Sara McNichols still raging at 100 sharp has most definitely lived on wit's end and at opposite ends of the spectrum as well.
One of a hundred centenarians in Northern Virginia to be honored at a governor's gala in November, McNichols, a resident of a federally-subsidized retirement home in Vienna, was once a debutante of aristocracy. Born and raised on an estate near Ellicott City in Baltimore County, she has gone from being served five-course meals by black butlers to having her meals on wheels delivered in a paper bag by social workers.
"What a pretty dress you have!" Gov. James S. Gilmore III said as he shook McNichols' hand during the birthday bash, a bodyguard at his side. "I would have thrown a rock at him and he would have wrung my neck," McNichols thought to herself.
"I was amazed at the way some of them looked so old," she said of the other centenarians. McNichols celebrated her hundredth on Sept. 28. "I don't feel 100. I'm not one of those old people who totters around, grabbing at furniture," she says sitting comfortably in her favorite chair.
Her doctor has told her to stay put in her room and never move without assistance. Her seven-year pacemaker is running out, she's "deaf as post", she says, and she has to catch her breath every few steps. Any secrets to her longevity? "I have absolutely none," she replies.
McNichols has survived four ex-husbands, five strokes, countless car accidents - "Once, I was all smashed up," she remembers - and her 68 American Motors Ambassador, which ran out on her ten years ago . She has had three sons by three different husbands. When her eldest child, Mat, died five years ago of a heart attack, she said that nearly killed her. She says her second husband was stabbed to death getting a paper at 1 a.m. on a Brooklyn street in New York City. Her third husband left before her third son, Steve, was born. Her fourth husband started whipping her boys a week into marriage, so she divorced him as well.
After her father and mother died within three days in the early 40s, her two brothers sold the family's estate and gave McNichols a paltry $5,000, sending her from a life of riches with a chauffeur to a life on the road in a mobile home. With two of her three sons in tow, McNichols became a nurse, supporting them as best she could, in between stops from Florida to New York. She moved to the Northern Virginia area thirty years ago to move in with her oldest son, Mat, who by then, had a job as a salesman in Falls Church.
For a while, she worked as a companion to the elderly, giving help she now would welcome for herself. "She doesn't even have the money to buy a coat," says Steve Ketcham, her youngest son, who works at a warehouse in McLean and lives in Centreville. "She should be at some assistance living place like the Sunrise where someone could check on her." McNichols has lived for twenty years at the Fairfax Education Retirement Housing Corporation on Tyspring Street, where she is the oldest resident. She says she likes the mix of Vietnamese, Chinese, Hispanic and "colored" people. Her favorite activities are watching "The Young and The Restless" and waiting for the mail.
McNichols has six grandchildren, five great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild, but she says, she doesn't get many visits anymore. She is fearful of getting a new pacemaker. "I hate those things, operations, they make me so tired." She is not looking forward to Christmas either: "it breaks my heart, I'm not supposed to go anywhere."
Dancing is what she misses the most. "I dream of stepping on the dance floor, one last time," she says, with a twinkle in her eye. "I was a beautiful dancer, you know. You don't say that of yourself, but that's the plain truth." In her early twenties, she spent four months as a professional dancer at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, a time she describes as the happiest in her own personal century.
