Frank Haight: Georgia Rose Bottorff is Blue Hills’ first centenarian

When Georgia Rose Bottorff celebrated her 100th birthday on Sept. 12 with family members, it was not only a milestone event for the Claremore, Okla., native, but also for the Blue Hills Rest Home, an assisted living facility in rural Eastern Jackson County.

“We have been here since 1984, and (Georgia) is the first resident we have ever had that reached 100 years of age,” says Marie Dunham, one of the owners, who describes the honoree as a “quiet, beautiful lady, whose eyes sparkle when she smiles.”

About two weeks before her big day, Rose joined her two sons, Richard Grady of Chilhowee, Mo., and Jerry Grady of Independence, in the dining room of the facility for her birthday interview.

The questioning started on a sorrowful note when Georgia, sitting in a wheelchair next to a long table, recalled the death of her mother as her earliest childhood memory while growing up on an Indian reservation near Collinsville, Okla.

“(Her death) was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” she says sadly, recalling she was around 9 years old when her mother passed away.

Born the second oldest of five siblings on Sept. 12, 1912, in Claremore, Okla., Georgia says her mom’s death came as a “terrible” shock to her. What little Georgia missed most was that her mother wasn’t at home to greet her when she returned home from school.

“I was very close with my mother, more so than the other kids,” she says, recalling her mother told her stories and sometimes played with her. “We had fun.”

But the fun Georgia once enjoyed became a thing of the past when her father, who worked in the Oklahoma oil fields, married, Ida, the caretaker he hired to keep house and watch his five children.

Says Georgia: “By the time I was in the fifth grade, I was in the hands of a (mean) stepmother. She and my dad didn’t get along at all. They really fought; there really wasn’t a home, you know. So I had a rough childhood with a stepmother.”

Little did Georgia know when she entered the fifth grade at Turly, Okla., that this would be her last year of formal education.

Richard says it’s safe to say that because Georgia’s dad was continually moving from one oil field job to another, she wasn’t in one locale long enough to attend school.

But when she was attending school, she enjoyed it.

“I could learn easy what they taught” – especially arithmetic, she says, recalling she enjoyed walking to the nearby schoolhouse with her friends.

Listening to their mother’s stories, Jerry and Richard were anxious to share some early childhood memories their mother no longer remembered.

One was about seeing her first airplane.

As Richard recalls the story, his mother was playing in the yard when an airplane flew over her house, so low that the excited little girl could see the pilot, with his white beard blowing back over his shoulders.

“And this was one of the first airplanes ever seen in these parts” of Oklahoma, he says.

Then there’s the story about the black panther that came screaming through the family yard and leaped upon the roof of the low front porch.

“Remember that?” Richard asks his attentive mother.

“I can’t recall that,” she replies.

Says Richard: “I heard that story a lot.”

The question that brought the biggest response was: “What did you want to do when you grew up?”

With a big smile, Georgia replies: “I wanted to fly in an airplane.” And at age 80, her childhood dream came true. She flew for the first time to Florida to visit her daughter.

Georgia wants everyone to know she loved the flight, was not afraid to look out the window during take-off and landing and she would do it again if she had the chance.

After moving to Kansas City as an 18-year-old, Georgia started dating a “good-looking 6-footer,” whom she would have married, she says, had she not “lost track” of him.

So when Georgia met John Grady, who worked at Kansas City Union Station and at Sheffield Steel, she kept track of this beau and married him in 1933. They had seven children, 17 grandchildren and “many, many great-grandchildren.” Following John’s death in 1951, she remarried.

Georgia describes herself as a jokester, the teller of clean jokes and a kind person who is easy to please.

But to Richard, she is all that and more.

“She was a good homemaker,” he says, “... constantly cooking in the kitchen ... and always baking something. Every day, there were cakes, pies and big meals.

Not one to let her brood stray too far from home, “She always kept an eye on us little kids and made sure we didn’t get too far from home,” her son, Jerry, says of his mother. Then adds: “If we got too far away from home, we got into trouble when we got back.”

What does Georgia credit her longevity too?

She’ll tell you she doesn’t know. But perhaps it was because she grew up “afraid to do this, afraid to do that” for fear of doing something that would shorten her life.

Says Richard: “It’s hard to say. I don’t know whether it’s heredity or not. She never smoked or drank. She eats well; she exercises. Maybe it’s her Indian background. I don’t know.”

Although Jerry and Richard were excited about their mom’s 100th birthday celebration, Georgia didn’t think it was a big deal.

And Richard says he knows why.

“She takes each day with a grain of salt,” he explains, then adds: “She doesn’t worry or think about it. It’s just another day.”

Asked if she was excited about becoming a centenarian, Georgia pauses for a moment, before replying: “Oh, I hadn’t even thought about it. … It kind of slipped up on me.”

To his mother, whom he describes as ornery with a “sense of humor that wouldn’t quit,” Richard says, “I am very proud of her for living to be 100 years old in this day and age, and I hope to follow her.”

Happy Birthday, Georgia!