By Patricia L. Pastore
Hermean Carter gazed at a festive cake decorated with red and yellow roses. She blew out the candles, cut the cake and then immediately started eating a piece.
“It’s good,” she said, savoring the first bite.
She waved away an individual who asked her if she realized it was her 100th birthday.
“Yes, I know it is,” the feisty centenarian said a week ago. “That’s why they got me this cake.”
Carter enjoyed the party given by her doctor, Pardeep Kumar, an internist. He remembers Carter surprised him on her first visit when she bent over and touched her toes.
“She is very alert and in very good health for her age,” he said. “She has a healthy lifestyle.”
Carter said she was born at home in Terre Haute on Jan. 21, 1906.
Her family members aren’t known for their longevity, she said. Her mother, Anna Carter, died when she was 18 and her father, Charles Carter, in his 50s, she said. Her brother and two sisters died years ago.
Carter attributes her longevity to “good clean living.”
“I don’t drink and I don’t smoke,” she said. “I walked everywhere because I never wanted to drive.”
Carter attends Christ Temple Church, where she often is called upon to recite passages of Scripture.
“We call on her to give verbatim quotes of Scripture,” said the Rev. Merrill Weir. “Her ability to recall is amazing. She has quite a command of the Scriptures.”
Carter, who is black, remembers growing up how segregation was a part of daily life. Blacks and whites didn’t eat together, attend the same schools, sit in the same section in movie theaters or use the same restrooms.
Despite having a high school diploma at a time when most jobs only required an eighth-grade education, the only jobs open to her and other black women were in food services and as housekeepers, Carter said.
“I mostly cleaned houses for people, but I worked in the kitchen at the Terre Haute House and I worked in Paul’s Restaurant,” she said. “Paul Welch owned the cafe and he was a good boss.”
Carter has helped raise several children, but she never wanted children of her own. She says she didn’t want the stress.
Thirty-eight years ago, Carter moved into a home with her best friend, Christine Smith.
She helped raise Smith’s daughter, Barbaran Smith. The women shared the home until Christine Smith died in 1990.
Barbaran Smith, a mother of twin sons and a daughter, asked Carter, then 86, to live with her and help with the children.
“She helped me raise the children; my boys are 22 years old and my daughter is 19,” Barbaran Smith said. “She’s been a part of my life since I was born.”
Patricia Pastore can be reached at (812)213-4271 or pat.pastore@tribstar.com.
