Last night JJ called Florence, his grandmother. It was her birthday. She turned 89. EIGHTY NINE! THAT is an accomplishment. I got to talk to her for a little while, to wish her happy birthday and so on, and as I talked to her I came to the realization she has seen and heard so much. Think about it - she's 89. That means she was born on April 19, 1916 if I did my math right. So that means she's seen the end of WWI, the Great Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, D-Day on June 6, 1944, Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, both the appointing and death of Pope John Paul, II, the day JFK got shot and died, the civil rights movements of the 1960s, including Martin Luther King, Jr., the integration of the school systems, the Columbia space shuttle disaster, the first man on the moon, the OKC federal building bombing, the Columbine high school shooting, Christopher Reeve at the peak of his movie career, his accident, his death, the entire life of the late Princess Diana, September 11, and I'm sure countless other world and nationwide events that I just can't remember. How full a life it has been for her.
And yet the list continues because those are just the national and international things she's experienced. What about the local things? I don't know a whole lot about Florence but I know she was engaged to Tom Cooper's brother who died in a car accident, then, years later when Tom Cooper's first wife died of cancer, Florence married Tom and became Florence Cooper. She became Jackie's stepmother. She then got to watch Jackie go through high school, college, and law school. Then, Jackie met Terry, married her and 2 years later Jackie, Jr, or JJ, was born and Florence became a grandmother. 2 1/2 years after that, Sean was born. She watched them grow up. She watched them both graduate from high school and college, she watched as Sean married Paula and then became a great-grandmother when Sean and Paula had Genna and Walker. She watched Sean go through seminary and become a pastor. She watched JJ start his journalism career, and now she's still around as JJ is getting married. And this is just the stuff that I know about! There's so much stuff I don't know about, so much history, so much life there. As Florence said last night, "After living in 1 town for 89 years, I know everyone and I've seen it all." How true, how true. Florence has lived from age to age so hats off to Florence Cooper. It's certainly not an just a number, it's an accomplishment.
