‘All right’ at 100
Published 9:32 pm Monday, February 9, 2015
A good diet, exercise and a positive attitude may have also helped, but Rosa Lee Alston attributes her 100-year-long (and counting) life to one thing.
“The good Lord did that,” she said, adding that she counts praying as a daily activity.
Alston, who turned 100 on Friday, celebrated at a Portsmouth restaurant on Saturday with about 100 of her family and friends.
“I do believe she’s the oldest living person in the Saratoga community,” granddaughter Shawanee Waters said.
Alston is a native of Thomasville, Ga., and followed her older brother to Suffolk at the age of 12. The brother, David Brown, moved here to become a police officer, and several of his 14 brothers and sisters followed — including Alston, who was the youngest of all 15.
She married Willie Alston in 1942, but he died at the relatively young age of 55.
She worked as a domestic worker and also at Planters Peanuts.
These days, she enjoys watching wrestling and “The Price is Right” on television. Her favorite song is “May the Work I’ve Done Speak for Me.”
She is also constantly surrounded by family — she has six children, 20 grandchildren, 37 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.
Her three living children are Willie Mae Mayfield, Margarita Clark, Elsie Marie Alston Taylor and a grandson she raised as a son, Harvey Manley.
Alston said she feels “all right” being 100 years old. She doesn’t like fried food, her daughter Margarita Clark said, which may have something to do with that, but she does enjoy a good dinner of chicken feet and sweet potatoes.