By Gary Lee Stuber
Leona Varrella will turn 106 years old this December. She was born Leona Kelly on December 3, 1918 to the parents of a Kentucky coal miner and his homemaker wife, and had thirteen siblings.
“We were once in the Guiness Book of World Records,” Leona says, “because all 14 children’s names started with the letter ‘L’.” There are times she will have momentary memory losses, but we should all be so lucid at age 105. Of her childhood, the word that comes immediately to mind is work. And while the family relocated to just outside Montgomery, West Virginia so dad could work at the Canel Coal mine, and even though all 14 children lived in the “supervisors’ house” in the early part of the 1900’s whether in Kentucky or West Virginia, life was hard. At least it was more work intensive back then. Water had to be carried for everything: drinking, cooking, bathing. Electricity was relatively new and the height of entertainment at the time was to sit in the living room (or at a neighbor’s house) and listen to radio.
Chores, and with a family of 16 there was a lot of work that needed done, was divided up by sex and age and often Leona would be washing clothes, or hanging them on outdoor clothes lines to dry, gathering them in and folding them, putting them away. She also cleaned, swept rooms, made beds, assisted with cooking on a wood burning stove, and gardening. Gardening was a necessity back then for most families. It was easier and cheaper to grow and then can much of your own food than to charge it to the coal company store. Children have no idea these days, how easy they have it.
“I only got to go to the middle of the eighth grade,” Leona explains, without elucidating. “But I have had a very good life. I have nothing to complain about.” This says the bed-ridden Christian woman who hasn’t walked in some time. She spends the largest part of the day now, alone, watching her 50’s and 60’s westerns on TV. Her remote and phone within reach. She lives with her son Joey in a nice little home a few miles upriver from Ivydale. Many of her neighbors remember a time when she went every Sunday to church and say that she was such a good woman, who was helpful to everyone and “knew everyone and everything.”
At age 18 she married her husband and became a Varrella. She had a daughter, Barbara, during the time her and her husband lived in Washington DC and he drove a taxi cab for a living. Joey would come along later. Her husband would become a West Virginia coal miner, too.
She was unsure how they ended up in Clay County. She also remembers that from time to time she worked outside the home herself. Temporary jobs, often menial. But considering that this woman lived through more than five wars; dozens of presidents; the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan; the invention of television, the computer and cell phones; the invention of airplanes and then rockets; the landing of a man on the moon: and is still mentally active.
She has a lot she could share with children growing up today. “Get a good education.” She advises. She does desire that her son Joey would become a Christian and says she rarely gets visitors these days. She does have a medical team that checks on her and a cleaning lady who comes in from time to time. Anybody who visits can see what a jewel she is to know. And with the living history she could tell, no one would be bored. And even though bedridden, and at times frustrated that she has these brief periodic memory lapses, she is awake, aware and connected to the world. She is also tough. And for that reason alone, I think I will be wishing Leona a happy birthday this coming December.