This month brought the death of a woman I have known most of my life, whom I will call Mary, at the stunning age of 104.

Mary lived a comfortable and largely happy life with her husband and 3 children, who gave Mary 8 grandchildren, and I have lost track of the numbers of great-grands and great-great-grands she had.  Trust me that the family photo taken at Mary’s last birthday celebration looks a bit like a mini-convention. Mary knew everyone’s name and birthday.

Now that it is over, I cannot help but think of all that happened and how much changed during Mary’s long life.

She was born in eastern North Carolina at a time that, if you had a telephone at all, an operator connected you with whoever it was you were calling.  Today we all have our own phones.  

I do not know for sure, but I suspect Mary’s family did not own a car as fewer than 1 percent of Americans did the year she was born, and there probably not many cars in rural North Carolina. 

An exciting event had occurred in Mary's neck of the woods a few years before her birth. Orville Wright managed to stay afloat on a glider for nearly 10 minutes at Kill Devil Hills, setting a world’s record that stood for 10 years.  Today we book a flight online and fly virtually anywhere in the world.

Mary was unusual for her time in that she attended college, which few men did and even fewer women.  She married and moved near Charlotte where she lived the rest of her years. Davidson-educated Woodrow Wilson, our 28th President,  was in the White House, meaning that Mary lived through 19 of our 47 Presidents.  

At home in North Carolina, Democrats were firmly in control of government and would remain so for almost 100 years. None of this would have mattered to baby Mary, because when she was born, she did not have the right to vote.  That came with a Constitutional amendment in 1919, so that Mary was able to vote when she became 21.

When Mary was born, North Carolina’s population was just over 2.2 million people.  Today, we are 11 million and growing. Most of young Mary’s North Carolina was rural, with farming being the primary occupation.  There were no real cities as we know them today, as our state capital had just over 19,000 residents.  Today, Raleigh’s population is bumping up on half a million people with a metro area population of 1.6-million.  

Life was not easy for most North Carolinians when Mary was growing up. While industrialization was underway in other parts of the nation, North Carolina remained largely rural.  

Few women were employed and if they were, the jobs were menial except for teaching and nursing positions.  Life for people of color was tightly restricted with segregation and Jim Crow laws in full effect.  North Carolina’s literacy rate was around 20-percent.  Today we have AI to write for us.

Mary’s children and her children’s children saw her through her final days and will remember her with love.  Most, but not all, continue to live in North Carolina.  

It is impossible not to think how different the world Mary entered is from the one we live in now and the one Mary’s grands and great-grands will inhabit in the years ahead.