If a great smile, a hearty laugh and a good disposition is the secret to living to be 100 years old, Frances Showell has it down. Showell, originally from Devon, Pa., came to the Bayard, Del., area when she was 19 years old and lived there her whole life until her husband died, when she moved in with her daughter Doris in Milton. Not a fan of southern Delaware at first, she said she grew to love it.
Coastal Point • Monica Scott
Frances Showell recently celebrated her 100th birthday. Showell has lived in the area since she was 19.
“It wasn’t a good move to me,” said Showell of her grandmother’s move to Bayard in 1932. “She didn’t have electric or running water, and the wages weren’t anything here then.”
Showell said women made about $3 per week and men made $15, but “Things were cheaper then. Bread was 17 cents, and now it’s two or three dollars!”
Showell said her grandmother eventually did get electric and running water in the house she bought for about $1,000, which came with 20 acres of land. And, eventually, Showell met her husband, married and had three children. The family lived in her grandmother’s home in Bayard. Now, she has 10 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.
In her 100 years, the world has changed a lot, and Showell believes not for the better.
“It’s the worst time now,” she said. “People are different, the world is wicked. It’s a mean world.”
She said she believes at least some of the change is because of people’s reaction to the fact that “we have a colored president,” adding that she does think he is doing his best. She shows off a picture and a letter from President Obama she received on her 100th birthday.
“He’s better than George W. Bush! The Republicans want to cut out everything that helps the poor. Well, when children are starving to death, they need help. It’s a mean world. No, it didn’t use to be this bad.”
When she and her grandmother and family first came to Sussex County, some 80 years ago, it was a time of leaving your doors open, but that day has come and gone. She said she was ready to move in with her daughter after her husband died, because she didn’t like the thought of being alone, and one night people had thrown beer bottles through a screen on her porch.
As for any great pieces of wisdom she would give the young people of today, she joked that it wouldn’t do much good.
“There’s not too much I can say to them, because they don’t listen,” she said with a laugh, adding that parenting is not quite what it used to be.
“They let them do anything, say anything,” she said of parents and their children. “I am glad mine are grown!”
However, hearing about her decades of life in southern Delaware, one might think that not much has changed. After coming to Bayard, Showell worked picking strawberries and potatoes and doing housework for people. She cleaned cottages in Fenwick Island in the summer. She worked for 30 years for the Lynch family in Dagsboro, and her husband worked on a farm with chickens.
She said she doesn’t remember doing very much for fun “because we didn’t have any money and worked all the time,” but said she did enjoy being active in her church, Union Wesley in Clarksville.
But while some things seem as if they haven’t changed much, other things have changed greatly. She gave birth to her three children at home with a midwife, and her grandmother watched her children so she could work. She remembers when “colored” people were taken care of in the basement at Beebe Medical Center and says she never thought the area would see the growth that it has.
While Showell has seen many things her in 100 years, there are things she hasn’t done. She never learned to drive a car. (“I always had somebody drive me around”). She doesn’t use computers, and she is not a fan of cell phones, saying, “I’m too old to bother with that kind of stuff now.” She said TVs are nice to have, but “it’s a mess the stuff that comes on them!”
Looking back, she said she never thought she would live to be a centenarian.
“My mother lived to be 92, but the rest of them died young,” she said. “The Lord has kept me here for something.”
She was one of four girls and does have one living sister, who is 14 years her junior. It was that sister and her brother-in-law who recently threw her a bash celebrating her April 15 birthday.
“It was a big bash. It was beautiful,” she said. She was quick to point out, though, that she wouldn’t need a similar party for her 101st.
“It was a nice affair. But, when you get to be 100 years old, it gets tiresome.”
Despite some arthritis in her hands and feet, Showell is mobile and in good health.
She said that, overall, she has had a good life, and has always tried to be nice and “not interfere in people’s business.”
“When I got married, I was really happy, because I had a good husband. We got along good.” She said she didn’t marry again after taking care of her husband at the end of his life. “I decided I wouldn’t get married no more. I wasn’t the type of woman that just had to have a man,” she joked.
Pressed for some wisdom on what it might take to be content and live a good life, whether blessed with 20 years or 100 or somewhere in between, she said with her big smile: “You can’t jump at everything that says, ‘I want to marry you.’ You have to take your time. You give a little and you take a little — you know that song, don’t you?”