{"id":2056,"date":"2024-07-02T13:10:31","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T13:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demolinks2.com\/nina-melillo\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2024-07-02T13:42:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T13:42:18","slug":"inspiration-during-trying-timescovid-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demolinks2.com\/nina-melillo\/inspiration-during-trying-timescovid-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration During Trying Times\u2026\u2026Covid Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When I read this article from the Washington Post, I realized the woman who is narrating was born the same year as my Dad. I have been thinking about him a lot lately, so perhaps this is his way of comforting me through Lucille\u2019s words. I hope you also receive some comfort from her inspiring words\u2026..<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/history\/2020\/04\/05\/centenarian-coronavirus-1918-flu-depression-world-war-2\/?utm_campaign=wp_the_optimist&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_optimist<\/u><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Comfort from a 102-year-old who has lived through a flu pandemic, the Depression and WWII<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2018You see a lot when you get to be 102,\u2019 Lucille Ellson says, and learn a lot, too.’<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Inspiration During Trying Times<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Lucille Ellson in the 1930s. (Family photo)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By Jesse Dougherty<\/strong><\/a> April 5, 2020 at 7:30 a.m. EDT<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At Lucille Ellson\u2019s home, inside her brimming drawers, are hints of how the present mirrors the past.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ellson is 102 years old. She was born Dec. 30, 1917, right before a flu spread through military camps in Europe and the United States and became a global pandemic. She was a baby then, unaware, but heard stories of how her uncle contracted the flu while serving in World War I; and how her father got it so bad that he took time away from the family farm outside Laurens, Iowa.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Neither died. Ellson\u2019s mother would remind her of that, too. But it wasn\u2019t Ellson\u2019s last time living through a historic crisis. She was a teenager during the Great Depression. She was a schoolteacher and young wife during World War II. And she has reflected on that as the country faces another pandemic, this one from the novel coronavirus.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ellson has been going through the letters, newspaper clippings and other stuff \u2014 she calls it \u201cmumbo jumbo\u201d \u2014 she\u2019s kept over a century. It all reminds her of what\u2019s gripping the country, the feeling of being stuck inside and a bit scared, and of not knowing what the future holds.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lucille Ellson on her 102nd birthday on Dec. 30. (Jane Pickle)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI know a lot of people are in a panic about their weddings because they have to cancel them or postpone them,\u201d Ellson said this week from her home in Orlando. \u201cWell, let me tell you about my wedding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She can only draw faded lines between the coronavirus and the 1918 flu, since all those stories are second hand. The lines get thicker between today and the Great Depression, spanning 1929 to 1933, with millions applying for unemployment and the economy faltering. But Ellson sees today and the World War II period as true parallels.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It starts, for her, with a delayed wedding. She was supposed to marry Floyd Ellson in July 1942. Then came the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. She and Floyd knew what that meant. He had a low draft number. Their marriage would have to wait. He was soon enlisted in the Navy, sent away for training, and Ellson stayed home teaching in Iowa while panic reigned.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Plumbers were out of work, she remembered, because all metal was directed to the war effort. A few local heating businesses closed for the same reason. People left her tiny town and rushed west, hoping for jobs building ships in California or Washington state. There was a shortage of teachers, and the school system begged her brother, who had fallen sick and was discharged from the Army, to come use his college degree in their classrooms.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI spent so much time reading the ration book,\u201d Ellson recalled. \u201cThe grocery store shelves were empty. It wasn\u2019t quite like now, because you were allowed outside, but there was the same fear. That we didn\u2019t know what was going to happen tomorrow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lucille Ellson and husband Floyd when they were dating. (Family photo)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When she and Floyd did have their wedding, about a year later than expected, they weren\u2019t gifted any metal dishware or table cloths. Those materials were still needed in large bulk by the U.S. military. She left teaching for a desk job at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. He was away for 17 months as a gunnery officer. They were lucky and lost no relatives or close friends in the war.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She\u2019s 105. He\u2019s 106. The world\u2019s oldest living couple celebrates 80 years of marriage.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Floyd didn\u2019t make it home for Christmas in 1944. But he did send a letter to Lucille, who would soon give birth to their first child, a baby girl named Jane. They loved writing to each other. They would later write a book together, titled \u201cMy First 100 Years,\u201d an effort Lucille finished after Floyd died at 104 in 2012. They had been married for 69 years.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cDarling I really love you,\u201d Floyd penned to Lucille in a letter dated Dec. 25, 1944. \u201cEverything you wrote & each little package just brought out to me your really true colors. You made this a very pleasant Christmas in such a way that I cannot be bitter. I can only hope we can be together next year & we can demonstrate to each other only what we can feel now. \u2026 I will sign off now and dream of you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Floyd was honorably discharged on Dec. 20, 1945. He made it back to Iowa for Christmas with Lucille and Jane.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve been through so many things,\u201d Ellson said. \u201cTo cope with this virus, and all that\u2019s going on, I would tell people to not get stressed about planning far ahead. You can\u2019t do it. A long time ago, I started making a list every morning of what I had to do. It was the only thing I could control, and I stuck to it, you hear me?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Those lists are similar day-to-day: Check in on family with her iPad, do Zoom video calls with her kids, their kids, and their kids\u2019 kids. Make meals and bake desserts to leave on the front porch for her son who lives nearby. She cooked for 25 people in February. She calls that preparing \u201ca little something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lucille Ellson in her home in June. (Glenn Hettinger)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ellson has few infirmities for her age, wearing a hearing aid and taking thyroid and blood pressure medicine. She still walks unassisted when inside. She otherwise uses a rollator for balance and storage. She calls it her \u201cbuggy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lately, she\u2019s been focused on organizing the drawers that show a life in full. She is sorting the mumbo jumbo into categories. One is for when her house will be sold, a pile of neighborhood regulations, the property deed, and old contracts that Floyd signed. Another is for receipts she doesn\u2019t want to throw away. Another is for her kids, with the first-grade report card that shows she received a \u201cD\u201d in deportment and more letters from the war.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is not her way of wasting time. She wishes she had more of that. But what Ellson wants people to know \u2014 \u201cif I can preach for a minute,\u201d she requested with a laugh \u2014 is that this, like everything else, will pass.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI learned that from living, I guess,\u201d she said. \u201cYou see a lot when you get to 102.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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