Edit Renfrow Smith, who turned 111 on Monday, welcomed visitors. From left, (with backs to the camera) Valeriya Woodard and Feven Getachew, and two recent graduates from Grinnell College, where Smith, Class of ’37, is the oldest living graduate. At center, Rev. Jane Eesley, the new senior pastor at the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, where Smith is a member. She stopped by to give Smith communion. At far right is associate pastor Sophia Carno. “You have made my day so very special,” Smith said, after taking communion.
Photo by Neil Steinberg
Loneliness is the curse of old age. Your friends are gone, your family distant, your life’s work, a box in the basement. Most seniors struggle with it.
But most seniors are not Edith Renfrow Smith, who at times Monday had a dozen visitors in her room at Brookdale Senior Living on Sheridan Road. And that was before the party celebrating her 111th birthday.
Regular readers might recall meeting Mrs. Smith on her 107th birthday and learning about her extraordinary life. Born in 1914 in Iowa, she became the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College. She pooh-poohs it, but had her share of encounters with the famous, from Amelia Earhart to Muhammad Ali.
Not to forget her grandparents, born in slavery.
Or the boy across the street, Herbie, who taught her daughter Alice to play “Chopsticks” on the piano. Herbie Hancock, the future jazz great.
I joined the crowd, and asked: How did her 110th year go?
“Everything has been fine,” Mrs. Smith said, precisely, not mentioning specifics.
Such as in September, when Grinnell College named a dorm after her — Renfrow Hall. Not be confused with Renfrow Gallery, or the Edith Renfrow Smith Black Women’s Library, previous tributes bestowed by the college, which granted her an honorary doctorate in 2019.
Two recent graduates, Feven Getachew and Valeriya Woodard, hung on the conversation. Dr. Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, the Louise R. Noun ’29 chair in gender, women’s, and sexuality studies at Grinnell, observed from a distance.
“I’ve been listening to Mrs. Smith and realized she is her family’s historian,” said Beauboeuf-Lafontant, who is writing a book on Mrs. Smith’s matrilineal history. “She keeps the memories, she inherited the memories from her mother. It’s extraordinary she has taken on an old West African role of preserving the memories of your family, your people.”
Mrs. Smith seemed content to let conversation flow around her, though I tried to pick out highlights from the last year. I asked if she voted in November, drawing a reaction near outrage.
“I NEVER have not voted,” she said.
Does she still bake? Last year we watched her and Alice, 79, bake a pie with, all the drama that can be expected from a mother-daughter pair who have nearly 200 years of life between them.
“Sometimes,” Mrs. Smith replied. “Over there on the counter is a pie we baked yesterday. A cherry raspberry pie.”
The pie was brought out for admiration. Though the reason for its creation is even more noteworthy — her Sunday helper, Ebony, had confessed that she had never baked a pie. Mrs. Smith thought that a lapse worthy of immediate correction.
“It was the first time she had ever made a pie,” she said. “Her mother had taught her to cook, but never to bake. That’s why I told her to take a piece to her mother. I like to do things; I don’t like to do nothing. She was here to take care of me, and I said, ‘Oh, we can make a pie.’ So that’s what we did. I said, ‘You made the pie.'”
Living to 111 is extremely rare. About 3 in 10,000 Americans live to be 100, or 0.027 percent. There are thought to be fewer than 1,000 “supercentenarians” — people who live to 110 — in the world. Making Mrs. Smith not one in a million, but closer to 1 in 10 million.
I asked her what 111 feels like. She replied:
“It feels just like every day. I say, ‘You do what you do every day.’ That’s what makes life worth living. People let you tell them what you like. This is you. That’s me. I like to talk to people. I like people. I say, ‘Every day that God gives you, use it.’ And you can do that. You can do what you like, because someone has said, ‘Oh hey. Try it. Try it and see.’ You don’t know unless you try. Don’t let anybody tell you, ‘I can’t.’ You say, ‘I’ll try.” That’s the difference between living and not living: ‘I tried it, but I didn’t like it, so I didn’t do it.’
“Don’t spend your time doing things not worthwhile. What are you doing that for? ‘I don’t know. I did it because I didn’t know’. That makes every day and every year worthwhile, because you tried it and you did it. If it was good, it was good. If it wasn’t any good, you throw it out. Don’t hang on to things that mean nothing. Why hang onto something that means nothing to you? God gave us choice. People, they stopped letting individuals have choice. Don’t make my choice.”
Edith Renfrow Smith, 111, had an eventful year — a dorm was named for her at Grinnell College, where she, class of ’37, is the oldest living and first Black female graduate. She voted, and, oh yes, fractured her pelvis in a fall. But it was a hairline fracture and, except for three weeks spent unnecessarily in a nursing home, she didn’t let the mishap slow her down.
Photo by Neil Steinberg