A CENTURY OF SUNRISES
Eleven residents at Clarewood House, including WWII vets and retired teachers, celebrate turning 100 or older in 2018
A combined thousand years of life were celebrated last week at Clarewood House Senior Community in southwest Houston where 11 residents will turn 100 or older this year.
Centenarians, as the triple-digit set are called, have survived everything from the Great Depression to Hurricane Harvey.
“I grew up in the Dust Bowl and in the drought and ended up in the flood. I’ve come full circle,” said Laura “Wini” Robertson, 100, a retired teacher who was born in Texas and spent part of her upbringing as a “farm girl” in Oklahoma. She moved to Clarewood last year after her longtime Meyerland-area home was overtaken by water during Harvey.
Clarewood House — long known for its bounty of centenarians (they had six in 2010) — is believed to have the most people 100 and older living at one address in Houston.
Resident lore determined that there’s something on the door knobs at the United Methodist home, said Executive Director Patrick Pheifer.
“I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but keep doing it, because it’s working. It’s wonderful. Don’t change a thing,” he told the honorees at Monday’s group birthday party.
The nation’s number of centenarians is expected to rise sharply over the next few decades because of the size of the baby boom generation born between roughly
1945 and 1960, said Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston Medical Center. The study has been an ongoing project since 1996.
“Even in 1990, about 1 per 10,000 in the population was a centenarian, and now it’s 1 per 5,000. It’s doubled,” Perls said. “That’s still a rare number. We’ve gone from about 30,000 individuals in the United States to about 60,000 individuals who are centenarians.
“I’m not saying that we’ll continue to see such a dramatic growth in the proportion of the population, but because of the absolute number, we’ll see more and more.”
A new report released by the U.S. Census Bureau in March projects that the “graying of America” and longevity will reach a new milestone by 2035: For the first time, there will be more senior adults in the nation — people 65 and older — than children. Over the next four decades, from 2016 to 2060, the number of centenarians in the U.S. is expected to increase sixfold, the report said. For instance, in 2016, there were 66,000 female centenarians and 16,000 male centenarians. By 2060, the projection is 422,000 female centenariansand 168,000 male centenarians, which will represent a larger percentage of the population and a higher ratio of surviving men. Clarewood’s 100 club
The same is true at Clarewood House, where eight centenarians are female and just three are male. They include a World War II veteran and retired teachers as well as women whose efforts supported their families and businesses. Lifelong friends and other contemporaries are long gone. They are the patriarchs and matriarchs of their families.
Their mental acuity and physical conditions range from quick conversations and independent mobility to those in wheelchairs and one who forgot about Monday’s party less than a half-hour after the celebration ended.
When they were asked about the secret to living to 100 years old, some themes emerged: Exercise, work and a positive attitude. Most didn’t smoke, but some did. There were also only a few teetotalers.
“You need to have a job that you really like and have people that you really care for around you,” Robertson said. “Have lots of friends. I don’t think you have to be happy every single minute. Do the best you can. Having children in your life or being around children makes for a happier life.”
Cindy Jackson, the administrator of health services at Clarewood House, said the 11 centenarians are followed by a large bunch of healthy and vibrant residents in their 90s.
The oldest resident is George McMahan, 102, who worked at Hughes Tool Co. for five decades and believes he inherited his longevity from his mother. She lived to be 101.
At the party, McMahan sang “Amazing Grace” and led “Happy Birthday” while another resident, retired music professor Robert Bennett, played sacred songs and cowboy tunes for singalongs on the piano. Jackson roamed the room with the microphone for solos. Good genes?
“Why do you think people live to be 100? Who knows? I had a daddy who drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney, and he lived to be 93,” Jackson told the crowd. “It may be good genes.”
Indeed, that’s where the research is pointing.
The New England Centenarian Study and a sister inquiry with which Perls is associated, the Long Life Family Study, is searching for biological and environmental factors that help people survive from their early 90s to their early 100s — if not older.
“We think that a lot of the benefit comes from some special longevity-enabling genes,” Perls said. “These are genes that slow down aging and decrease your risk for aging-related diseases. We think that it’s just not one powerful gene, but rather a combination of many genes that individually have a weak effect but in the right combination can have a very strong effect.”
“The effect is super strong for people who are getting to the very oldest ages in our study — 110 and older,” he added. “Those people are incredibly rare. They’re about 1 in 5 million in the population.”
Those 110-year-old superstars — called supercentenarians — are 1,000 times rarer than centenarians.
Houston lost a celebrated supercentenarian in February when Emma Primas died at 112. The retired businesswoman gained national prominence at 109 during her 2015 meeting with President Barack Obama. Upon receiving a kiss on the cheek from someone she never thought she’d live to see — the first black U.S. president — she claimed it was simply like the loving nuzzle of a grandchild. She later admitted that the peck made her toes wiggle, a granddaughter said. 79-year-old daughters
Clarewood House residents have anecdotal proof of genetic longevity. Virginia Harrell, who celebrated 100 years last week, had three aunts who became centenarians. Margaret Shearer, 101, has twin daughters — Joan and June — who will turn 80 in May.
“Some of this generational stuff is so fun. The notion that there are centenarians with 80year-old kids? Amazing,” Perls said. “The children of our centenarians tend to be very healthy. They constitute the offspring portion of our study where we enroll the kids. Generally, they have 50 percent lower rates of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer compared to other people born around the same time. I think a very big chunk of that is healthy behaviors, but certainly we are guessing that there are some genes involved as well.” cindy.george@chron.com twitter.com/cindylgeorge