106-year-old local woman shows us how to live

Imagine a 96-year-old woman, all 5-foot of her, riding Lynx buses from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. just for the fun of it.

“I went all over [Central] Florida, everywhere,” Katherine Bellamy said with a wide smile. “On the last bus, he [the driver] would wait until I turned the light on in my house and then he’d leave.”

She recalls losing her license when she in her mid 90s, but Katherine kept her joyful curiosity about the world.

Maybe that’s another piece to this larger mystery about how one lives to be 106-years-old.

We’ve read stories about people reaching the milestone age of 100. But nearing a decade beyond that to become one of the oldest living residents in Seminole County? Well, that requires a story.

Katherine grew up poor and black in the Jim Crow South of Florida, except for the occasional seasons of life with her dad in Chicago, where work was more plentiful.

Forget Baby Boomers. She was born two generations earlier to an era known as the Greatest Generation because of the trials and tribulations these people endured, including the Great Depression and World War II.

Three days after Katherine’s 16th birthday, Wall Street crashed on Oct. 24, 1929, which marked the start of the Depression. History documented the stories of soaring unemployment, homelessness and suicide as people lost hope.

Of course, the Depression seemed less dramatic to folks who were already poor and black.

“You know what? We were poor and didn’t know it,” she told me. “So the Depression, we didn’t know much about that.”

Katherine was born in 1913 during Woodrow Wilson’s first term as president. The first airplane flew over American skies just 10 years prior to her birth, slavery hadn’t yet been abolished for 50 years and women were still banned from voting.

Katherine’s grandmother, who had been a slave, raised her. Katherine didn’t know anything about her mother except her name Camillas. Her father’s name was Governor Dixon.

Katherine welcomed her first child, a son named Willie Lee, in 1931. And while the birth of her first child was the happiest memory of her life, she said 15 would be the age she’d love to relive.

“That was when I was allowed to have boys around,” she said with a laugh.

Both of her children, Willie Lee and Katrina, died years ago, but she has three grandchildren and five greatgrandchildren.

She spent much of her life surrounded with books and children. For a time, Katherine taught kids in her home, where she has resided for 100 years in the migrant community of Midway.

“I love children, I love for them to learn,” said Katherine, who once met her idol, Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune, a civil rights activist and educator for whom Bethune-Cookman University is named, is set to have a statue in D.C.’s National Statuary Hall in 2020

Katherine also loves to dance, even if it’s mostly just with her arms now. But when her body was able, she loved to fly.

Aging brought some of her greatest adventures, though. She took her first cruise to the Bahamas in her 80s, even though she was scared the boat would sink like the Titanic.

She flew to California to visit family and back to Chicago, her second home, numerous times, even though she vomited on her first flight years earlier because she was so nervous.

By the time she reached 100, her travels slowed down but they didn’t stop. She knew a lot of bus drivers by name.On her 106th birthday Monday, her grandson wheeled her into a Cheddar’s restaurant to greet about 30 friends and family members. She asked for a selfie with Susan Wenner, publisher for the Sanford Herald. They’ve taken one together each year since Katherine celebrated her 100th birthday. Katherine likes to live in the moment because she knows all too well how moments change.

She doesn’t like saying good-bye anymore, not even to me. That’s too final.

“See ya later, alligator.”