THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 27, 1995 TAG: 9503250039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
THERE'S A JOKE making the rounds about a visit by President Clinton to a nursing home for the elderly.
Dressed in his best suit, the president walks to a corner of the lobby where an aging woman in a nightgown is seated in a wheelchair.
Gently, the president bends to take the woman's hand in his. ``Hello. Do you know who I am?'' he asks in his softest voice.
The woman takes a long look at the president's face before speaking. ``No,'' she replies, ``but if you go to that window over there, someone can tell you.''
If the president ever drops by Clara Willis' window she will not only tell him who he is but a lot more that's worth hearing.
Willis, 101, has never met Clinton but did receive a letter of congratulations from the president when she hit 100.
``I feel like a wet bug. Time has flung its fetters over me. But I'm doing very well for my age,'' she said, when I drove to her home on Caton Drive in Virginia Beach a few days back.
She's a handsome lady with a nice crop of white hair, a high forehead, gentle but knowing eyes, a Puckish streak, and a quick intelligence.
A country lady. She was raised on a farm near Chester, Md., and has a head filled with rich memories of skinning rabbits, driving horses, ice skating, wheat reaping and other things she did as a girl.
The centenarian with failing eyesight no longer does the crossword puzzles in the paper but does manage to unscramble the Jumble Words each morning.
She also eats whatever she pleases without bad effect. And she likes nothing better than an all-the-way pizza every now and then.
What Clara Willis does better than most is tell simple, homespun stories with a directness that brings the distant past to life. She is never flowery when she talks. Instead she uses plain words like stitches to create a small needlepoint of a stark-limbed tree in winter or a pot of daffodils.
Here's how she met her husband, Merritt Willett:
``I had recovered from scarlet fever and couldn't catch it anymore. My husband's father had a nearby farm. And my husband-to-be's sister came down with scarlet fever and his father asked if I could come stay with her and wait on her. She was only 7.
``I was about 17. We drove over to their house in a carriage drawn by horses. There were other brothers in the house and I couldn't show any favoritism - it wouldn't have been proper. I was shaking a tablecloth out of an open window. And the cellar door was open right beneath the window with Merritt standing there, although I couldn't see him. He caught hold of the tablecloth and began to roll it up to attract my attention.
``After his sister got better, Merritt's dad and mother got to talking. `I sure don't want to have to take that girl home,' his father said. So Merritt said he'd do it. So he drove me home and that's how it started. We got married when I was 21.''
Her husband died in 1979 and Clara Willis now lives with daughter Grace and son-in-law Stanley Phillips in a tidy room with some of her sketches on the walls. The sketches are in a primitive, spare style. A housefront. A tree.
``I have three children, eight grandchildren and so many great-grandchildren I can't keep up with them they are so scattered around,'' she said.
``I'm like a child now,'' she continued. ``I don't realize I'm so old until I look into the mirror and then I know it. I watch TV and enjoy watching ice skating when it's on. And skiing. I guess if there's anything I haven't done that I might have wanted to, it's flying over the Alps.''
When she was a girl, the Chester River flowed past the family farm house and two creeks close by routinely iced up in winter. Her family boarded schoolteachers for extra money.
``Did you live on a farm once?'' she asked. ``Well, the tide comes in these creeks and raises the ice, and there's a certain amount of water you've got to get over, but that ice will still be strong.'' One day the schoolteacher and her sister, Beulah, fell in the ice and got wet. The teacher and her sister shared a bedroom with two beds.
``So I remember those two girls settin' up there a-giggling and a-talking about it, because they got no business gettin' all cold and wet, and they were rubbin' and rubbin' cause they were cold. Cause we didn't have any heat upstairs.
``I remember that very well, their getting theirselves all warmed up and gigglin' about whatever happened out on that ice.''
Clara Willis is also a poet. Several of her poems have been published by the National Library of Poetry, she said.
Here's one I liked:
Snow
This old hand is very shaky
And does not want to write,
This old head is very achey
And eyes are dim of sight
But I must describe to you
What I see through my window
Winters wild white bees, quite a few,
In their beauty and their wonder
Busy putting pearls upon the trees,
And diamonds in the grasses,
Making joy as one can see
For young lads and lasses.
We had a nice chat. She remembered that electricity had changed life on the farm. ``No more oil lamps,'' she recalled. ``And people didn't go to bed right after supper the way they did before. They stayed up to listen to the radio.''
When I rose to leave, she offered her hand. ``You know I saw your picture in the paper and wasn't sure whether I wanted to talk to you or not,'' she confided. ``But now that you've been here it hasn't been so bad. It was like talking to a friend.''
That's about the nicest compliment I ever got. And I told her so. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
MORT FRYMAN/Staff
Clara Willis, 101, says, "I guess if there's anything I haven't done
that I might have wanted to do, it's flying over the Alps."
by CNB