Lillian Stubbs knows how to put an outfit together. She always has.
“See this?” Stubbs said, clutching her lavender jacket. “Now isn’t that pretty?”
The coat’s shade complemented red and purple hues in the floral shirt underneath. Stubbs’ earrings and black bracelet matched her pants – she always wears jewelry.
Stubbs loves vibrant colors, too. A bright pink, gold-buttoned jacket hung from the closet doors of her room at Williamsburg Landing’s Woodhaven complex. She’ll wear it to her 110th birthday party.
The world has changed around Lillian Howell Stubbs, but it hasn’t changed her.
With a laugh as constant as her impeccable style, and a love still unwavering, she turns 110 on Saturday.
Born April 30, 1906, just three years after the first airplane flight and six years before the Titanic sunk, Stubbs grew up on a farm with two brothers and seven sisters.
Family was her world then, as it is now. Photos decorate her bedroom walls, including a black-and-white photo of her parents, photos of her son Irving and daughter Jane, some of her seven grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Seated in the green recliner by her window, two days before her birthday, Stubbs doesn’t look 110. You’re reminded of her age by the nearby wheelchair, in her trouble hearing and sometimes remembering. But mostly, she makes you forget.
“I’m 120 years old – not really,” she said, joking.
Living as a supercentenarian
At her age, Stubbs is already in rare company.
Robert Young estimated about one in four million people in the U.S. live to be 110 or older, a group known as supercentenarians. Young is director of the Supercentenarian Research and Database Division for the California-based Gerontology Research Group (GRG).
Based on U.S. data, Young said more than 70,000 people are 100 and older, while the number of people 110 and over is closer to 70.
The oldest known Virginian is 112 years old, Young said.
“The thing that’s become clear is that supercentenarians do have commonalities … they tend to not be overweight. They tend to be female. They tend to be self-directed individuals. They don’t get emotionally upset about things,” he said.
Even so, the supercentenarian secret isn’t formulaic.
“These people that live to 110, they just had certain genetic makeup,” Young said.
A constant love
Irving R. Stubbs, 89, thinks there’s more to it.
Irving Stubbs penned a birthday letter to his mother in early April, explaining what he thinks has contributed to such a long, full life: her love, her faith in God, her sense of humor.
“Love is a central dynamic of your life and your way of living,” Irving Stubbs wrote. “It has contributed to the quality of life that has sustained you for these many years.”
He wrote of the love between Lillian and Irving P. Stubbs — the two were married 60 years before the senior Irving died in 1981. He wrote of Lillian’s constant love for himself and Jane, who died in 2008.
“You did not share your love only with your family,” the letter continued, “you shared it with all who (were) willing to receive your love.”
“She thinks well of everybody,” said Ann Sabin, 70, Stubbs’ niece. “That was her big motto: that people are not to judge other people.”
While growing up in Williamsburg, Sabin often used to travel to Norfolk to visit her Aunt Lillian. Sabin now lives in Tennessee, but her aunt’s love remains constant. That love extended to Sabin’s daughter Jacque and Jacque’s 11-year-old son Whitt, during a time of particular hardship for them.
“Aunt Lillian really took up with him,” Sabin said. “He just looks at her like he worships her.”
Once you’ve met Lillian Stubbs, you’re never quite the same.
“You spread your spirit every day and your spirit leaves its marks in many places every day,” Irving Stubbs wrote in his mother’s birthday letter.
She moved from her Norfolk home to Williamsburg Landing in 1993. Activities Specialist Patty Gaudio started at Landing in 2003, and she’s known Stubbs ever since.
“She is a remarkable woman,” Gaudio said. “She is lovely. Spirited.”
Even when Gaudio left Landing for four years, to care for family, she’d return to visit Stubbs.
“She really has a zest for life,” Gaudio said.
Gaudio treasures the memory of riding an elevator with Stubbs on a July day – together, they sang one of Stubbs’ favorite tunes, “O Holy Night,” no matter it was the middle of summer.
There are some people, few people, you meet in life who stay with you, Gaudio said.
“Lillian is one of them.”
Bridges can be reached by phone at 757-345-2342.
