Update: Lessie Brown died Jan. 8, 2019, at her daughters' home in Cleveland Heights. She was 114 years old.
Lessie Brown is asleep the first time I meet her.
But that’s not uncommon for the 113-year-old, who is the oldest known person in the United States. She turns 114 Sept. 22.
She sleeps most of the time now, in her bed with purple paisley pattern sheets tucked under a beige blanket. Her hair is up in a black shower cap, and I can almost see a soft smile on her face.
“Hi, momma,” whispers Lessie’s 90-year-old daughter, Vivian Hatcher. “How you doin,’ momma?” Vivian holds her mother’s hand while she talks to the nurse aide. “Did she eat OK?”
The aide tells her that Lessie almost finished an entire Ensure shake and even drank some water. “Good job, mama,” Vivian sighs while holding her mother’s hand between hers.
I can hear the relief in her voice.
Lessie’s room is covered in trinkets, photos and gifts from her family. Three giant cards hang on the wall opposite her bed that say, “Happy Birthday” and “We love you, Big Mommy” — a nickname she has earned over her years of treating everyone like family.
A photo of Lessie and her husband, Robert Brown, taken before he died in 1991 sits atop her bookshelf alongside photos of her grandkids, children and siblings.
Just a few hours into my first visit, I feel like I’ve known Lessie forever.
Verline and Vivian sit on the couch next to me reminiscing about playing dress-up in their mother’s clothes as if I had been there with them. Lessie’s great-granddaughter Angela Dow recalls a paper she wrote in college that focused on what Lessie remembered of major historical moments — Lessie was 8 years old when the Titanic sank, 59 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and 64 when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.
Even after four visits, Lessie was never able to speak to me. And yet her life’s story spills out from those around her, overflowing with tales of love, patience and faith.
It’s hard to ask questions as the room roars with laughter and reminiscing. Grandchildren, great-grandchildren and even great-great-grandchildren tell stories they haven’t thought about in years: putting plays on at Lessie’s house, watching her butcher chickens and receiving her special birthday baked goods.
As each person adds something else, Lessie’s life seems exponentially greater than her 113 years.
{ Early Life }
The seventh of 12 children, Lessie was born in Stockbridge, Georgia, in 1904 to Henry and Martha Barnes. Martha’s parents had been slaves in the same area.
Lessie attended school until eighth grade, when she decided to work full time on her parents’ farm. There she learned how to raise hogs, chickens and other animals.
When Lessie was 16, the family moved north to Cleveland. Her older siblings left first to find work and a place to live before her mother, father and a few of her siblings joined them. Eventually Lessie and her sister Lilly made the trip together. The country was still deeply segregated. African-Americans were pressured to stay in the South and work on farms, not move to the North to start a new life. So her father was forced to travel at night. The rest came in a small group, leaving behind anything they couldn’t carry.
“They had to come up just a few at a time,” says Verline.
After settling on the East Side for three years, Lessie’s parents longed for days outside the city where they could have a garden and raise animals, so they moved to Twinsburg.
Lessie and Lily stayed with their older sister, Lottie, to be closer to their job at Mount Sinai Hospital’s kitchen and laundry room in University Circle. At a Halloween party in 1924, someone caught Lessie’s eye: a tall man with deep, dark eyes and a perfectly square face that made a dimple on his chin when he cracked a smile.
Robert Brown stole her heart immediately. He and Lessie weren’t dating for more than two months before they were engaged. They married in his family home in 1925.
“They were married for 66 years before he passed,” Verline says.
Their first child, Robert Jr., was born in 1926. They lived in an apartment on Cedar Road in the Fairfax neighborhood even as the family grew to five children. Robert worked various factory jobs and Lessie traveled downtown each day to the Statler Hotel and another office on Carnegie Avenue to clean rooms.
“She worked a lot,” Verline says. “Sometimes my sister and I would walk to work with her just to spend more time with her.”
Around 1940, Robert and Lessie moved to Bedford. Their kids were getting older — the youngest, Delorie, was around 8. So Robert built a small white, one-story, three-bedroom home with his own hands.
It hosted some of their most precious times, from family holidays gathered around the table to Lessie meeting her first grandchild.
One of Verline’s favorite memories is helping her mother in the kitchen. “My mother was an amazing cook,” she says with a smile. “I used to try and help her when I was young, but my favorite part was when the food was done and we could eat.”
Lessie was known for her yeast rolls, sweet potato cobbler, blackberry pie and green beans and ham.
“Even though she had so many grandkids and great-grandkids, she still remembered everyone’s favorite dessert for their birthday,” Lessie’s grandson Ronald Wilson says. “My favorite was vanilla cake with chocolate icing. I got that every year.”
But nothing compared to her fried chicken. She raised chickens in the backyard for eggs and the occasional dinner. “Whenever mother wanted fried chicken, my dad would tell her, ‘OK Lessie, but just one chicken,’ ” Verline says holding back a giggle. “I don’t know where he thought those four drumsticks came from, but he never argued.”
