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‘Old but not cold’: Four very longtime friends anticipate turning 100 this year
In print, in the newspaper on Wednesday, March 15: "4 Friends, 99 and Counting."
"As they near the century mark, women who grew up together in Washington reflect on the years and the changes that followed."
‘Old but not cold’: Four very longtime friends anticipate turning 100 this year
From left, Ruth Hammett, Gladys Butler, Bernice Underwood and Leona Barnes, who will all turn 100 this year, at the Zion Baptist Church. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)
By Tara Bahrampour March 14
@TaraBahrampour
Leona Barnes doesn’t remember when, back around the close of World War I, she met Gladys Butler, Ruth Hammett and Bernice Underwood. Growing up in Southwest Washington, they were part of the landscape, in the same way that her house and her street and her church were.
As little girls, the four played jacks and jumped rope; later they shared gossip and danced the two-step and the Charleston. Two of them lived in the same house at one point, and three of them had babies the same year — 1933. But they could not have predicted that someday they would be poised to celebrate their 100th birthdays together.
“We all are grateful, and we thank the Lord for all of us to see 99,” Barnes said as she sat this week in Zion Baptist Church in Northwest Washington with the other three, who are members there. Slapping her thigh for emphasis, she said, “If we don’t make 100, it’s up to Him — but we made the 99.”
....
“It came so fast, I didn’t realize it,” Underwood said. ... Making it to the triple digits together is one of many things the four friends never foresaw. When they were girls, the District had separate movie theaters for black and white patrons and separate schools for black and white students. As kids, they didn’t think much about it. ... They accepted that a black girl couldn’t try on clothes or hats at the department store; she had to take a gamble that the items she bought would fit or that she would find someone in the neighborhood willing to buy them off her.
From left, Ruth Hammett, Gladys Butler, Bernice Underwood and Leona Barnes, who will all turn 100 this year, at the Zion Baptist Church. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)
By Tara Bahrampour March 14
@TaraBahrampour
Leona Barnes doesn’t remember when, back around the close of World War I, she met Gladys Butler, Ruth Hammett and Bernice Underwood. Growing up in Southwest Washington, they were part of the landscape, in the same way that her house and her street and her church were.
As little girls, the four played jacks and jumped rope; later they shared gossip and danced the two-step and the Charleston. Two of them lived in the same house at one point, and three of them had babies the same year — 1933. But they could not have predicted that someday they would be poised to celebrate their 100th birthdays together.
“We all are grateful, and we thank the Lord for all of us to see 99,” Barnes said as she sat this week in Zion Baptist Church in Northwest Washington with the other three, who are members there. Slapping her thigh for emphasis, she said, “If we don’t make 100, it’s up to Him — but we made the 99.”
....
“It came so fast, I didn’t realize it,” Underwood said. ... Making it to the triple digits together is one of many things the four friends never foresaw. When they were girls, the District had separate movie theaters for black and white patrons and separate schools for black and white students. As kids, they didn’t think much about it. ... They accepted that a black girl couldn’t try on clothes or hats at the department store; she had to take a gamble that the items she bought would fit or that she would find someone in the neighborhood willing to buy them off her.
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