Streamwood woman has seen 108 years of change
Josephine Ross has seen every day of the 20th and 21st centuries so far.
Family and friends of the Streamwood woman continued giving thanks Friday for the decades of life lessons and love she's shared with them.
Ross was born Nov. 25, 1900 - just weeks before the official start of the 20th century - and marked her 108th birthday earlier this week.
The event was celebrated by nearly 100 others, many of them her direct descendants, at Fountain Blue Banquets in Des Plaines Friday.
Tommy Ross, the grandson with whom she now lives, said Josephine was first "grandma" to him before becoming a more direct maternal figure in his life after the death of his own mother in 1946.
"I love her dearly," Tommy Ross said.
It's only in the past few years that Josephine has lost the mental sharpness and physical independence she kept for so long, he added. As recently as 2006, she was climbing three flights of stairs every day.
Josephine Ross was born in Mississippi and moved to Arkansas at the age of 13. She married not long after, her husband dying in 1966.
The four children they had have been followed by eight grandchildren, 71 great-grandchildren, 46 great-great-grandchildren and 15 great-great-great grandchildren.
"You should say thank you to Mrs. Ross, because she made all this possible," family friend Winston Shelby said, looking around the crowded banquet hall.
"She taught people respect and how to be self-sufficient," said granddaughter Tonda Patterson.
Josephine Ross was still living on her own in Arkansas at the age of 98 when Tommy and his wife, Mary, brought her to live with them in Arlington Heights. They moved to Streamwood in 2000, and the Streamwood Historical Society Friday presented a certificate verifying Josephine as the oldest resident of the village.
While a big birthday party was held for Josephine's 100th, this was the biggest since then. The party was thrown in part due to the fact that she's lived to see Barack Obama elected the nation's first black president, Mary Ross said.
The Rev. Mpaka Fyneface, an associate minister of Rock of Ages Baptist Church in Maywood, also found it impressive that a woman who grew up picking cotton in the South would live to see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream come to pass.
"It is truly a blessing to live to 108," Fyneface said. "Give honor to your family members while they're still alive. Don't wait until they can see you no more, until they can hear you no more. This day is never going to come again. This is a special day, so let us rejoice and be glad."