THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9412310038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: SENTINELS OF THE CENTURY
From the horse and buggy to the lunar landing
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
THE STRENGTH of character it takes to live 101 years runs with a river's force through the veins of Corine W. Wright. It's apparent the moment you shake hands with her. She has a firm, solid grip that belies her age and her delicate stature.
Delicacy, though, could not have sustained her into the second century of life as Ms. Wright has lived it. She has lived on her own terms and still does, tending to her neat Portsmouth bungalow, tending her flower beds in spring, her dozens of potted plants indoors in winter.
What few inconveniences advanced age has brought she handles with dignity and resolve. Her hearing has faded some, finally forcing her to give up driving. Two years ago. When she was 99.
Her eyesight isn't quite what it used to be, so she doesn't watch TV as much. But she enjoys playing videotapes made at church celebrations, like the big party they held for her 100th birthday. Ms. Wright runs the VCR herself, a task that can defeat people half her age.
Just across the room from the VCR and the videotapes, we were turning through the pages of a photo album that records the first 101 years of Ms. Wright's life, which began in 1893. The album's early pages were crowded with sepia-toned photos of proud black families in 19th century formal dress.
``Nobody living but me,'' she said, just a little wistfully. ``I'm the only one.''
Her father farmed a piece of land in the Hodges Ferry section of Portsmouth, which was then part of old Norfolk County. She had four brothers and three sisters, though one of the boys died young, before she was born. The children were not coddled.
``Did I work on that farm?'' Ms. Wright asked back, bemused at a question that had such an obvious answer. When a black family of eight ran a truck farm at the turn of the century, everybody worked. ``I should say I did,'' she said, chuckling. ``Picked strawberries, picked beans, okra, black-eyed peas, all that kinda stuff.
``My father was strict, a strict man.
``But I had a good life, yes. A good life.''
Among the sepia photos was one of a young woman in a dark suit, a high-collared white blouse and a formal white hat, a serious look on her lovely face. Ms. Wright, circa 1914, as a graduate of Virginia Seminary. She was about to embark on a career that would lead to 40 years as a teacher and assistant principal in Portsmouth schools.
``Yes, changes, have I seen some changes in my life,'' she whispered as we turned the album pages, pointing to a picture here, identifying a long-lost relative or a group of school mates. ``Certainly have seen some changes.''
She knows, though, that change can be for the better. The wise adapt to the changes around them, and press for other changes that are necessary. Ms. Wright was among the first three black women to successfully register to vote in Portsmouth.
``Women weren't allowed to vote in the city of Portsmouth. It must have been in 1927, I think, and Miss Lila Johnson was the first lady to vote, and Miss Anna Royster and I were second. Yeah, that's right.'' She had to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test.
``They gave us a blank sheet of paper, don't you know, and we had to do our own writing, and we did that.''
She still votes, and refuses the convenience of an absentee ballot. It's not the same as going to the polls and seeing your ballot cast with the rest.
A picture of her and her first husband, in front of an open touring car, brought back memories of her first ride in an automobile.
``Well now, I remember it was . . . the first colored man that had an automobile at my church. They took a bunch of children out riding. Ooohh, I was scared to death when I got in there. I was used to riding a horse and buggy, don't you know.''
The photos progressed from sepia to black-and-white, to the Kodachromes of a modern era. Good friends. Fellow teachers. Treasured pictures from cruises through the Caribbean, happy days in Cuba when even Castro was a schoolboy. The three husbands she outlived, the students who became her family, the children she never had. Some still send cards on Mother's Day.
``I had someone ask me that, if I had children, and I answered, `Yeah, I had children, had about a thousand.' Yes, they're all my children.''
If any of the changes she's seen trouble her, it's the changes in attitudes among a new generation of young people. Their parents, she said, are failing to teach them values.
``These kids today, they'll step right on you, right on your foot, and not say a word.
``My parents taught us how to obey older people. And you know the Bible said, `Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.' '' (She delivered the quote, from Exodus 20:12, with absolute precision.)
She learned the value of work, as well, she said. She still cleans her own house, which she has owned nearly 70 years. She cooks and does the laundry: ``Monday is wash day, and I iron on Tuesday, to this very day.''
Fresh Christmas fruitcakes, made from scratch, were in the kitchen cabinet, waiting for delivery to close friends.
Lectures on family values are easy coin among politicians these days, even among those who have failed, in rather spectacular fashion, to live up to them.
It is much easier to see the wisdom when the words come from someone like Ms. Corine Wright. They are values she taught the young people, they are values she believes in, and values she has lived by through every day of her 101 years.
They are beliefs that have sustained her. Just ask her. She'll tell you. ILLUSTRATION: LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff photo
Photo
Corine Wright, circa 1914, about to embark on a teaching career.
by CNB