Viola Brown of Berryville, Virginia, celebrated her 110 birthday on October 4 and told her guests that “the Lord’s been really good to me.”
Brown’s birthday officially made her a supercentenarian, which is one who reaches 110 years of age.
The supercentenarian’s birthday bash took place on her front porch at her Berryville home. Family, friends, caregivers, and county officials all showed up to wish her a happy birthday, the Winchester Star reported.
“They make such a great fuss,” Brown said according to the outlet.
The Winchester Star reports that Chairman David Weiss of the Clarke County Board of Supervisors attended the celebration and bestowed Brown with a document that declared October 4, “Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown Day.”
“This is officially your day,” Weiss told Brown, per the Winchester Star.
“Every day that the good Lord lets me stay here is my day,” she reportedly replied.
Prior to her 109th birthday, Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown posed with her 1988 cookbook, “Viola’s Favorite Recipes.” Mrs. Brown began working as a domestic when she was 7, and cooked her entire life although she did not use an electric stove until 1960. (Facebook/Clarke County, VA)
Staff from Blue Ridge Hospice came to sing “Happy Birthday” to the supercentenarian and presented her with flowers and a quilt fashioned by hospice volunteers, according to the Winchester Star. “Oh it’s beautiful,” Brown said of the quilt. “These are pretty. I love flowers.”
After an eventful 30 minutes, the celebration began to wind down according to the Star, and Brown thanked her guests for attending. “Every day’s a good day. The Lord’s been really good to me,” she explained.
“He wakes me up in the morning. He tells me what to do. I don’t worry about things,” Brown told the Christian Post.
Her great-nephew Andrew Roberts told the Christian Post that Viola is an avid worshipper of Jesus Christ.
“My personal experience has been nothing but love and joy whenever I’m in her presence,” he explained. “There’s never one minute that Jesus doesn’t drip off her lips. It’s as if she embodies Him. Everything she talks about and does, she gives honor and praise to God. I mean everything. She’s a literal [believer].”
Brown was born to James and Maria Roberts on October 4, 1911, the Winchester Star reports. The Brown family lived in the town of Hume, Virginia, until Viola was seven, at which point the family, including her 12 brothers and sisters, moved to Clarke County.
According to ABC 7, Clarke County says the move was prompted by Viola’s brother Harrison:
When Viola was 7, she and her parents moved from upper Fauquier County to northeastern Clarke County to work at Springfield Farm. A brother, Harrison Roberts, worked for the Claggett family at Springfield and told his parents about the job opportunity. Thus, Viola began a life of cleaning, cooking, and caring for others.
In 1936, Viola married her first husband, John Lampkin, who constructed the house she still lives in today on Josephine street in Berryville, according to the Winchester Star. The couple had two children, one of which is deceased. Lampkin passed on in 1982, and Viola remarried Reverand Paul Brown in 1988. The pair remained together until Brown passed in 1998.
Last year, while Brown was having trouble walking, her 79-year-old daughter Vonceil Hill moved in, so to her assist her, the Star reports. “She’s getting feisty in her old age,” Hill joked.
Brown enjoys frequent visits from her eight grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren, according to the Winchester Star.