November Theatre
November 5, 2007
Daniel Rodrigue, Sr.
November 7, 2007
With one twist of the wind-up key, the 104-year-old, three-tier plastic birthday cake in the middle of the table came to life – shaking and singing “Happy Birthday” to Myrtie Jarrel Simmons last week.
The cake was a gift in 1904 from her parents, Simion and Nora Jarrel.
The well-kept gift is used annually to mark another milestone in Simmons’ life. Each time it’s wound, the dancing cake takes the Thibodaux woman back to her childhood in Hornbeck, La.
Today, the cake is an integral part of the party.
Simmons’ great-great-great-great nephew Gregory Adams pointed and cheered as the antique toy did its birthday bop for the 104th consecutive year – in honor Simmons’ 104th birthday.
Decked out in a rose print blazer, Simmons sat patiently as guests and five generations of family members photographed her at Copeland’s of New Orleans Restaurant in Houma Thursday.
“Look up, Maw Maw, and smile. Let the lady take your picture,” they chimed.
“That’s enough pictures. I am going to break that thing (the camera),” she joked in return.
While the Simmons greeted her guests, her sister, Ida Lee Reed, 96, grandson Edwin Alcoy Simmons Jr., 54, and granddaughter Vicki Schilleci, 60, embarked on a journey through Simmons’ life.
Schilleci describes her grandmother as a fun, loving, angel on earth. “She’s always happy and she always wants to go places and do things that are fun. She has never lived a boring dull life,” she said.
Simmons’ is Thibodaux Health-care Center’s oldest resident.
The Jarrel family migrated back and forth between Louisiana and Texas as father Simion looked for work as a sugarcane farmer. For years, the Jarrels would pack up their nine children [Myrtie is the third oldest] and travel from place to place in search of work at the local sugarcane mills.
By the mid-1990s, the Jarrel children were grown. Most of them settled in Hot Springs, Ark.
Myrtie married Alcoy Simmons and stayed in Louisiana with her parents.
While her husband worked for Standard Oil Company, a predecessor of Exxon Mobile Corporation, Simmons was a housewife and an avid seamstress.
Her favorite pastime was home stitching, sewing and crocheting blankets, tablecloths and other home décor accessories. She also spent her days caring for her only son, the late Edwin Alcoy Simmons Sr., and her niece and adoptive daughter Billie Strong, 80.
Simmons dedication to her family was echoed in story and story.
According to the family, during World War II, she joined other wives and mothers at the local post office in Trees, La., to wrap bandages for soldiers serving abroad.
“She always said, ‘I can spend all day wrapping bandages because I know if my son was wounded he would need them,'” Reed recalled her sister saying.
By 1952, Simmons and her mother had packed up and moved to Hot Springs with the rest of the family.
She remained there until she was 100 years old.
“At 100, Maw Maw was still trying to take care of herself,” said Simmons’ granddaughter-in-law Tina Simmons.
“She’s always been a strong person. She never had any health problems like the rest of us, but a few broken bones here and there,” Reed said.
Reed credits her sister’s good health to being a vegetarian. Simmons, Reed and Simmons’ younger sister, Geneva Alexander, 89, have been vegetarians since 1932.
Edwin Jr. and his wife Tina were concerned about Simmons’ fragility, so they moved her back to Louisiana and into Thibodaux Healthcare Center in September 2004.
Gregory Adams, Edwin Simmons Jr., birthday girl Myrtie Jarrel Simmons and her sister Ida Lee Reed celebrate at Copeland’s in Houma Thursday. * Photo by SOPHIA RUFFIN
