedication to their work. These women were pioneers in their fields over fifty to seventy-five years ago. Not only were they working women in an era of limited opportunities, and for many lacking a university degree, but they chose professions demanding a place at the table in what we know was primarily a “man’s world.”
Our generation has been part of the one of the greatest revolutions in cultural and social change in the world so. If we learn nothing else from these remarkable women, we must take away that we are never too old to take the first step. Maybe that glass of red wine or that piece of dark chocolate helps too. These women made us feel better about “growing up”. Let’s get out there and greet the day and forget about the aches and pains. Let’s continue to be engaged and be open to new possibilities.
Ciao,
Lucy and Claudia