Four Friends Ready to Turn 100

From the Washington Post:

Leona Barnes doesn’t remember when, back around the close of World War I, she met Gladys Butler, Ruth Hammett and Bernice Underwood. Growing up in Southwest Washington, they were part of the landscape, in the same way that her house and her street and her church were.

As little girls, the four played jacks and jumped rope; later they shared gossip and danced the two-step and the Charleston. Two of them lived in the same house at one point, and three of them had babies the same year — 1933. But they could not have predicted that someday they would be poised to celebrate their 100th birthdays together.

“We all are grateful, and we thank the Lord for all of us to see 99,” Barnes said as she sat this week in Zion Baptist Church in Northwest Washington with the other three, who are members there. Slapping her thigh for emphasis, she said, “If we don’t make 100, it’s up to Him — but we made the 99.”