WAYNESBORO, Va. — A Waynesboro woman celebrated her 100th year birthday a few weeks ago.
Mary Ann Batten said she doesn’t feel like a centenarian. Instead, she feels like she’s only 70 years old. Although she has hearing and balancing difficulties, Batten has no major health problems.
“I bet you can’t do this,” Batten said as she proudly demonstrated a sit-and-reach stretch.
Batten’s second daughter, Beverlee Vaughan, said her mother often wakes up at 6 a.m. and spends most mornings either gardening or weeding her sidewalks. By 10 a.m., with her outside work done, she then sits down inside to “read a book a day.”
“You would not know that she is a 100 years old,” Vaughan said. “She gets up early and she’s starting to take naps, which she did not do really until this past year, but she’s out there constantly.”
In celebration of hitting the triple digits, her family made large, colorful posters they hung in her sunroom, had a dinner party at Stella, Bella & Lucy’s in downtown Waynesboro and her grandchildren paid to unofficially name a star after her.
“It was just so nice,” Batten tearfully said.
Batten has lived throughout modern history from the Great Depression, World War II, the segregation era, the first moon landing and much more.
“It’s amazing when I look back, when I think back, at how much progress we have made,” Batten said.
Batten was born in 1922 in Ohio but moved to Staunton when she was 7 years old when her father was hired as lead electrician for Waynesboro High School. Batten graduated from Waynesboro High School when she was 18 years old. While attending Waynesboro High School she met her future husband, Leighton. After high school, Batten attended the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, but left when WWII broke out after her father got a job offer in Fontana, California, as an electrical engineer for Kaiser Steel Mill.
After WWII, Batten and her husband moved back to Waynesboro in January 1945 after Leighton was done serving in war in California. The couple had three children — Barbara, Beverlee and Chip — during the baby boom era. Batten said during this time Waynesboro was an industrial town with factories including DuPont and Virginia Metalcrafters’ industrial complex.
“This was all pasture land, there was nothing, absolutely nothing,” Batten said of her neighborhood.
Although much different now than in the 1940s and 1950s, Batten said the River City is still a wonderul place.
“I’m a firm believer in doing. Don’t sit and do it,” she said. “Waynesboro has really, really changed and I’m really proud of it.”
During the segregation era, Batten said she was ahead of her time by having several Black friends.
“She’s the most loving person that anybody will ever meet,” Vaughan said. “She was a grandma to everybody. She didn’t have the same mindset a lot of people of her generation had in the South.”
Throughout her life, Batten was a stay-at-home mom to her three children except for three years when she worked at First Merchants Bank as a banker.
“I loved that job,” she said. “That was a fun job.”
Although she was offered a vice president position, Batten had to resign when her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at 55 years old.
“She needed to be home and take care of him and be his caregiver here at the house,” Vaughan said.
Despite the disease’s progression, Batten and her husband were still able to travel together with their family.
After her husband’s death when he was 75 years old about a quarter century ago, she continued to travel with her children and their families. She has visited Panama twice and took a cruise to the North Pole from Sweden.
“We were on a cruise to Russia and Germany,” Batten said. “We all got scarves and everything. We get up to the North Pole, it’s 72 degrees.”
What is Batten’s secret to a long life? Being happy and living a good clean life, she said.
Besides using her Olay skincare products to looking ageless, Batten said she eats healthy foods, wakes up early and is active daily in some form.
“We live a good clean life,” Vaughan said.
In today’s economic and political climate, she worries about the future of the country.
“I can’t stand that the economy has just absolutely gone crazy,” she said. “Younger generations have nothing to look forward to. There’s just no protection anywhere, I don’t care where you put your money, it’s going to be gone. I been through it in 1929 and it’s heading exactly the same way as it did.”
Having been through the Great Depression, Batten has some advice for younger generations. She urges people to be careful with their money, but still find ways to live life to the fullest.
“Enjoy it,” she said. “Enjoy every minute no matter what it is, enjoy it.”
Looking back over the past century, Batten said she has lived a good life.
“Our whole life was looking for fun, looking for joy,” she said. “We just had a wonderful life. I’m ready to go. I am. I’ve done it all. I’m ready.”
