LOUISA COUNTY, Va. β Frances West Byers is a card-carrying member of an exclusive club. The woman with deep roots in Louisa County is one of only about 400 people worldwide who have reached a certain age. Next month Byers will turn 111 years old.
Born Frances Mae West on January 23, 1915, she came into this world when Charlie Chaplin enjoyed the spotlight as a silent movie superstar. Babe Ruth was still playing for the Red Sox. Frances was also born the same year the first coast to coast long distance phone call was made and Woodrow Wilson was serving in the White House.
The feisty Byers was raised on a farm before the advent of the modern-day supermarket.
"I didn't know where the grocery store was," Frances said.
Her food was grown right outside the family home.
"You had potatoes and you had cabbage. You grew those things," she said.
Her parents lived in the latter half of the 19th century.
"My father was born in 1879. And mama in '89. 1800s now. Not 1900s," she said.
Growing up, the family's mode of transportation was by hoof.
"My mother and father had riding horses. Two black riding horses that you hooked to a buggy or a carriage to carry us places. A carriage when we went to church," she said.
In about 1920 when she was 5, Frances called Patriot Patrick Henry's house home.
"We lived in Scotchtown in Hanover County," she said.
Her father and brothers tended crops on a sprawling 200 acres.
"We lived in half of the house. 12 rooms," she said. "And middle of it is that long hall all the way through it."
Byers says life was hard. She left grammar school and got a job where she made $5.50 a week. Privileged she was not.
"That was during The Depression. I stopped school and had to go to work at 14 years old," she said.
She learned the value of helping others in need from her parents who shared what they had with hungry neighbors and strangers.
"One man came down there and said, 'Ms. Frances can you give me three eggs? I ain't got nothing in the world for my breakfast with a little meat and I've got two children in my house.' I said, 'Sure I'll give you everything that you want,'" she said.
At 17 she married and later raised 7 children.
Byers' youngest son Dan calls the matriarch of the family a treasure.
"She is a high spirited one who has spent a whole life caring for people and one who has a great love for God, her country, and fellow man," Dan said. "Not a week that goes bad that somebody doesn't come by to talk with her and to gain a greater knowledge of our county history, of our family, or history of the folks that I've lived nearby."
What's her secrets to a long life?
Avoiding alcohol and tobacco, she said.
Her only vice?
Bluegrass music.
"Oh! Guitar and banjo! I love to dance. I love to dance. When that music started my feet went like this. I can dance," she said.
Byers says what really gives her strength, health and happiness is her unwavering faith.
"Serving the Lord above everything else. The Commandments. They are Commandments not suggestions," she said.
Frances West Byers never expected to live to 111 let alone 110.
"Feels like it was when I was 109," she said.
She is a member of an exclusive club with her fellow supercentenarians found all across the globe. Proving age does have its privileges.
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