Deep faith helps New Madrid man reach 105

Monday, September 19, 2005
Willie Harris

NEW MADRID - Every day Willie Harris wakes up, opens his eyes, takes a breath and thanks God for another day.

God has heard Harris' thanks for a long time. At 105, Harris, himself marvels about God's gifts to him. "I don't have a pain in my body. I don't take no medicine," he announced, with a smile.

Born May 30, 1900, in Jackson, Miss., Harris is New Madrid's newest yet almost accidental resident.

He explained he was visiting his sister in Michigan. "After she died I took a notion to go back south," said Harris. He boarded a bus and began the trek home to Monroe, La., when he became ill. When the bus stopped at New Madrid he got off to recuperate.

Harris said he met a man who told him about the local apartments for the elderly, was befriended by others and soon decided to make this his home. He is the last of his family, outliving his parents, his two brothers, two sisters, his wife, his daughter and his son.

But Harris doesn't complain, instead he simply offers thanks once again for a long life and being on his own, assisted by a cane, his friends and a deep faith in God.

The more than a century of life has given Harris a look at the changes in the United States. "My mind's good. I can think of things that a lot of people have done forgot," he said with a laugh.

His earliest memory is of going to work in the fields with his father. "My dad started me to work behind a plow with a pair of oxen in the field," he said. "After a couple of years, we got mules. Then you could farm a lot faster."

While their life on the farm was hard, the family had all they needed. He recalled a farm with cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys.

Money, however, was tight. "We didn't live in no flower bed. The government didn't give you anything like they do now. You had to work all the time. You might make 75 cents a day, then it went up to a $1 and stayed there for a long time," he recalled.

When not farming with his father, Harris worked for others. He recalled picking cotton and being able to pick 300 pounds in a day - the work netted him a dollar and blisters on his shoulders from pulling the cotton sack through the field. But he kept on working, he said.

After his father died in 1941, Harris took on a new career. For more than 36 years he worked as a brakeman on a freight train.

While his father taught him the value of work, it was his mother, he fondly recalled, who taught him about love and God. "We didn't have no shoes but we would wash our feet and legs and go to church," he remembered. "She taught me to put my hands in God's hands."

Admitting to getting around as a young man, Harris said whenever he came home he would listen to his mother. Her advice kept him out of trouble and encouraged him to take care of his health. "She would tell me it is just as easy to do right as do wrong," Harris said. "You ought to do right and walk in the footsteps of the Lord."

It is a message he said today's young people are not hearing. He worries about those who abuse alcohol and drugs and complained of the government's effort to keep prayer out of school, which he remembered as being a part of his daily school routine along with the Pledge of Allegiance and a morning song.

"Back then people were more accepting, more helpful, more loving. Now, they are selfish," said Harris, a church deacon for more than 60 years. "I don't know what is going to happen to them, they are living fast, driving after money. There will come a day when they will need the Lord but they will have lost their souls."

Although the last of his family, Harris looks at his situation philosophically: "It's just like when I started out, I had no one then, and now I got no one. But I got so many friends. There are so many nice people here."

For those who ask about his long life, he advises them to take care of their bodies, not to abuse whiskey or drugs. Also, he said, people should treat one another like they would like to be treated.

Keeping the Bible close by and offering a hymn whenever a song strikes him, Harris said he realizes his body is weak. But, he continued, it doesn't worry him. "I'm living in the Lord's hand and the Lord has his arms around me. I'm not scared to take that last breath."

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