THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603260178
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 19 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY J.M. DAIL, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
As the year 2000 approaches, it is increasingly rare to meet someone who was born in the 19th century.
But Norfolk resident Frances Miller White, now 99, is someone who was born in the 19th century.
She was born Jan. 17, 1897, to a farmer and his wife in Colerain, N.C., one of nine children who spent days picking cotton and tending to chickens and pigs.
Eighteen years older than her youngest sibling, White is the oldest of Edward and Elizabeth Miller's nine children.
Only two of the children are still living, White and her sister, Lorene Marshall of Norfolk.
To honor her on her birthday, White's extended family, friends and neighbors, about 80 to 90 people, recently crowded into the Sentara Nursing Center's main dining room to give her a party.
The dining room was decorated with linen tablecloths, balloons, flowers, bubbly red punch, a large sheet cake and an old family photo showing a young White with her brothers and sisters. A particularly striking picture taken about 1918 of White, when she was about 20 years old, was a page out of history, showing the changes in fashion during her lifetime.
For her birthday party, White's pastor, the Rev. Mark Pullen of Temple Baptist Church in Norfolk, opened the festivities with a prayer.
``Ninety-nine is quite an achievement, and we thank God for seeing Frances to this day, and for all those lives she has touched,'' said Pullen, who arrived with a group of about 20 people from his church.
Pullen said that he had been at Temple for 16 years, and White was already a longtime member then.
``She's come faithfully to church except those times when she has been in the hospital,'' he said.
Pullen added that the church has a visitation committee that visits shut-ins and members in nursing homes, and that White is one of the church's favorite parishioners.
``I've been a member of Temple for 40 years, and Frances was there when I started,'' said Louise Boone, a member of the church's visitation committee. ``She's the sweetest person any person could know.''
White is the mother of seven children, four of them living. White's extended family continues to her 1-year-old great-great-grandson, Justin Harrison of Virginia Beach.
Relatives - who came from as far as away as Richmond and several North Carolina locations such as Pink Hill, LaGrange and Kinston - were busy counting on their fingers trying to track how they are related to White.
Some of them gave up on the genealogical arithmetic.
Sprinkled among the relatives were friends, such as Vashti Brown Jernigan, a childhood friend who grew up with White in Colerain; Pat Conklin, a hair stylist who has tended to White's hair for the past six years;, and Henrietta Bell, who has known White for about 30 years.
In October 1992, at 95, White found out her great-nephew, Christopher Baccus, was having an engagement party in Philadelphia. No one had mentioned it to her, thinking it would be too much of a strain. But off she went.
She followed that up by going to Baccus' wedding to Leslie Carpenter, also in Philadelphia, in June 1993.
More recently, in November 1995, White made the trip from Norfolk to Gainesville, Fla., to visit the Baccuses in their new home.
White is recuperating from a recent fall and looking forward not only to returning to her apartment in Braywood Manor, a senior citizen high-rise apartment building on Auburn Avenue in Norfolk, but to her 100th birthday.
White left North Carolina in 1918 and moved to South Norfolk, where she lived for 31 years. She moved to Norfolk in 1949 and has lived in Ghent, Colonial Place, Lafayette Shores and Fairmount Park. She moved to Braywood Manor in 1981. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Four generations of descendants stand behind Frances Miller White:
from left, granddaughter Virginia Brown, great-granddaughter Ona
O'Connor, great-great-granddaughter April Harrison and
great-great-great-grandson Justin Harrison.
by CNB