A combined 394 years old, the Laird Sisters continue to be a force of nature

By Jim Muir

It’s always a unique, entertaining and interesting story to hear of an individual that lives a long, full life into their late 90s or even beyond to the 100-year-old mark. When considering the Laird sisters – Fanny, Mitzie, Mary and Wanda – multiply unique, entertaining and interesting by four.
The four sisters are the daughters of Joe and Mary Ann Laird, who raised five children in a single-level frame home located at 612 West Reed Street, in Benton, Illinois. It was the last house on the street, where West Reed intersects with North Du Quoin Street. Joe was a coal miner and Mary Ann was a homemaker. After marrying in 1919, Joe and Mary Ann had five children in rapid succession. James Fred, was born in 1920, Fanny May, was born in 1921, Mitzie, was born in 1924, Mary, was born in 1927 and the baby of the family, Wanda, was born in 1930.

James Fred was born deaf and, as was the custom in that era, he was sent to a school for the hearing-impaired in Jacksonville, Illinois. James Fred lived to be 89 years old and died in 2009.

The four sisters lived their lives in Benton, attending school and graduating from Benton High School, during or shortly after World War II. Here’s where the stories for Fanny, Mitzie, Mary and Wanda takes on all those adjectives (and several more) that were mentioned earlier.
First, and the most amazing aspect of this story, is that all four sisters are still alive. That’s a combined 394 years of living for the Laird sisters. Fanny is 103 and resides in a nursing facility in Kentucky, Mitzie, who is 100 years old, lives in Florissant, Missouri with her son, Mary, at age 97, lives by herself in the same house in rural Sesser, Illinois that she has called home for the past 76 years. And only a short distance down the country road, Wanda, who is the “youngster” of the four Laird sisters at age 94, also lives alone in the same house she has resided in for 75 years.

While Fanny’s health has deteriorated some in the past year, the other three sisters are bright, charming and, as the old-saying states, “sharp as a tack.”
One of the interesting and unique anecdotes about the two youngest sisters (Mary and Wanda) is that they married brothers, Tom and Walter Newbury, who both operated successful farming operations northeast of Sesser. Mary and Wanda have lived and raised their respective families, as the crow flies, about two miles apart for more than seven decades. And the fact that Mary and Tom Newbury had four children and Wanda and Walter Newbury had two children, means that there are literally dozens and dozens of double-cousins and double-second and third cousins that were created from the two Laird sisters meeting the two Newbury brothers back in the 1940s.
In an effort to tell the story of the Laird sisters, an interview was arranged with Mary and Wanda. Several family members attended the interview to listen to Mary and Wanda recall dates of births, deaths and weddings with uncanny accuracy from decades past. In all, there were children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren involved in the interview, making it a four-generation event. Mitzie was later interviewed by phone from St. Louis.

Family members pointed out that what the sisters don’t have stored in their sharp memory, they have documented in handwritten notes on calendars and in journals that have been kept through the decades.

As one family member stated: “If something newsworthy happened it’s written down. It might take a while to figure out which calendar or which volume its in, but if we look long enough, we can find it.”

Mary said she recalled her life in Benton growing up as “good, but we were very poor.” All the sisters attended Lincoln Grade School, a neighborhood school that was located only a few blocks from the Laird family home. All four sisters also attended Benton High School, located on East Main Street. All four walked to school every day. Mary said her dad worked at Orient No. 2 Mine, in West Frankfort, Illinois, but noted that during that era the mining industry was not considered steady employment during that era. She also remembered that her dad was working at Orient 2 when it was the site of one of the worst mining disasters in the nation. On December 21, 1951, 119 miners were killed when a methane-fueled explosion ripped through the mine. Joe Laird was on a different shift and was not at work that fateful night.

Mary described her family life growing up as “great” but also very mundane.

“Our big outing every week was going to church,” Mary recalled. “We were there every time the doors were open. We went on Sunday morning, Sunday night and again on Wednesday night. We never missed church.”

She said the family attended the Benton Church of God, which she believed was “located off of Bailey Lane to the south near the railroad tracks.”
As an illustration and life lesson that one contact can change a life, Mary related the sequence of events that led to her meeting her future husband, Tom Newbury, which of course, led to Wanda meeting Walter Newbury.

“There was a man at the church that was a manager at FS Grain, in Benton, and he was looking for a bookkeeper and he offered me a job,” she said. “I graduated high school on a Friday night and I started working at FS on Saturday morning.”

And since local farmers frequented FS Grain on a regular basis, it was there that she met her future husband, Tom Newbury. And seven months after that initial first date, the couple were married on August 21, 1948 standing in the front yard of the Laird residence at 612 West Reed Street, in Benton. From that union, Tom and Mary had four children, Mary Jane (Gee), who passed away two years ago, Tom, Jr., Janice (Page) and Janine (Kelley). Tom, Sr. and Mary were married for 62 years until his death in 2010 at the age of 86.

Tom, Jr. said his dad remained proud of that “front yard wedding” his entire life.

‘He used to talk about people that would spend thousands of dollars on a wedding and then the marriage wouldn’t last,” Tom, Jr. said. “He used to say, ‘they don’t have any sticking power. Then he would say, ‘after all the years…our front yard wedding is still holding.’”

Mary said she found great pride that her life had primarily consisted of raising and taking care of her family and helping on the farm. When posed with a question about regrets in her life, or doing things differently, Mary gave a poignant answer.

“I honestly don’t have any regrets at all,” she said. “I can’t think of one thing that I would do differently. I’ve lived a good and a full life.”

Actually, Mary accepting a job at FS didn’t change just two lives, it changed four. After Mary met Tom Newbury and began dating, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out how Mary’s younger sister Wanda and Tom’s older brother Walter got together. Four months after Tom and Mary said their “I do’s” Walter and Wanda were married on December 25, 1948. So, within a matter of four months’ time in 1948, Mary and Wanda, after spending their entire lives on West Reed Street, in Benton, moved to rural Sesser and began life as the wives of busy farmers.

Wanda and Walter had three children, James Walter, who passed away shortly after birth, then David (1952) and Barb (1954) were born. Walter passed away in 2021 at the age of 98. At the time of his death, Wanda and Walter had been married for 73 years.

Wanda recalled that Walter made her a promise before marriage – a promise that he kept over and over through the decades.

“He told me that he would provide for our family and he would work hard and take care of us,” Wanda said. “And he did that his entire life.”

Wanda recalled a harrowing story about a fateful day on the farm when she feared for the lives of herself and her children, David and Barb. On April 5, 1958, a tornado originated in Perry County, traveled east and damaged and destroyed scores of homes in Sesser and then continued east toward the still-standing Horse Prairie Church. Walter and Wanda’s home was just a short distance east of the church. Walter was at a grain bin a few miles north of the home and saw the tornado approaching and actually saw a silo blow away, but didn’t have enough time to get back to the family residence. Wanda recalled in great detail and emotion, those few frantic minutes of that spring day nearly 70 years ago.

“I had just walked out the back door to feed the chickens and I saw the tornado approaching from the west,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “I ran back in the house and grabbed my babies (David was six years old and Barb was three years old) and we made a run for the basement. Just as we got down the stairs, the entire house was just gone, it just blew away, there was nothing left.”

Wanda said she “cried out to God” as she headed down the basement stairs.

“I just prayed, ‘God take it all…but save me and these babies,” she said. “And I believe God was watching over us and protected us during that tornado.”

Almost 67 years later, David still remembers those moments.

“We (David and Barb) were standing in the front window and we saw the black cloud, but we didn’t know what it was and mom grabbed us and just as we got to the basement the house was just gone. I can still remember looking up and it was just pouring down rain on us. And I can remember some family members coming and pulling us out of the basement. They always talk about the noise that a tornado creates, I still remember that noise, it’s something you never forget.”

Wanda added that they had just had the house remodeled and the carpenters had finished the day before the tornado.

“We hadn’t even paid the carpenters or the lumber yard yet and it was all gone,” she said.

She said the family rebuilt at the same site in the house that she continues to live in today.

Since attending church had been such an integral part of both Mary’s and Wanda’s lives, they continued that practice when they made the move to rural Sesser, and since Horse Prairie Baptist Church was only a short distance away, that became the home church for both families through the decades. While neither Mary or Wanda are able to attend church now because of mobility issues, both still rely on their upbringing and emphasized that prayer and reading their bible is a daily practice.

“It’s the first thing I do in the morning, I read scriptures from the bible,” said Mary. “It’s the best way possible that I could start my day.”
Family members who attended the interview pointed out that Wanda began decades ago, at the request of her husband, reading the biblical account in Luke about the birth of Jesus.

“And I was able to read it again this year,” she said proudly, “so I am thankful for that.”
While Mary and Wanda both left Benton and still reside in Benton more than 75 years later, older sister Mitzie, also a Benton High School graduate (1943), got married and lived in various locations throughout the Midwest. She currently lives with her only son, Terry and his wife Keryl, in Florissant, Missouri. Mitzie, will turn 101 on June 5.

During a phone interview, Mitzie’s voice was strong and clear and she answered questions concisely and without hesitation.

The church the family attended also played an integral role in Mitzie’s life – it’s also where she met her husband.

“I met my husband Gene at church,” Mitzie recalled. “He was from West Frankfort and he was in the Army at the time. When he got out of the service we got married and moved to Paducah, Kentucky.”

Mitzie recalled that through the years her and Gene, and one son Terry, would live in Missouri and then moved to different locations in Indiana, including Kokomo, Hammond and Highland.

Mitzie’s life has not been without tragedy, her husband was killed in a car crash in 1984, when a young driver ran a red light and collided with her husband’s vehicle broadside at an intersection. Gene Harris was only 58 years old, and Mitzie never remarried.
Mitzie called it a “tremendous family blessing” that all four sisters had lived such long and healthy lives.

“We were all raised in a good home, with good parents that were good to us and siblings that loved each other,” Mitzie said. “We’ve all had good marriages and good children. None of our children have never been in any kind of trouble. All of us have been Christians and been active in church work and I think God has really blessed us.”

Mitzie said her health remains good and she is mobile enough to still walk “anywhere I need to go.”

“Sometimes I use a cane to help with my balance and sometimes I don’t,” she said. “Overall, to be 100 years old, I think I’m still in good health.”
Mitzie, just like Wanda and Mary, has attended church all her life and still reads her bible daily, providing a great example of the way they were raised and attended church regularly.

Echoing her sisters, Mitzie said, “I read my bible the first thing every morning.”
Mitzie, who has three grandchildren, said she still communicates with her three sisters regularly.

“I talk on the phone to all of them every week,” Mitzie said. “After all these years I still enjoy talking to them and we still have lots to talk about.”
Mary and Wanda both said they try to stay active so they can continue to get around. Mary has a stationary bike that she rides daily (at age 97) and Wanda has a small device that allows her to sit on the couch or in a chair and pedal and keep her legs active.

When asked about what she attributed her long and healthy life to, Mary gave a touching, but also a surprising and humorous answer.

“I was sickly as a child, I had bronchial trouble and I’ve dealt with that all my life, but I think growing up in a good Christian home is the reason we’ve all lived long lives. But I also think it had something to do with the chocolate cake.”

That answer certainly prompted an explanation about how chocolate cake played into their long lives.

“When we were growing up, my dad left for work at 4 a.m. every day and as soon as he went to work my mom would bake a chocolate cake,” Mary recalled. “When we got up, at 6 a.m. we would have hot chocolate cake right out of the oven, with hot tea. Looking at all the long lives we’ve lived…I believe there had to be something in that chocolate cake.”

By Jim Muir

I like to look at what I do in this space as small ‘portraits’ of life through my eyes. Today’s ‘portrait’ involves fading summer, a lifelong love affair and ‘travelin’ on.’

Let me explain.

I’m asked to speak at various venues on a regular basis, a list that in the past year has included sports banquets at a half dozen high schools, a junior high and high school graduation and various civic groups. It’s something I enjoy.

Recently, I experienced a ‘first’ – I was asked to speak at a birthday party for 100-year-old Stella (Burzynski) Stewart, of Benton. I hold the Stewart family in high regard and I saw the request as an honor and a challenge so I readily accepted the invitation.

Stella is one of 12 children of immigrant parents and grew up in Rend City, an area located northwest of Benton, near Valier. Stella raised eight children and still lives alone. To say Stella is a remarkable lady who has lived a remarkable life would be an understatement.

When I arrived at the party at the Benton Kiwanis Hall, I knew many people there and I sort of just mixed and mingled and visited – something I do very well. The person I spent the most time talking with that day was Ruth Grammer, Stella’s 88-year-old ‘younger’ sister.

Ruth was married to former Grand Ole Opry star Billy Grammer, who passed away in 2011. Billy also grew up in Rend City, one of 13 children, and achieved stardom in 1958 with his million-seller Top 5 hit, “Gotta Travel On.” Ruth and Billy were married 65 years.
On an afternoon when reminiscing was the main theme I listened as Ruth told me about graduating high school at age 16 and traveling alone 900 miles to Washington, D.C. for her first job. She said it was the most excited and scared she has ever been in her life.
I heard about Billy borrowing $50 from Verbal Rea, who ran the relief office in Valier, to hitchhike to Virginia for a job possibility with nationally known disc jockey Connie B. Gay, who had a live radio show at WARL Radio in Arlington, Va.

You could still see the pride in Ruth’s eyes when she finished the story by telling me that Billy beat out 150 other guitarists and won the audition and a spot on the national radio show. She talked and recalled Billy’s success in country music that led to appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand,” “Bill Anderson’s Backstage Opry,” “Hee Haw” and others. He also worked as a front man musician for the likes of Patsy Cline, Grandpa Jones, Charlie Pride, Louis Armstrong, George Jones and Ernest Tubb. I did more listening than talking but thoroughly enjoyed visiting with Ruth.

Last Sunday morning, the day before Labor Day, Ruth did what she has done every Sunday morning for virtually her entire life – she headed to Rend City Baptist Church – the church she attended as a child, the church where she married the love of her life way back in 1944. During the service, and without a sound, Ruth simply slumped over in the pew and passed away – suffering a massive heart attack. Much like a cowboy dying with his boots on, Ruth passing away at the church she loved and that had been such a huge part of her life seemed proper and fitting to me.
After I heard about Ruth passing away, I spent a good deal of time recalling our conversation only eight days earlier. The single thing that stood out to me was that she really missed Billy every single day. As she had told me the weekend before she died, she missed talking to him, she missed holding his hand, she missed listening to him ‘make a guitar talk’ … she just missed him.

“Oh, how I wish I could sit and watch him play guitar again,” is one poignant comment that stuck with me.

Through the wonders of modern technology, I went to YouTube and found a recording of Billy Grammer performing “Gotta Travel On.”

I watched the black and white video and I was struck by the irony in the chorus of the song and the timing of Ruth’s death. The chorus goes like this:

I’ve laid around and played around
This old town too long
Summer’s almost gone
Yes, winter’s comin’ on
I’ve laid around and played around
This old town too long
And I feel like I gotta travel on

While fall does not officially begin until September 23, I’ve always thought of Labor Day weekend as the unofficial end of summer. And on Labor Day weekend 2015, with summer almost gone and winter comin’ on, Ruth Grammer traveled on and crossed the threshold from this life to the next one. And I believe her beloved Billy, probably with guitar in hand and a big smile on his face, was there waiting for her. While there was a sense of sadness for me that Ruth had passed and the world had lost such a remarkable woman, there was a greater sense of joy because she is reunited with the love of her life. What a reunion that must have been!

“Ask yourself how old would you be
If you didn’t know the day you were born”

From “Don’t Let the Old Man In” by Toby Keith

By Jim Muir

I want to begin today by asking you to ponder the poignant question raised by country star Toby Keith in his classic song, “Don’t let the old man in.” While you might have a totally different perspective on that powerful lyric, what I take from that line is simple. Are we all expected to act a certain way just because there is a number attached to us that is based on the day we were born?

I heard that song for the first time recently and that single, simple line has caused me to do a lot of thinking and soul-searching. In short, should we act, dress, eat, talk, retire, sleep and interact with others based on “the day you were born.” In short, I believe our age is a number and we’re only as old as we feel! In other words, being a certain age isn’t a doesn’t mean we should be grouchy, irritable or quit work and things we enjoy doing.
That little blast about the past was prompted by a column I wrote last month lamenting the fact that young folks don’t play outside anymore and that 21st Century gizmos and gadgets have sadly taken the place of those wonderful sandlot games of (name the sport) that many of us enjoyed in the days of our youth. Many people reached out to me about that column, all people in my age group, and agreed that with the loss of neighborhood interaction with friends we have lost something very special through the decades. Sadly, I don’t think it’s something that will ever be regained.

I want to continue on that same theme this month. Let me explain!

From the time I was born until I left home at the ripe old age of 18, I lived on North Street in Sesser. There were two locations on that wonderful little street, but North Street was home and still holds countless great memories for me. Here’s a little geography lesson on North Street. If you were to travel north on Route 148 out of Sesser, three blocks from the 4-Way stop is where North Street intersects with the state highway. Even as a kid I always found it interesting that North Street runs east and west?! There’s no wonder I am sometimes confused!

From the time I was born until I was 12 years old my family lived in a small house on North Street, east from Route 148. Then we moved three blocks west to a much nicer and larger house that was one block west of Route 148, but still on North Street. Interestingly, at both locations there was a vacant lot that became a hangout for youngsters from the neighborhood for games of every competition imaginable. If you’re young and reading this and you have every wondered why your parents or grandparents are stubborn and hard-headed, look no further than those highly-spirited and competitive neighborhood games from yester-year where determination, grit, toughness and a will-to-win were honed.

My recollection from those days on North Street started me thinking of the many people from that neighborhood and one elderly gentleman also came to mind. Directly across the street from the first house I lived in on North Street was a simple, gray house with a front porch. An elderly man that all the neighborhood kids called “Asbury” lived there alone. I have thought often that I wished I had taken notes or kept a journal during those childhood days so I could recall exact details about Asbury. I just remember him as being a kind, gentle, always-smiling man who loved the kids in the neighborhood. In fact, that vacant lot where we congregated, often more than a dozen kids, belonged to Asbury. And it never failed that when we had one of our epic games of wiffle ball, football or maybe even Red Rover, Asbury would come outside with a bowl of candy, a plate of cookies and a pitcher of lemonade for us. Sadly, I don’t know if parents would allow the interactions we had with Asbury to happen here in 2024. I guess that’s something else we’ve lost along the way.

While the memories of my friends from that wonderful neighborhood – the Dugger sisters (Darby, Nancy, Connie and Susie), Lecil, Terry, Rick and Debbie Witcher, Rick Basso, Jeff Wilkerson, Joe and Shelley Marlo, Roger Jones, Lanny Allen, Kevin and Greg Minor, my brother Billy and many others are warm and vivid in my mind, thoughts of our friend Asbury also provide wonderful recollections about the good old days on North Street.

I recently had a conversation with a longtime friend and stories about Asbury surfaced. I was told that he was buried at Paradise Prairie Cemetery, located on Route 154 in Perry County. On a recent day I decided to try to find his grave and without much effort I was able to locate it. As I stood at his gravesite, I studied the names and dates on the gray, marble monument. The information was scant and provided me with a few answers, but also raised more questions.
Asbury was born in 1877 and died in 1963 at the age of 86, so in those days when he wasn’t acting his age and instead was laughing, joking and making lemonade for youngsters he would have been in his 80s. His wife, Mae, was born in 1865 and died in 1955 at the age of 90, so he was a widower during those days. I also found it interesting that Mae was 12 years old than him, but perhaps the one bit of information I gleaned from the monument was the death of an infant child that was born and died in 1915.

Was that Asbury’s only child that had died? And was that why he loved that rag-tag group of heathens on North Street so much? I suppose those questions will remain unanswered, but as I stood at his monument and pondered things like age, mortality, names and dates chiseled in marble, children playing games on vacant lots and wonderful memories, the one constant thought that kept rolling around in my mind is that everybody should have the privilege and joy once during their lifetime of having a friend like Asbury!

Let me leave you today with a question I began this offering with: “How old would you be if you didn’t know the day you were born?