BY TASHIEKA MAIR, STAR Writer
Martha Thorpe, centenarian - TASHIEKA MAIR
WESTERN BUREAU:
THOUGH NOT IN the best of health and confined to her home, Martha Thorpe is eternally grateful to God for sustaining her for the past 100 years.
"Mi haffi give God thanks fi everything because things could ah worse," She told THE STAR on our visit to her home in Flankers, St. James. "Jesus a spare mi life, Him no ready fi mi yet."
Thorpe was born in Harvey River, Hanover, on April 1 1906. She was the fourth of seven children born to Edward Thorpe and Catherine Diney. She is the older of the two remaining children for her parents. Her younger sister Sara Malcolm is 91 years old.
She recalls experiencing the June flood and at least four major storms, the first being at age six. "Mi not even did christen yet. Me memba the breeze did just have wi deh wheel we so," she recalled, laughing.
Thorpe explained that her parents were very poor and so after Askenish Elementary school she had to work. She said that she worked in the cane fields, broke stones, dug dirt, cut grass and even cultivated her own farm.
"Mi did have to work hard fi tek care of my children you know. Work is not a bad ting; it give you independence," she explained.
The centenarian said if she was still young she would be hard at work. Now, plagued with arthritis, high blood pressure and impaired vision in her left eye, Thorpe is still able to wash her clothes.
Though unmarried all her life, she gave birth to four boys and nine girls, of which only four of her children, Lillian, Ethlin, Daisy and Herbert are still alive. She has 17 grandchildren, 35 great grandchildren and 15 great-great grandchildren.
When asked why she never got married, she said, "No sista, mi neva interested inna that. Mi radda work fi myself than work fi mine nobody."
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