By Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisburypost.com
GOLD HILL ó At age 105, Ethel LaFreniere is living proof that inside of every grownup is a little child wanting to come out at Christmas.
Sitting by a beautifully decorated Christmas tree in the Gold Hill Road East home of her daughter and son-in-law, Carole and Dan Dumas, her face lights up when she reminisces about Christmases past.
“I can remember all the things we got for Christmas when I was a little girl,” she says, “dolls and tea sets and things like that.” Ethel says the dolls had porcelain faces, arms and legs and the rest of their bodies were stuffed.
“They looked just like real babies,” she says. “They were so natural looking.”
Instead of buying dresses for the dolls, Ethel says her mother made them dresses even prettier than he ones in the stores.
Back then, families didn’t have their own Christmas trees. “The only Christmas tree we had was at church,” she says, “and everybody went to church on Christmas Eve.”
At the Baptist Church Ethel attended, the children put on a little program, and they all received a treat bag at the end of the night. “It was all good times,” she says.
Raised on a farm in southern Alabama, Ethel had two older brothers and an older sister, and they looked forward to the holiday every year. When they got home from church on Christmas Eve, she says they waited anxiously for Santa Claus to bring them gifts the next morning.
Like everything else, Christmases were a lot simpler then, Ethel says, and that in itself made them more special.
Through the years, her Christmases got bigger and bigger as she married ó three times ó and had children of her own.
This year, Ethel will be spending her first Christmas in North Carolina. She moved with the Dumases to Gold Hill this March from Palm Beach County, Fla., where she lived by herself next to her daughter until a year ago.
After almost dying from salmonella, Ethel agreed to move in with Carol and Dan in their house next door.
Though she resisted leaving Florida for North Carolina because of the colder weather, Carol says her mother enjoys sitting on the large covered porch of their new home and even likes to ride the golf cart when the weather is pretty.
“If it wasn’t for this gal,” Ethel says of her daughter, “I wouldn’t be living. I couldn’t live by myself.”
Her first month in their new home, Ethel suffered a stroke and was treated at NorthEast Medical Center for about five days. Prior to her discharge, a doctor referred Ethel to Hospice and Palliative Care of Rowan County for in-home monitoring of her continuing mini-strokes.
Since then, Hospice nurse Melanie Webb and social worker Julie Whicker have become like part of the family. Both of them call Ethel “Mema,” and she seems happy to see them.
“Look at you,” Melanie says, referring to Ethel’s black Christmas sweater. “You’re all decked out.”
When Julie comes in a few minutes later, she says, “Hey Mema, you look good.”
Many Hospice patients are not able to interact with the workers like Ethel. “She’s 105,” Julie says, “and she can carry on a conversation with you.”
The Dumases also make the Hospice workers feel right at home.
When Ethel first went on Hospice, Melanie visited her twice a week to check her vitals and monitor her condition. Now that she’s doing better, she comes only once a week.
Carol says Melanie and Julie are a great support for her. “I don’t know what I would do without them,” she says.
Though the initial stroke affected Ethel’s speech, it is back to normal. She has problems hearing, but her memory is excellent.
She recalls going with her father, a country doctor, to treat people in their community. There weren’t any pharmacies back then, she says, and country doctors carried a variety of medicine with them all the time.
Her parents raised cotton, and she and her brothers and sisters grew up helping pick up. “It was hard work,” she says, “but it was still fun.”
They also raised corn. Ethel says they’d pull the corn by hand, then cut the stalks with a mower. “Now I hear it’s all done in one step,” she says.
As for school, Ethel says she and her siblings got up at 6 o’clock in the morning to walk the three miles to school.
She remembers buying her first car. “Listen to this,” she says. “A man bought the car brand new for $500. He couldn’t drive the car, and he sold it to me for $250, and I drove that car for years.”
Carol, who says she was a “change of life baby,” listens attentively. “I never remember her driving,” she says.
Ethel also lived through the Great Depression, but says it wasn’t that much different for her family. They already grew their own food, she says.
Through the years, Ethel says she has learned that possessions don’t make people happy. “I think sometimes some people try too hard to gain what they want,” she says, “and they lose it all.
Ethel says she’s seen a lot of technological advances through the years, but has enjoyed the telephone the most. “I think the telephone was really the best thing that ever happened,” she says. “We couldn’t live without it now.”
Despite her hearing loss, Carol says her mother is still able to talk on the phone.
Though she’s outlived three husbands and three of her five children, Ethel says the most difficult losses for her were her parents. Her mother died at age 74 from a recurrence of pneumonia, and her father died of a heart attack at age 65.
Carol’s sister was only 12 days old when Ethel’s second husband died of pneumonia. Carol and her brother, Jimmy, were born after Ethel married her third husband.
Today, Ethel has eight grandchildren and and at least six great-grandchildren.
She says her faith is just as important to her now as it was when she was growing up. Being a good Christian is easy, Ethel says.
“You just love Jesus,” she says. “I happen to love him, and I work for him. I did. I don’t do too much work now.”
As for how she’d like people to remember her, Ethel says, “I just always wanted people to like me, and it seems like most people have.”
When asked the secret to living a long life, Ethel says she doesn’t have one. “I don’t think anybody should live to be so old,” she says, adding that she doesn’t like having to have somebody do things for her.
Carol says her mother has to have assistance walking.
As for Ethel’s longevity, “I think the secret is her snuff,” Carol says. “She calls that her vitamin.”
It seems Ethel has been dipping Bruton Snuff for years. “As long as I can remember,” Carol says.
And when she doesn’t have snuff in her mouth, her daughter says she likes to chew Juicy Fruit chewing gum.
In fact, Ethel chews on the gum during the interview for this story. “She’s on dip restraint until the interview is over,” Melanie explains.
“I’ve used snuff for years and years,” Ethel says a little later. “As a matter of fact, I was just about to take some when you got here.”
It seems the Bruton Snuff restraint soon wears thin for Ethel. At one point, she asks, “Are they gone yet?”
Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249.