Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 15, 1993 TAG: 9304150454
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY JO SHANNON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FOR 100TH BIRTHDAY PARTY, GUEST OF HONOR DID BAKING
One of Mera Mason's earliest memories is an event that took place at the turn of the century."I was about 7 or 8 years old and had gone with my family to visit a cousin in Charlottesville. We were standing on the lawn when President Theodore Roosevelt passed by on horseback. He looked right at me and waved. I'll never forget it."
Mason, who turned 100 on Easter Sunday, remembers the first light bulb and the first motor car, among other firsts during the past century.
Not one to seek the limelight, though, she recalls only one incident involving publicity.
Gardening was a major interest when her children were small. She also won many blue ribbons for flower arrangements. A story, with a picture of her among the 150 African violets she had propagated, was published in the Roanoke Times on Jan. 1, 1951.
"When I think about that picture, I always wish I had dressed up. All I wore was a house dress."
Mason also likes to tell her courtship story.
Being next to the oldest of five, her mother taught her to sew and cook and "helped me make a dress when I was 11 years old."
Mason was 18 in 1911 when she took a business course and went to work for Remington Typewriter Co. in Richmond.
But then her family moved to South Hill and she was "heartbroken because it was such a little place," she recalls.
"But soon the man who ran the hardware store asked me to keep his books, and I had a job again."
She was making the store's deposits at the bank when she became perturbed by a "smart-alecky cashier who started asking me questions that were none of his business - like how long I'd lived in South Hill; where I used to live - you know, personal questions."
After a while, the cashier invited Mason "to help out at the bank," making her the first female employee.
"We worked together for about a year and got to know each other, but we didn't really have a courtship," she says.
"One day he wrote on a piece of paper, `Mrs. Victor Marshall Mason,' and asked me how that looked. That's how he proposed."
"When Daddy [her name for her husband after the children were born] said we had to move to Roanoke two years after he became a bank examiner, I was heartbroken again. But, I fell in love with the mountains and wouldn't move away for anything."
Her husband was 64 when he died in 1958.
Mason says her doctor attributes her longevity to "good genes." Her mother lived to be 98, and a cousin died at 103.
"I think hard work and the love of people account for it. Of course, I don't smoke, and I'm not a drinker. Maybe you shouldn't say that though, 'cause now and then I'll drink a little sherry."
She also has been blessed with good health, except for failing eyesight and a slight hearing loss.
"I don't have arthritis, but my legs are getting kinda creepy. I thank the Lord I still have my mind. But I guess I don't have all of it 'cause sometimes I don't remember like I used to."
For her 99th birthday, Mason went to the circus. For her centennial, she had a party.
The women of her church, Raleigh Court Presbyterian, and her family gave the Easter Sunday party, but Mason baked her specialties - cheese wafers and date bars - and polished the church's huge silver candelabra for the table.
Many of the crafts - the oldest a sampler book of stitchery dated 1905-06 - Mason has made through the years were on display. She sat in a rocking chair by the table, surrounded by great-grandchildren, and greeted individually the 85 guests who came from Minneapolis, Delaware, New Jersey, Boston, South Carolina and Ohio as well as Virginia.
Mike and Karen Lewis, her former next-door neighbors, flew from Naperville, Ill., just for the occasion.
"We had to promise the girls - Michelle, 12 and Krista, 7 - that we would return for the party, says Karen Lewis, who lived next door to Mason for 12 years.
"Mrs. Mason was like a grandmother to both of them. She played Barbies and told them stories about her father, the harness maker."
\ ABOUT MERA MASON
Name: Mera Dean Mason
Born: April 11, 1893, Richmond
Education: Graduate of Massey Business College, Richmond
Family: Married to Victor Marshall Mason (deceased); three daughters - Vivian Colman, whom she lives with in Southwest Roanoke, Frances McPeak of Pulaski, and Jane Suiter of Newark, Del.; five grandchildren; three great-grandchildren
Occupation: Prior to marriage in 1920, worked as bookkeeper and bank clerk. Since marriage, homemaker and mother.