Happy birthday to Virginia’s own Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown!
Written by Keenan “HIGz” Higgins
(Source NewsOne):
It’s still Libra season, and we’re sending a season-wide happy birthday to all those celebrating under the most balanced sign of them all.
We also have to give an extra warm shoutout to a special lady that recently celebrated a very monumental birthday, becoming one of only six people currently alive in America to turn 110-years old. The best part? She’s a proud Black woman!
Virginia’s own Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown hit the big 1-1-0 last week on October 4th, making her the first and only supercentenarian to reside in the southern state of the six in total still alive. Throughout her many, many years of defying the odds of human mortality, Viola has been blessed with a sizable family that includes eight grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, three great-great-grandchildren and “more relatives and friends than she can count” according to ABC local affiliate WJLA.
More from WJLA below on the lengthy life of Viola Roberts: “Viola Roberts was born Oct. 4, 1911, in Hume, Va. Her parents, James Roberts and Maria Hosby Roberts, had 13 children. Clarke County said, ‘when Viola was 7, she and her parents moved from upper Fauquier County to north-eastern Clarke County to work at Springfield Farm. A brother, Harrison Roberts, worked for the Claggett family at Springfield and told his parents about the job opportunity. Thus, Viola began a life of cleaning, cooking, and caring for others.’ Viola married John Lampkin in the 1930s, and together they built their house on Josephine Street. The main two-story structure of their home was originally part of a livery stable on Main Street that Mr. Lampkin moved about seven blocks to Josephine Street.”
Viola actually rang in her 110th at the home on Josephine Street in Berryville, which she still resides in after all these years.
Happy Birthday Mrs. Roberts Lampkin Brown, and here’s to many more!
Brown’s milestone birthday came more than a decade after the then-oldest-living African American died at the age of 113.
Louisiana resident Mississippi Winn — who was more commonly known in Shreveport as “Sweetie” — died in 2011.
At the time, Winn was believed to be the oldest living African American in the U.S. and the seventh-oldest living person in the world, said Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group, which verifies information for Guinness World Records.
At the time, Young said Winn was one of two known people left in the United States whose parents both were almost certainly born into slavery because documents show they were born before the end of the Civil War.
Black Don’t Crack! African American Woman Is Now 1 Of 6 Living People Who Are At Least 110 Years Old was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
